This week You! takes a look at five brilliant start-ups which are a part of STEM Hackathon for women in Sindh and Balochistan...
In today’s competitive world, women in businesses are as enterprising as men. The inclusion of women in the workforce and their visible participation in economic activities around the globe is the most positive development of this century. From running small scale start-ups to managing big ventures, women have proved that they are no less than men when it comes to their entrepreneurship skills. Over the last decade, the world has witnessed the emergence and growth of women-owned businesses globally, making up 38 per cent of all small businesses that keep the economy growing and developing.
Successful women entrepreneurs like Oprah Winfrey, Cher Wang, Indra Nooyi, Falguni Nayar, Vandana Luthra, Kiran Shaw Mazumdar, Gina Rinehart, are inspiring others to venture on the path of entrepreneurship through their success stories.
To support and celebrate the invaluable contribution of women business leaders and entrepreneurs towards economic growth and development, Women’s Entrepreneurs Day (WED) is celebrated every year on 19th November in more than 150 countries around the world.
As far as Pakistan is concerned, women entrepreneurs are also making their mark with their start-ups. Keeping in spirit with WED, U.S. Consulate funded a two-year grant programme from 2019-2021 initiated by the Asia Foundation who later partnered with National Incubation Center (NIC) Karachi to implement a STEM Hackathon for Women in Sindh and Balochistan. The idea was to encourage our women entrepreneurs. Over the two years, five women led start-ups have received $5000 each to scale up their start-ups, and this year, Femprow partnered with the U.S. Consulate to provide honorary mentorship to Quetta based start-up ‘She Can’ who was an honourable mention in 2021’s Hackathon.
Originally anticipated as one hackathon only, the success of the virtual hackathon with 700 women participants in 200 cities of Pakistan in 2020, paved way for funding of the second Hackathon that happened in October 2021, where 800 participants signed up from Sindh and Balochistan. Overall, six start-ups have been funded. Two in 2020 and four in 2021.
Recently, Public Affairs Officer Amy Christianson, Cultural Affairs Officer John Rhatigan, and Cultural Specialist Zahra Hajyani joined established Pakistani entrepreneurs to judge the final pitch session of ‘Built By Her’ 2021, a STEM hackathon for women in Sindh and Balochistan. Let’s take a look at five brilliant start-ups...
Barricade, a unique start-up, was initiated by Krinza Momin, Shakeeb and Fatima Moin. All three are Karachi based. Krinza and Shakeeb are FAST-NUCES graduates in computer science whereas Fatima has done her bachelor’s in computer science from Habib University. The online challenge encouraged young women programmers and entrepreneurs across Pakistan to develop digital solutions and technologies to reduce or mitigate the impact of Covid-19. They came up with creative and innovative digital solutions – through web and mobile-based apps. Team Barricade created an attendance management system that aimed to maximise class participation.
Talking about her start-up, Krinza explains, “With our country suffering from a considerably low literacy rate, the country’s youth is showing a non-serious attitude towards education, which is evident from their habit of bunking off their classes in educational institutions. Even with increasing access to compatible web-based resources or lecture recordings, traditional face-to-face classroom lectures are considered better at engaging the students with the content. Successful students are well aware of the importance of attendance. Yet absences are common in lectures. Often a quarter of the students do not attend lectures. Frequent absences often result in subsequent academic hardship.”
“We conducted a brief survey about the educational institution’s dynamics in adapting the Barricade, for a feasibility study of the idea. In conversation with the top management of universities, it was evident that proxy culture and absenteeism is one of the root causes of 40 per cent of students dropping out of University, whether be it the lack of attendance or drop in performance because bunking and missing out on lectures. To address the problem which was hidden under plain sight, we came up with an app that makes sure a student never misses a class. The app is able to engage 1000+ folds of students and student communities through online and virtual mentoring sessions, events, panel discussion and talks,” she adds.
Google features the story of Krinza Momin (co-founder Barricade) to appreciate her work in building the tech community in her campus as well as outside the walls of her university. On the occasion of United Nations International Day of Women and Girls in Science, The Nest I/O, in partnership with Careem, conducted panel discussion ‘Opening Doors & Breaking Ceilings: Women in Tech’ on 11th Feb and Barricade was represented by Krinza Momin for the recognition of social apps built by women. The panel talked about celebrating, promoting and encouraging women and girls to be part of Science and Tech, and share their personal journey with the audience.
iParhayi is a wonderful start-up initiated by Mariam Usman; content developer; Muhammad Saad Iqbal; product developer; Shariat Mushahid; web developer; and Yamna Ahmed. Mariam and Saad are pursuing their master’s degree from National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (FAST-NU); Shariat is pursuing post-graduation degree in Data Science from FAST- NUCES whereas Yamna did her Master’s in Computer Science in 2020 from FAST.
While explaining the reason behind developing iParhayi, Mariam Usman says, “As we know that Pakistan faces key challenges of illiteracy, poor school education, ghost schools, and an extremely high number of school-aged children who do not attend schools. During this pandemic we all came to realise how important online education is, however, children in online education don’t get enough attention or personalised content which is hard on them to learn.
Certainly this caused me and my team to realise that now is the time we take action for such problems and we worked on an idea of iParhayi. It promotes personalised online education through adaptive and adaptable learning. Adaptive learning implies that an AI based content recommendation engine is used, which will deliver contents according to the level of the individual learner.”
Muhammad Saad Iqbal, another member of the team, shares, “Since Covid-19 hit everyone so bad, and most affect the education sector since online studies are less interactive and boring. So as being a techie we decide to build such an application that will make education more interactive and adaptive. Then the idea came out as ‘iParhayi’ an application that could make education accessible to everyone, more interactive content, gamifies the education, multiple learning modes, and using Artificial Intelligence will make it adaptive and a personalised learning path for every individual.”
“We face difficulties in connecting ourselves with the market and how to penetrate the existing market along with our competitors. This competition ‘Build by Her 2021’ is the biggest milestone for us to market our product with this achievement, which is our first success story towards our future venture,” elucidates Yamna.
An excellent start-up, Fixie.pk is the brainchild of Kanwal Aftab. She has recently launched this mobile application with her dedicated team namely Tasneem Ahmed, Pirah Wali, Dua Abro, Muhammad Saleem and Zakir Hussain. “Fixie.pk provides convenience to travellers and vehicle-owners in managing their vehicle problems at doorsteps or in remote areas and provides roadside assistance,” enlightens Kanwal, who hails from Dadu District and is pursuing her bachelor’s in Computer Science at University of Sindh Jamshoro.
“I am responsible for planning, leading and managing all the strategic work of the start-up. With the opening of an Incubation Center in Jamshoro, we got chance to put our idea into reality. With outstanding performance and dedication of team Fixie.pk, we raised seed funding which will prove to be the backbone in the finances of Fixie.pk,” tells Kanwal, CEO of Fixie.pk.
“Being a Product Manager at Fixie.pk, I have researched on different areas of product and helped the start-up making different strategies,” notifies Tasneem who is also pursuing her final year Bachelor in Computer Science at University of Sindh Jamshoro.
“We are so excited to come up with Fixie.pk. I manage the overall marketing section of our startup. I'm a certified Digital Marketer so that I analyse data coming from social media like engagements, identifying trends in customer interactions and planning campaigns to build a good community on social media,” comments Pirah Wali.
Services of fixie.pk will be provided by mobile applications which are under development and will be launched very soon,” informs Kanwal.
PowerHer is another great start-up, established by four undergraduate students at Fast Nuces – Aliya Tharwani, Merub Shaikh, Hermain Qadir and Anusha Saad. They came up with the idea of establishing a place where women could seek basic finance knowledge.
“We, a group of four undergraduate students, surveyed women and came across the need for financial literacy as a matter of urgency. If there’s one territory that has gone largely untapped, it’s this. Less than 5 per cent of women are included in the formal financial sector of Pakistan. To contribute towards the cause, we came up with the solution of building a one-spot platform- PowerHer – an easy-to-use web application – which empowers women to become aware of their finances as well as take strong financial decisions independently. Our solution aims towards instilling financial skills in women by educating them and providing expert guidance on matters of money so that they can make wise financial decisions and investments; thus making them active agents of economic and social change in Pakistan,” explains Anusha Saad.
“We realised that women lack basic finance knowledge and there should be a way to deliver it to them. And that’s from where we united together to bring our idea towards the world hoping that it would bring a positive change in our society,” states Merub.
“When I came across Built by her Hackathon, I was exhilarated to participate and put in my contribution towards the cause,” adds Aliya.
“With PowerHer we hope to bridge the gender gap in the economic front of Pakistan that has otherwise set women back by not years but decades,” vows Anusha Saad.
SheCan is a remarkable start-up initiated by Misbah Rani and Banafsha Durrani, based in Quetta, Balochistan.
“The project ‘Built by Her’, conducted by the U.S. Consulate NIC Karachi, gave us a wonderful opportunity to work towards the betterment of women of Balochistan. With the help of some friends and family members we came up with our website ‘SheCan’ – a platform for the women of Balochistan where they could easily provide their services nationwide. By the help of our website the skilled women will be able to reach out to more customers and can expand their business,” defines Banafsha who has a master’s degree in computer science from Sardar Bahadur Khan University.
“Women here in Balochistan are facing difficulties reaching out the customers. Our website/ web portal will give them easy access to reach out customers. Our website will act like a bridge between the buyer and seller of the services. It will increase independency of women economically as they could earn by the services or skill they have. We will market our website among skilled women and potential buyers.
The website will have a diversified portfolio that would include any skill that any female has such as stitching, cooking, teaching, computer programming, typing etc,” elaborates Misbah, an experienced computer science expert.
Erum Noor Muzaffar is the editor of You! magazine. She can be reached at iram29@hotmail.com
Women Entrepreneurs Day was the brainchild of an organisation called the Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Organization (WEDO). The organisation has worked with individuals and group leaders within government to advocate for greater support of women and to educate leaders on the social and economic benefits of women entrepreneurship.
WED was started in 2014 by social entrepreneur and humanitarian Wendy Diamond, after volunteering with the Adelante Foundation who provides microcredit to low income women in Honduras. Upon her return to the US she decided she wanted to develop something to help this and similar philanthropic causes and to empower, celebrate, and support women in business worldwide. Due to these efforts, the United Nations now celebrates Women’s Entrepreneurship Day on the 19th November each year. The inaugural event was held in New York City at the United Nations, with some additional events being held simultaneously in several other countries. Initially, 144 nations in total recognised the first WED in 2014.
The reason behind observing Women Entrepreneurship Day is to empower and support women in business and to encourage them in alleviating poverty. WED works globally and encourage women leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs to initiate start-ups. WED builds and catalyses the vital networks of like-minded individuals and organisations that women business leaders need in order to realise their full potential.
