Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) in collaboration with Google on Thursday launched a $ 250,000 worth Social Innovative Fund to finance innovate and constructive ideas of young entrepreneurs and students of Pakistan.
Google Inc. has granted an amount to IT entrepreneurs’ body to launch P@SHA innovative fund for sponsor different IT and technology projects to young entrepreneurs and students of IT field.
This was announced in the press conference held in Karachi at local hotel.
President Pasha Jehan Ara said that the all interested entrepreneurs and students should submit their proposal in next three months on to the website www.pashafund.com till August and they will be funded accordingly.
She said that board members will dedicate their valuable time to all talented people and help them out budget and materializing of their planned projects.
The entrepreneurs will be allocated maximum of one million rupees for the project in the first phase but the extra amount could be released if there will be any need to pursue a specific project.
Pakistan’s students are talented and creative as well but finance is the sole barrier for them to make a difference in the world, she said and added that PASHA will provide them all possible financial and technical assistance to encourage maximum youngsters to invent or to innovate new and useful things.
“There is a need to promote technology in lives of the people so as people should not go into complicated things rather they should focus on the projects, which create easiness and comfort to people in their daily affairs,” Jehan said.
There is lot of ideas to develop an application on disease prevention and disasters forecast which help masses in urban and rural areas to get advantages, she added.
Badar Khushnood, Google Pakistan’s Consultant, said the idea is not fund the creation of software but to fund ideas that use Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as a platform for delivery and as a means for empowerment.
The grant was to support social entrepreneurship and innovation in natural follow-up to the one million dollar aid that Google had provided Pakistan as part of the flood relief effort.
A board has been formed in consultation with P@SHA to allocate funds with proper scrutiny and advisory to funds beneficiaries. This will give technical and financial expertise to entrepreneurs and students for pursuing their project in best economical way.
The board members include:
- Chairman PTA Dr. Muhammad Yaseen,
- MD PSEB Imran Zia,
- Pasha Chairman Ashraf Kapadia,
- Pasha President Jehan Ara,
- Co-Chairman Pakistan-India Business Council Ameen Hashwani,
- Head of Cyber Internet Service Danish Lakhani,
- Chairperson Red Communication Arts Sabene Saigal.
Pasha members will visit universities and ask students to submit their expression of interest for carrying out different projects. The fund will be used for social innovation ideas which may come from university students or the general public.
It seems big news for Pakistani Young Entrepreneur unfortunately these offers are only applicable for high class people studying in top class universities of Pakistan. Pasha should find resources from grass root level in all scales where thousands of talented people can be find with superb piece of ideas
Its website is lunched few minutes before visit it http://pashafund.com/
there is should be more opportunities for other peoples are not studying in universities but doing great work for Pakistani Websites and promoting Pakistani culture to world
Google doing GrooL things.
Keep it up :)
please yai traffic exchange thing hata do mai nai galti sai ik icon per click ker liya to agay to kuch A+ hi chez open ho gai propakistani ko yai suit nai karta asay cheap traffic stunts
protest from silent reader ++
Removed
Thank you so much.
thank you Aamir bahi mai to samja tha ap ignore ker do gai mera comment or publish bhi nai karo gai :) again bari merbani ap ki Allah ap ko google sai kafi user dai ga Ameen :)
عامر بہت شکریہ آپ کا، آپ نے یہ گند ہٹا دی۔ مجھے بہت سخت اعتراض تھا لیکن میں خاموش رہا۔
youre welcome boss – next time, you don’t like anything – say it!
P@sha Social Innovative Program
1. Come up with an idea
If you are a person who is aware and concerned about his/her surroundings and the social issues that the people in your society, your community or your city are facing, and you are a person with ideas, you will already have dreamed about solutions that you can come up with to alleviate the problem. You could have even have experimented with something but may not have had the time or the money to take it further.
If your idea is innovative and uses technology either as a development platform or as a platform for delivery – and actually addresses a specific social need, then we are interested in you and would like to help you.
2. Tell us about your idea
Submit your idea but before you do so, think it through. The questions in our form will help you to answer some of the questions that we need answered before we can decide to fund your idea.
3. Oversight Committee of Jurors
All ideas that are received by us will be examined by a team or jurors who are experienced entrepreneurs and have a strong background in technology but have also worked in the social space. The shortlisted candidates will be asked to present their ideas to the panel for further scrutiny. Announcement of winners will be made via the website and by email.
4. Mentoring
Selected individuals and organizations will be connected with mentors who will thrash out their idea with them and offer them guidance on the development of their strategy and their product or service, and work out a budget and timeline for the project before the funding is made available. The idea is to make every attempt to ensure that all ideas that are selected have the best chance of success.
5. Guru Talks
Apart from the resources that are already available on our website, and which we will continue to add to, we will be holding a series of Guru Talks across the country to ensure that you benefit from some of the experience and the ideas that have already been developed by other people in the country.
6. Show and Tell
Once your product or service is at a stage where it can be showcased, we will organize an activity to present it in front of potential users or customers and media who would help with Outreach. We have a team of Outreach Gurus on our side who will use both mainstream and social media to talk about your solution and its impact.
Criteria
Identify the social problem you’re going to solve?
Your idea can be a solution to a problem that exists or something that you feel will add value to the community in which you live.
Push the boundaries. Don’t restrict yourself to existing ways of doing things. Come up with new models for solving social problems.
The role of technology
Technology must be an aspect of the solution. The solution can be mobile or web based software that addresses a problem or Service or Solution or a new model using technology as a platform for delivery.
Essential requirements
Who qualifies?
Age: It does not matter how old or young you are
Gender: Any gender
Educational Qualifications: It doesn’t take a degree to come up with a good idea or an innovative solution. The only requirement is that you and your team must be able to deliver on the idea.
Nationality: Pakistani based in Pakistan
Individuals or Companies – we would prefer early stage companies or individuals or teams to whom the funding amount would make a difference.
Can u plz remove the comment which had blatantly copy pasted content from P@SHA Fund website?