State Minister for ICT Division Zunaid Ahmed Palak has declared bdapps (www.bdapps.com), the country's largest mobile application platform, as the national application store.
The announcement was made at an agreement signing ceremony between the Robi and ICT division at the latter's office on Thursday, says a statement.
Zunaid Ahmed said that from now on, app developers of other organisations and other mobile phone operators besides Robi will be able to upload their apps on this platform. The ICT division will work on income tax exemption for developers and the abolition of VAT on apps.
bdapps is the largest mobile application platform in Bangladesh. Application developers can host their innovative applications in this platform and can sell it to the local mobile subscribers. This partnership aims to help the country's ICT innovation and entrepreneurship to develop faster.
ICT Division's additional secretary Dr Bikarna Kumar Ghosh and Robi's Managing Director and CEO Mahtab Uddin Ahmed signed the agreement on behalf of their respective organisations. This arrangement is for five years with the option of extension.
ICT Division and Robi have already agreed to partner on a set of mandatory training for qualified incumbents having any programming language skill from ICTD's pool. ICTD may include Robi in all its training programmes and may get a revenue share for all its apps.
State Minister Zunaid Ahmed said, "All of our initiatives and projects are focusing on youth, ICT and employment. This agreement will facilitate the developers' training through ICTD's current training facilities and monetizing their skills through bdapps. The government is planning to work with bdapps to facilitate the dynamic youth of the country to engage in digital innovation and planning."
bdapps will be a great stepping stone for the young generation and entrepreneurs to make a career as a developer from all across the country, he added.
Under the agreement, ICT will collaborate with bdapps to organise exclusive boot camps and events in government universities all across the country.
The events will also enable bdapps to accelerate potential digital entrepreneurs and freelancers onboarding process through all the ICT Division's labs in the country.
ICT Division will also try to enable all Bangladeshi mobile users from all operators to enjoy these applications and bdapps will facilitate this vision through its state of the art technology.
ICTD and Robi will work together for development of new curriculum and training programmes to encourage a new group of people to monetize their innovations through bdapps platform.
