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:
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.
