Telenor Pakistan Wins the Prestigious ITU Innovation Challenge Award
Telenor Pakistan has been crowned as the Global Challenge Winner in the ‘Ecosystem Best Practice’ challenge for the idea, ‘Open Innovation in Mobile Agriculture’ at the ITU Innovation Challenge. The event was held in Budapest, Hungary, from 9th to 12th September 2019,
The United Nations’ specialized agency for information and communication technologies, ITU Telecom World conducts the event with a focus on high-level dialogue, networking, showcasing innovation and knowledge-sharing.
ITU announced the challenge on 6th June 2019 with the aim of uplifting innovation and entrepreneurship, while offering a platform to co-create proposals and present ideas to transform communities through technologies.
Telenor Pakistan came forward with an initiative to digitize the agriculture ecosystem of Pakistan.
The ITU Innovation Challenge 2019 had three main categories:
- Digital Change-maker Challenge
- Ecosystem Best Practice Challenge
- Smart Communities Challenge
Telenor Pakistan presented its proposal under the Ecosystem Best Practice Challenge category and pitched its ‘Agri-Tech’ cohort, under the Telenor Velocity platform. This leading digital accelerator platform provides opportunities for startups to scale their solutions through Telenor Pakistan’s digital assets.
On the achievement, Telenor Pakistan Chief Digital & Strategy Officer, Sardar Abubakr said:
It is an honor for us to be a part of the ITU Innovation Challenge and we are extremely excited about winning this award. Under its Velocity program, Telenor Pakistan enables creation between skillful people who are working together to augment the digital ecosystem. Specifically, with Telenor Velocity’s Agri-Tech Cohort, we are working towards uplifting the agriculture sector through technological intervention by enabling startups with solutions to transform the agriculture sector in Pakistan.
According to Telenor Pakistan, this platform was selected due to its capability of providing a co-creation environment while nurturing a global community of like-minded people who are ecosystem builders and knowledgeable, experienced individuals. The platform offers innovators new opportunities to create an enabling environment for innovation to flourish.
This is a substantial development for socioeconomic and digital progress in the country. Pakistan, being a developing country, has extensive potential in the fields of ICT and digital technologies.
This potential only needs a solid footing for nurturing, which is what Telenor Pakistan is providing through Velocity and other digital ecosystem development measures. Winning such prestigious awards and challenges will further encourage undiscovered talent to come forth and showcase their ideas which can turn into large market names.
