State Minister for ICT Division Zunaid Ahmed Palak urged the young generation to come forward with innovative ideas and project for driving digital Bangladesh forward.
He made the call while addressing as the chief guest at a programme titled ‘Student to Start-Up competition, BUET round’ in BUET on Thursday . Leading youth platform ‘Young Bangla’ and Innovation Design and Entrepreneurship Academy (IDEA) project under ICT Division arranged the two-day long competition.
In his speech, Zunaid Ahmed Palak said, “Don’t think ICT Division as the separate part of the government but feel it as the platform of implementing your potential dream, we always searching for potential new ideas and project to grab out developed digital Bangladesh.”
He said that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina always advocates for necessary allocation for conducting time-befitting researches and studies, and emphasize for tapping potentiality of technology based Bangladesh.
With the slogan of ‘My innovation, My Dream’, the Young Bangla, under the auspices of Centre for Research and Information (CRI) is supervising the competition.
Later, a workshop took place while a number of team participated under the specialists of technology and young entrepreneurship. Pitching round will take place today (Friday) while three of innovator team will be selected for national camp. Vice-Chancellor of BUET Prof. Dr. Saiful Islam, project director of IDEA Syed Mojibul Haque, centre for research and information (CRI) co-coordinator, Tonmoy Ahmad and specialists of ICT division along with a number of participator were present at the competition.
In his speech, Prof Dr. Saiful Islam emphasized undertaking collaborative work and research activities for achieving sustainable development economy of Bangladesh.
Organizer of the event Adnan Ahmed said, three teams will be chosen from each university and some 120 teams will be qualified from 40 universities in the process. Later a national start-up camp will be held at Savar with those teams.
In final competition, 10 start-up teams will be selected as winners and each team will get money, advice and all kind of support to implement their innovative ideas and rest of 20 teams will be selected for being groomed, he added.
The main purpose of IDEA project is to give support to the enterprising youth of the country. The youth are given support in terms of advice, finance, and office and so on for their startups. Project IDEA is working to ensure that no great idea or startup gets ruined because of financial crisis and lack of technical support.