Pakistan Bags 3 Gold and 1 Silver Award at APICTA 2015

Team Pakistan yesterday won 3 Gold Awards and 1 Silver Award at the Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA) 2015 ceremony held in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Leading the way with the Gold were the teams from Eyedeus Labs for their new product “Ingrain”, Evamp & Sanga for their product Mobile Audio Streaming Service and students from the NUST College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering for their research project “Active and Intelligent Powered Ankle Foot Prosthesis for Trans-tibial Amputees”.

The Silver Award was taken Teddict, a very young team that incubated from Nest i/o.

The Awards ceremony was graced by the Sri Lankan Minister for Telecom and Digital Infrastructure. The Pakistan High Commissioner Major General (Retd) Syed Shakeel Hussain in Sri Lanka, was with Team Pakistan to witness the Pakistani Tech sectors red letter moment.

Regional ICT Award winners from 17 countries from Asia Pacific compete in three day regional event judged by industry professionals, technology veterans and thought leaders from the APAC region.

The consistent great results by Team Pakistan are due to the concerted efforts of judges and mentors who work tirelessly with winners at the P@SHA ICT Awards which took place in Lahore in October this year.

This year’s Pakistan’s delegation comprised 50 members with 22 technology products competing for the APICTA Awards against 197 products from 17 economies in the region.

Team Pakistan delivered another stunning performance in front of the Who’s Who of the technology industry in the Asia Pacific region in categories that are extremely competitive.

Speaking on the occasion, Jehan Ara President of P@SHA said, “The P@SHA ICT Awards , P@SHA’s signature event for the past 12 years, has provided a platform to show the world what technology companies and young people in Pakistan are capable of. This year we have once again proven that our products can be benchmarked against the best in the region. “

International APICTA Judges from 17 economies who evaluated the categories in which Pakistan participated spoke about the consistently high standard of technology products presented by Pakistan year after year.

This year Team Pakistan performed superbly with young people once again taking the lead. With the support of Samsung and Google for Entrepreneurs, P@SHA was able to take a number of young teams to Colombo. The objective was to bring them face-to-face with the best technology companies, professionals and students in the Asia Pacific, to provide an opportunity to meet and form potential partnerships with each other and to attract business and possible investment.

Dressed in their green Team Pakistan t-shirts, the team from Pakistan created impact by putting up a great show. Some of the international judges commented that all the teams had shown the caliber of work being done by the Pakistan tech sector. They were absolutely blown away by the younger teams that took part in the Tertiary Student Category and the Secondary School Project category.

Speaking at the APICTA Awards gala event in Colombo, Dr. Shoab A. Khan, Immediate Past Chairman of P@SHA and a judge at the APICTA event said, “The standard of the competition is improving each year and we know that because it is the best products from each country that compete, we will have to share the accolades.” Other judges from Pakistan include Jawwad A. Farid, Badar Khushnood, and Sultan Hamdani.

On hearing news of Team Pakistan’s performance, current P@SHA Chairman Syed Ahmad said “Top performance at APICTA 2015 has shown that young Pakistani IT entrepreneurs are the best in the region. If the IT industry gets support and an enabling environment from the Government, it can provide millions of jobs and help the Government achieve its Pakistan Vision 2025.”

Gold & Silver Award winners from Pakistan:

• GOLD AWARD
  • Company: Eyedeus Labs
  • Product: Ingrain
  • Website: http://www.eyedeus.com
  • Category: Startup Category
  • Eyedeus Labs is a startup developing Computer Vision technologies for smartphones. Ingrain is their second product – it is a Platform for targeted native advertisement in videos.
• GOLD AWARD
  • Innovators: Noor Asif & Muhammad Farjad Hassan
  • Organization: National University of Science & Technology School of EME
  • Product: Active and Intelligent Powered Ankle Foot Prosthesis for Trans-tibial Amputees.
  • Category: Tertiary Student Category
  • The objective of this project is build and run a prototype of an intelligent powered ankle foot prosthesis based on electromyography, capable of providing active mechanical power at terminal stance, can improve amputee metabolic walking economy compared to a passive or passive-elastic prosthesis.
•  GOLD AWARD
  • Company: Evamp & Saanga
  • Product: Mobile Audio Streaming Service
  • Website: http://evampsaanga.com
  • Category: Inclusion & Community Category
  • This service streams the audio feed from all popular TV and Radio stations in Pakistan, allowing access to live audio from TV & Radio via a simple phone call. The service does not require mobile broadband, and is accessed via a dial-in short code.
•  SILVER AWARD
  • Product: Teddict
  • Website: http://Teddict.com
  • Category: School Category
  • Teddict is a network, learning portal for young students that makes learning more engaging by giving the primary role to the student. Teddict allows students to learn their own way by letting them connect with each other for a diverse portfolio of concepts.