While most people are sitting idly at home spending leisure time or wondering how to spend time, some bright minds are already looking for ways to revive the social and economic conditions of the country after quarantine. In order to get those intellectuals a stage to share their ideas, Interactive Cares organised an idea generation competition.
Interactive Cares is a cloud and artificial intelligence based platform of the country that offers e-learning, health, mental health and legal service to customers through real time communication between users and experts through chatting, video calling and virtual whiteboards, easy ask and resources.
This idea generation competition "Idea Innovation Contest 2020- Crafting Visions" aspires to be one of the biggest entrepreneurial platforms of the nation. Their vision is to create a platform for the young and aspiring entrepreneurs of Bangladesh to facilitate seamless flow of ideas. Due to this pandemic, many businesses are shutting down and the economy is on the brink of collapse. However, to save the economy from this mishap, entrepreneurs of the future has to play a vital role. And to do their part, they first need to come up with feasible business plans. Idea Innovation Contest was launched with the intention to find out those feasible business plans so that the effects of this handicapped situation can be lessened.
The selection round, semi-final and grand finale of this competition took place via online assessment. In the selection round, the participants had to provide meticulous solutions to some prevailing social issues. Out of nearly 256 registered teams, 24 teams went straight to the semi-finals. After heated competition in the semi final only six teams were able to secure their position to the glorious grand finale. Among these six teams, 'Team Cognitive Dissonance' from Bangladesh University of Professionals and 'Team FYB' from IBA, Dhaka University was declared as the champion and runner- up consecutively bagging a total prize money of Taka 100,000.
The idea of the champion team Cognitive Dissonance was to produce Trichoderma bio-compost, an organic fertilizer, from water hyacinths and poultry wastes through a convenient drum composting method that's not only inexpensive but also extremely environment friendly. The runner-up, Team FYB, came up with the idea of RojRoj, a micro-delivery, subscription-based platform that will incorporate small retail stores and vulnerable groups in society to reliably and regularly supply essentials to households.
Rare Al Samir, CEO of Interactive Cares stated, "Idea Innovation Contest was launched to find out the Innovative Business Ideas which can sustain, maintain profitability in pandemic situation and contribute to the economy of the country." CMO of Interactive Cares Fahim Shahriar Swapnil was also present at the grand finale.
The founder and CEO of Hult Prize Foundation and the chief guest of Idea Innovation Contest, Ahmed Ashkar described the importance of young generation to take lead for the growth of Bangladesh and also the discussed effective ways of being a successful entrepreneur.
The event was made successful with the contribution of six partners, 30 university affiliations, a bunch of campus ambassadors, more than 1,000 participants along with special guest Tina F Jabeen, investment advisor, Startup Bangladesh, and esteemed judge panel ornamented with other industry experts - Ghulam Sumdany Don, CEO of Don Sumdany Facilitation and Consultancy, Bijon Islam, co-founder and CEO of Lightcastle Partners, Sumit Saha, co-founder of Analyzen, Nahian Rahman Rochi, senior corporate finance manager, BATB, Syed Ibrahim Saajid, manager, Bkash Limited, Zafir Shafie Chowdhury, co-founder of Singularity and Bondstein and Muqit Ahmed, director of Digital Services, Banglalink. The host of the final was the popular host of What a Show and Senior Strategic Planner of Grey, Rafsan Sabab.
The writer is a content writer at Interactive Cares.
She can be reached at khushbu_bhuiyan@yahoo.com