Aitizaz Hassan

Huawei has selected 16 startups in Pakistan to uplift their business coverage. These startups from across country pitched their business ideas to a set of decorated judges during the Huawei Cloud startup program. A panel of highly reputed people from the government and private sector were selected to be the judges.

The eligible startups who applied and were selected to join the program will receive free cloud resources, professional technical trainings, go to market (GTM) support, mentorship and marketing benefits.

Huawei has partnered with Ignite in Huawei Cloud startup program. With joint effort of Huawei and Ignite, the national incubation centers across the country provided a list of top startups. Huawei selected 16 startups which met the set criteria.

It was shared in the selection event that Cloud technology is very important for startups in the entire world. Some of these startups, which are good in Pakistan, also want scaling out of the country. If startups want to go to multiple regions, they would need could computing and data centers. With cloud technology, they can replicate the application in real time. The selected startups will also be provided with the opportunity to interact with government and private stakeholders of the digital market.

The selection criterion for the startups was the use of Cloud technology and working on important challenges such as climate change, Saas (software as a service) based solution, healthcare, green tech, and artificial intelligence (AI).

Each startup was given seven minutes for pitching and five minutes for questions and answers. With the intent to accelerate startups growth, Huawei established a startup advisory committee composed of specialists’ support including legal counsel, chief technology officer (CTO), chief data officer (CDO), corporate marketing, industry experts, senior executives at Huawei, founders of established startups, venture capital firms and government officials.

The top 10 startups will be on boarded in three different levels and will get Huawei Cloud credits and benefits mentioned. The three tiers include Tier 1, ‘Hall of Fame’ which will include the top three teams, Tier 2 ‘All Star’, comprised of the top 4-6, and Tier 3, ‘Rookie’ startups that end with 7-10 positions. The 16 startups were shortlisted after an application process that included giving their company name and/or team profile, describing their product/solutions, market analysis, reports for the last three years and projections for the next three years.

The program is a global support initiative launched by Huawei Cloud for global startups. The main purpose is to help accelerate the business growth of technology startups and ecosystem partners.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk