DHAKA, Feb 13, 2021 (BSS) – Representatives of world’s top tech giants including google, facebook and Microsoft have joined virtually the guest sessions and panel discussions of a four-day Unibator Mentor Development Camp, an initiative to build startup mentors.
Participants of the camp hoped the initiative would play a crucial role to the development of startup ecosystem in Bangladesh as representatives of world’s top technological companies as well as officials of government’s policymaking level are joining it and giving suggestions.
Sheikh Kamal IT Business Incubator Project, CUET under Bangladesh Hi-Tech Park Authority (BHTPA) and Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh (IEB) arranged the camp, first of its kind in Bangladesh, at IEB Dhaka centre with the participation of university level teachers.
Managing Director, Emerging Markets, Asia Pacific Region at Facebook Jordi Fornies, Facebook’s head of public policy for Bangladesh Sabhanaz Rashid Dia joined the guest session today (Saturday) in the four-day camp that began on Thursday.
In their speeches, they focused on the importance of innovations in boosting up of digital economy.
Microsoft Bangladesh’s head of channel sales Mashroor Hossain joined a separate guest session today and discussion on “Empowering the Academic Community to Fuel Industrial Transformation”.
Earlier on February 11, Google’s Next Billion Users (NBU) Initiative Head of Operations Bickey Russell joined a guest session and discussed on ‘innovation and commercialization”.
Prime Minister’s Special Assistant Barrister Shah Ali Farhad will join a guest session tomorrow (Sunday) while SBK Foundation and SBK Tech Ventures Founder Sonia Bashir Kabir will join a panel discussion on ‘Investment Opportunities and Prerequisites’.
Representatives of different venture capital companies, local and international IT institutions and officials of policymaking levels of the government also joined different sessions in the four-day mentor development camp.
Bangladesh High-Tech Park Authority (BHTPA) Startup Policy and Incubation Strategy Affairs Consultant Ashiqur Rahman Rupok told BSS that such interactions, suggestions and assistances will help develop startup ecosystem properly.
The UNIBATOR program is expected to bring a change in the thinking process of the educational institutions and upcoming graduate-level students regarding the thesis and academic projects.
The name UNIBATOR has been derived from the statement, ‘University Incubator’ that will be connecting faculties of 20 universities across the nation, and through them, the programme will reach out to the graduating students to guide them to pick up topics to find solutions based on national challenges.
Through the Unibator programme, top ten innovative ideas from thesis or project papers will be launched as ventures by establishing 10 international standard companies.
After the initial selection, the selected students will go through a month-long incubation program, to think, design, develop and launch their ideas as a venture with the help of BHTPA and iDEA Project under ICT Division.
Office spaces will be given to the new companies at High Tech Park buildings and each startup will get Taka 10 lac as primary capital.
Besides, top three startups will take part in global competition. University Grants Commission (UGC) and iDEA Project are acting as strategic partners of the Unibator programme.