The Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT & ITES (P@SHA) celebrated its 11th annual P@SHA ICT Awards 2o14 at a grand gala event on November 15, 2014 at Movenpick Hotel, Karachi.
Leading dignitaries from the Pakistani ICT sector gathered along with representatives from foreign missions, government, academia and the business sector at yet another dazzling awards night that lauded the innovative achievers from amongst Pakistan’s ICT sector.
The P@SHA ICT Awards aim to provide recognition to the software and service applications by providing them an opportunity to gain local, regional and international exposure; acknowledging creativity, innovation and excellence in Pakistan’s Information and Communications Technologies sector.
“As always we received an overwhelming number of amazing entries this year as well. It is so exciting to see such brilliant work being done in the country. However, this year we are pleased to have innovators from Peshawar join the list of winners from Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad highlighting the amazing pool of talent from all corners of Pakistan.” said Jehan Ara – President of P@SHA.
Chairman P@SHA, Dr. Shoab A. Khan was of the opinion that the emphasis on research and innovation is impressive and is improving Pakistan’s stature as a source of technology and creativity. “The public and private sector institutions need to join hands to ensure that this specialized field benefits Pakistan through the creation of high value jobs and efficiency of government and business processes,” he said.
Panels of judges from Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad faced quite a challenge as they judged some of the finest software products and service offering from Pakistan. This year the P@SHA ICT Awards announced 49 exceptional entries as the best innovators in the 17 product and 15 service categories.
The winners from the product categories of the P@SHA ICT Awards 2014 will be part of the P@SHA delegation from Pakistan that will compete at the APICTA (Asia Pacific ICT Awards) in Jakarta, Indonesia against 17 IT economies including Australia, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Key stakeholders from the IT Community who were present at the P@SHA ICT Awards 2014 event and the Conference highlighted the need for policies that facilitate the growth of the ICT sector and did not hamper its development. Emphasis on the grooming of talent to enable companies to scale and the need to explore a changing export landscape were also part of the discourse.
NUST :)