ICCI president stresses promotion of innovative ideas

Islamabad

Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) President Sheikh Amir Waheed said that aspiring entrepreneurs should focus on innovative cleantech products to maximise business growth and achieve sustainable progress in business field.

He was addressing as chief guest the ‘Business Clinic’ organised by UNIDO in collaboration with ICCI under Global Cleantech Innovation Programme (GCIP).

Sheikh Amir Waheed urged that promoting innovative ideas and their commercialization, especially in the field of clean technologies offered great prospect for growth and aspiring entrepreneurs should come up with innovative cleantech solutions to excel in business field. He said that industry badly needed innovative solutions in various fields including waste water treatment and renewable energy and entrepreneurs should come up with innovative clean tech products to address such issues. He assured that ICCI would continue to collaborate with UNIDO in such programs to foster better growth of cleantech businesses.

Speaking at the occasion, Nadia Aftab, UNIDO Country Representative highlighted the role of UNIDO in promoting sustainable industrial development in the country and its interlinkage with Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) with particular focus on Goal 9 ‘Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure.’ She thanked all the beneficiaries who travelled from across the country to join UNIDO business clinic and also thanked ICCI for collaborating in this important venture.

The two day ‘Business Clinic’ was an event where the aspiring cleantech entrepreneurs came up with the problems in their business models and experts provided them best solutions of such problems. The experts were from the field business and technology with a proven track record of running tech based businesses. Under this program the innovators in the field of clean technology were encouraged to commercialize their innovations so that the businesses, society, and economy could be benefited from environment friendly innovations.

UNIDO provides all necessary support like training, capacity building, access to capital to the innovators and helps them in launching businesses based on their innovations. The business clinic was part of the capacity building of teams and to discuss issues in business models where they were mentored by the experts of business and technology.

The Business Clinic started with discussion on different aspects of business modeling with experts and exports clarified the highlighted issues. The media experts stressed for using electronic media especially radio for those teams who had developed some technology-based solutions for agriculture as radio was an effective medium to get outreach to rural areas. Experts also elaborated on the methods and techniques of venture capital raising. Start-up teams gave their presentations to experts. GCIP winners inspired people by telling their inspiring entrepreneurial journey.

Muhammad Naveed, senior vice president, ICCI, Dr Shahina Waheed, National Programme Coordinator of GCIP, Pakistan also spoke at the occasion.