Founder & Managing Director, Serendib B.V.

Gleb is the founder of Serendib B.V., the Dutch company behind Lake Land. A serial entrepreneur since 2008, he has built businesses in several countries — every one of them still running today. His attention has always gone to the same two things: how a process is set up, and whether the result is genuinely good.

He had wanted to see Ceylon since childhood. When he finally came, he found that everything he thought he knew about the island counted for very little — the place turned out to be a run of discoveries he had not gone looking for, much like the three princes of Serendib whose story gave the English language the word serendipity. One of those discoveries was a quiet lagoon with lotus flowers on it. Lake Land began there.

It was also where the noise stopped. Thoughts that had been circling for years settled into order, and the clarity that came with it was worth more than the rest of the trip put together. Anyone who has run a business will recognise how rare that is — and how much of your strength it quietly gives back. Building a place where that happens for other people is the reason this project exists.

Gleb leads the project himself: the design brief, the choice of partners and the commercial terms.

Land Partner

Veronica has lived on Sri Lanka's south coast for more than a decade and knows the coastline between Galle and Tangalle intimately — bay by bay, road by road, village by village.

Sri Lankan land is governed by registered deeds, licensed surveyors' plans and local authority approvals — a system unfamiliar to most European buyers, and one where the questions that matter are rarely the obvious ones. Veronica has spent more than ten years working inside it. She reads a title chain and a survey plan the way a European reads a floor plan, and over the years she has guided a great many international families through the process of establishing a home here. Much of that experience lies in knowing which parcels to walk away from.

Every parcel that becomes part of the project is one she has walked herself. Her assessment covers what a drone photograph never shows — boundaries and access on the ground, elevation and drainage, coastal setback, water and power connections, prevailing wind, and how a site actually feels at seven in the morning.

She lives on the coast for most of the year and is present on site day to day, working directly with surveyors, local authorities and the village community at Nakulugamuwa. She and Stephen have made their own home nearby on the same coast.

Land Partner

Stephen is a British serial entrepreneur and a qualified accountant, who spent decades founding, building and selling international software companies and has since built and led businesses in the UK financial sector. More than a decade ago he turned his attention to Sri Lanka's south coast, where he now spends part of every year.

Bringing land of this kind into a project takes more than an agreement between two parties: registered deeds, licensed surveyors' plans, local authority approvals and the structure that carries a foreign buyer safely to a title of their own. That side of the work is where Stephen spends his time — the terms, the structure, and the discipline of getting each step properly documented before the next one begins.

Their own home on the south coast came first — and it was later, nearby on the same coast, that Veronica found Mawella Lagoon and saw what it could become. Stephen backed the idea, and together they made the decision to develop it. Between them the two roles are complementary: Veronica reads the land, Stephen structures the deal.

Chief Project Engineer

Roman is a civil engineer with twenty years in design and construction. He has progressed from structural engineer to head of design departments and chief project engineer, leading projects through the full cycle — from concept and design documentation to construction permitting, site supervision and completion.

At Lake Land he is responsible for the technical development of the project: the site masterplan, the architectural, structural and engineering design of the villas, the coordination of building services and the construction cost workings.

Through construction he provides Serendib's technical supervision — monitoring compliance with the approved design and the quality of works at every stage, and coordinating between the parties on site. He personally conducts the final inspection of each villa before it is handed to its owner. He represents the technical interests of the project and is independent of the contractor.

Lake Land is built by Squire Mech Engineering (Pvt) Ltd, the construction arm of Arinma Holdings, under a fixed lump-sum EPC contract with Serendib B.V.

Established in 1985, Squire Mech was among the first construction companies in Sri Lanka and today employs more than 500 people, including chartered engineers, senior project managers, civil, mechanical and electrical engineers and quantity surveyors. The company holds the highest CIDA grades in its fields — C-1 for Building Construction, C-1 for Water Supply & Drainage and EM-1 for Electrical & Mechanical Services — alongside grades for highways, bridges and interior finishing (CIDA registration C 0054). It is a member of the National Construction Association of Sri Lanka (R218) and an ISO 9001 certified organisation.

Squire Mech works to the standards demanded by institutional clients: government ministries, the Urban Development Authority, and internationally funded programmes for JICA, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the United Nations FAO. Its own plant and equipment fleet — excavators, loaders, concrete plant and site machinery — is owned rather than hired, which keeps a project's programme in the contractor's own hands.

Arinma Holdings is a diversified Sri Lankan group and a signatory to the UN Global Compact, certified carbon neutral and ISO 14001 certified.