Anusha Fatima of Trash It has won a global competition for women, She Loves Tech Pakistan as she does not want her country to become a trash dump.
CIRCLE Pakistan, an organization that works for the empowerment of women through entrepreneurship, advocacy campaigns, and research founded by Sadaf Abid has organized this competition. Institute of Business Administration city campus hosted the final round of competition. TRAFiX LLC President Yusuf Jan, OPEN Karachi President Zakiuddin Ahmed, Startup Adviser and former IBM Chief Executive Officer Humayun Bashir and Ayesha Khan were the part of jury.
Pakistan will be represented by Fatima in the global competition of She Loves Tech in Beijing. Student of computer science at Habib University who is interested in civic hacking and sustainable community models. She Loves Tech Pakistan will have 80 candidates to take part.
“I am exploring and developing a model for efficient organic waste disposal particularly for households via my startup. It all started from Startup Weekend Karachi, 2017 where I was a runner up. The idea, inspiration and the fire to make it happen. Acting upon commitment is a challenging than complaining,” Fatima said.
Samar Hasan was the first runner up with a startup ‘Mera Paisa’, she has just co-founded. Her focus is on joining ideas for transformation and interventions in enterprise development, institutional development, governance and democracy, dialogue and advocacy and other areas.
‘DoctHERS’ was the second runner up, the third runner-up was ‘Sehat Kahani’, startup of Dr. Sara Saeed Khurram. Dr. Khurram, co-founder, and chief executive officer tried to start a community innovation hub based in Pakistan. Sehat Kahani works on spectrum of services focused on primary health care consultation, health awareness and health counseling for health improvement.
The other startups included SheKab, Qayyam, ELN, Kafayak, IoTA, Aurat Raj and Edvon in addition to Trash It, Mera Paisa, DoctHERS, and Sehat Kahani.
United States Agency for International Development Deputy Mission Director Denise Herbol graced the event as chief guest. Working space for women in Pakistan and across the world is very limited irrespective of progress, she said, adding that women face discrimination either employed or run their own business.
Herbol said that it’s good to see such technological ideas from women. Women along with the responsibility of looking after their children and home get financial freedom from such ideas.