State Minister for Technology and Communication Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak said that the future of Smart-Bangladesh depends on sustainable and strong inter-relationship at the academic-industry level, citing the example of Stanford, Harvard and MIT.
He made the remarks while addressing as the chief guest at the 7th BASIS Outsourcing Awards held at Bangladesh Film Archive Multipurpose Auditorium on Saturday evening.
Keeping that in mind, the ICT department had requested the VCs of 150 universities of the country for a piece of land at the very beginning of setting up the Unibator at the university level. He added that KUET and CUET responded at the very beginning. Then the Prime Minister had allocated over 100 crore Taka for that purpose. Unibator of KUET will be inaugurated tomorrow.
And for those who did not spare a piece of land in the argument as to why businesses will enter the educational institutions at that time, Palak said, “In the future, the educational institutions will be the maternity wards for building business establishments.”
The state minister further said that the innovative ideas of trillion-dollar companies of the world have come from the universities. Today, NASA’s world-winning concept has come from team Mohakash, the Bangladesh team consists of the students of KUET and BUET. That’s how innovative thinking comes from student life. The commercialization of these ideas requires patronage. To reduce this gap, we have taken initiative to set up a University Incubation Center.
In his speech, Palak urged the banks to come forward in investing behind the freelancers. Noting that it is not possible to launch an equity share model without resorting to traditional financing, Palak said, “I expect Bank Asia to set up a startup fund for freelancers in the future.” Which will finance them by reviewing their business model without going into traditional debt through equity sharing.
After reading the success stories of one lakh freelancers out of six and a half lakh freelancers in the country, now the ICT department is preparing a self-employment ecosystem development project, said the Minister of State for ICT. Through this project, at least one lakh freelancers will be developed as entrepreneurs by 2025.
BASIS President Syed Almas Kabir presided over the event while Bank Asia Managing Director Md. Arfan Ali, MasterCard Bangladesh Country Representative Syed Maqsood Kamal, BASIS Outsourcing Award 2021 Judiciary Panel Head Rafiqul Islam Rawli and BASIS Senior Vice President Farhana A. Rahman delivered speeches.
At the event, 20 awards were given at the organization level and 79 at the individual level. At the organization level, 5 awards are given in the Outsourcing Organization category, 5 in the Startup category and 10 in the Export Excellence category. At the individual level, awards were given to 63 people in 63 districts, 5 people in the individual women’s category, 10 top national outsourcers and 1 specially-able person.