Telenor Pakistan brings the ITU Innovation Challenge Award home

Telenor Pakistan, after competing in the ITU Innovation Challenge held in Budapest, Hungary, from 9th to 12th September 2019, was the Global Challenge Winner in the ‘Ecosystem Best Practice’ challenge for the idea, ‘Open Innovation in Mobile Agriculture’. The challenge is owned by ITU Telecom World, which is the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies. The global platform focuses on high-level dialogue, networking, innovation showcasing and knowledge-sharing. 

ITU announced this 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, being at the forefront of empowering the Pakistani society, came forward with their proposal to compete at this global platform and showcased an initiative for digitizing agriculture eco-system of Pakistan.

The ITU Innovation Challenge 2019 was organized in three main categories namely Digital Change-maker Challenge, Ecosystem Best Practice Challenge, and Smart Communities Challenge. Telenor Pakistan presented the proposal for the Ecosystem Best Practice Challenge Category and pitched its ‘Agri-Tech’ cohort, under the Telenor Velocity platform. This leading digital accelerator platform provides opportunities to startups to scale their solutions through Telenor Pakistan’s digital assets.

“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 programme, Telenor Pakistan enables co-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 Agri Sector through technological intervention by enabling startups with solutions to transform the agriculture sector in Pakistan, commented Sardar Abubakr; Chief Digital & Strategy Officer, Telenor 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 eco-system builders and knowledgeable, experienced individuals. They also believe that through co-creation, 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.