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I Am Karachi Innovation Challenge from Pakistan Innovation Foundation on Vimeo.

Pakistan Innovation Foundation and I AM KARACHI Consortium hosted… The I AM KARACHI INNOVATION CHALLENGE.

OPEN FOR ALL INNOVATORS passionate about creating a Peaceful Karachi! Student, professional or entrepreneur with an idea for this great city and believe that your idea has the power to solve Karachi’s problems were asked to apply to become part of the most exciting event of the year!

3-day Hackathon took place at Habib University  from 12-14 June 2015.

Problem statements were revealed in the following theme areas:

1. Health
2. Education
3. Law and Security
4. Environment and Transportation
5. Art, Culture and Society

Winners won up to  PKR 300,000 (1st), PKR 200,000 (2nd), and PKR 100,000 (3rd) worth of merchandise and support on the day of the Hackathon. They also won support from our theme partners and sponsors to help them realise their ideas, and the opportunity to participate in a 3-month long Innovation Accelerator!

Where functionality met form!

Under the National Innovation Grand Challenge, more than 20+ teams participated in the Design Day held in Islamabad. The teams were paired up with student designers and faculty from SADA, University of Gujrat and National College of Arts, Lahore. The purpose of Design Day was to assist teams in improving the outlook of their product, while maintaining the same level of functionality. Participants worked with their paired up designers to submit their ideas to win cash prizes worth PKR 50,000/-

Winners include:

Neelam Munir from University of Karachi

Awais Arshad from Islamabad University of Gujrat

Ilm Apps Challenge conducted in 2014, was an “Open Innovation Challenge” focused on creating ‘ilm applications’ to address Pakistan’s Education Emergency. Applicants were invited to create mobile and web-based applications focused on the goal of increasing outreach of education in an improved manner. The Ilm Apps Challenge included a series of eight workshops and three hackathons to produce polished products in the form of web-based and mobile applications that were awarded seed funding amounting to PKR 200 million.

Winners of the Ilm Apps Challenge of include:

Knowledge Platform

Arbisoft

MS-ITE (NUST)

Team Amal

Innovation Forum 2014 was conducted under the theme of “Innovation Nation™ – The Promise and Challenges of Creating an Innovation Ecosystem”. The event brought together notable champions from the academia, government and business together with emerging young innovators and entrepreneurs. The Innovation Forum addressed the challenges and opportunities of boosting innovation in the country by engaging all the relevant stakeholders. Here is the final report of “The Innovation Nation”. Click here to read the Report.

The Innovation Lab is a special initiative of PIF carried out with the sole purpose of finding novel solutions through faculty-student exchange, across universities in Pakistan. The Innovation Labs provide a conducive surrounding for creative solutions from the identification of the problem till the discovery of the solution through collaborative problem solving.

The PIF Innovation Labs are currently located in the following universities:

• University of Agriculture, Faisalabad
• PMAS Arid University, Rawalpindi
• University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences, Lahore
• CASE, Islamabad
• Karachi Institute of Technology & Entrepreneurship

One of the major parts of these innovation labs is the brainstorming exercise carried out by students and faculty to identify problems and create innovative solutions in Water, Climate, Information Sharing, Energy, Farmer Information System, Communication among others. The students were divided into the groups and given their desired field to deal with. The session was divided into two parts. First, students and faculty were told to focus on the main problems of their fields and then move towards solutions. In the process of that, some of the groups come up with very important problems as well as innovative and creative ideas to solve those problems.

PIF Ideas Lab is an initiative to aims to bring together professionals and students to brainstorm innovative ideas that addressed the Pakistani problems from a creative angle. The aim of the ideas lab is to find ‘out-of-the-box’ solutions while creating opportunities for industry-academia linkages, mentorship and knowledge sharing.

Under the PIF Ideas Lab, the Ideas Contest 2013 was conducted with a focus on solutions from the following key areas:

• Agriculture and Rural Development
• Manufacturing
• Water, Climate, and Disaster Mgmt.
• Better Governance
• Energy
• ICT for Development
• Urban Living

PIF received an overwhelming response for the Ideas Contest 2013, with participants submitting original, innovative yet realistic solutions to problems. The winners of the competition were awarded PKR 50,000 and runners up received PKR 25,000 in cash prize, coupled with lots of mentoring and training on how to refine ideas and practical advice on taking them forward from some of the leading innovators and entrepreneurs in Pakistan.

VISIONING PAKISTAN 2050

This online competition was conducted to commemorate the successful democratic transition of power in Pakistan in 2013 General Elections. Entries were invited in the form of photographs, design or visual artefacts that best revealed the artist’s vision of Pakistan in 2050. This online competition was conducted with the support from National Academy of Young Scientists (NAYS), Go Green Pakistan, Sha’oor Society and IdeasEvolved. We received an overwhelming number of positive, patriotic and inspiring visual material, that included pictures, photographs, paintings and designs that showcased the finesse, energy and patriotism of our youth. The winners received Gift Vouchers worth PKR 7500 and PKR 2500.

Short Listed Entries were posted on our Facebook page and can be viewed here Pakistan Innovation Foundation – PIF