Pakistan’s IT products solving business, community problems: says P@SHA president

KARACHI:  The Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT & ITES (P@SHA) president Jehan Ara said: “The Pakistan IT industry has been growing steadily over the years, and it is essential for us to tell the world that Pakistan is a country where young  innovators transform their ideas and dreams into products that have been solving business and community problems.”

She was speaking at a gala dinner hosted by (P@SHA) in connection with its 13th annual ICT Awards ceremony here at a local hotel. The guests at the event included leading players from the tech industry as well as representatives from the government, the business sector, professionals, academia and students.

For the first time ever, the main sponsor of the event was UBL, a bank that leads the banking and financial services sector in Pakistan, and one that has come to be acknowledged as a progressive and innovative bank.

Bringing together local tech superheroes on a common platform, the Awards ceremony lauded innovation and excellence in the Pakistan ICT industry and recognized the efforts of outstanding achievers that have been making waves both locally and internationally.

 “The idea behind organizing the P@SHA ICT Awards 2016 every year is to celebrate homegrown Pakistani innovators” said Jehan Ara.

Entries for the P@SHA ICT Awards were received from all over the country and judging was held in all three major cities of Pakistan to evaluate the applicants and their products. Companies and individuals were asked to pitch their products in front of a panel of esteemed industry experts who came up with the list of winners and runners up.

Chairman P@SHA Naseer Akhtar, President & CEO of the Infotech Group said on this occasion, “The official export figures are deceptive because some of revenue being generated by IT professionals, consultants and freelancers is coming in as remittances.

However he admitted that although the IT industry had been successful in incubating, creating and supporting the growth of companies, the sector had not succeeded in creating large scale companies employing 10,000+ people.”

“This will only happen when we have more top notch universities creating a larger number of graduates in the software engineering and computer science domain,” he said.

“The goal of P@SHA is to provide software and IT service companies with a collaborative platform where they can come together as a force to network, to brainstorm and to come up with solutions collectively”

The application process for the awards kicked off in July, and companies and individuals applied in 17 product categories and 15 local categories.

P@SHA ICT Awards also open doors to international exposure for local companies working on innovative ideas, as the winners from the Product categories get a chance to represent Pakistan and benchmark their products against those from 17 countries at the APICTA (Asia Pacific ICT Alliance) Awards 2016 that are being held in Taiwan in December this year.