ISLAMABAD ( BMZ REPORT )
The 40th Board of Directors meeting of National ICT R&D Fund Company was held at MoIT on 5th November, 2015 under the chairpersonship of Minister of State for Information Technology Ms. Anusha Rahman. Federal Secretary IT Mr. Azmat Ali Ranjha, CEO National ICT R&D Fund Company Mr. Asif Roomi CEO ICT R&D Co, Member (Telecom) Mr. Mudassar Hussain, MD, PSEB Mr. Asim Shehryar, Telecom Industry’s representative Micheal Foley, Khawaja Saad and other Members of the Board were also present in the meeting.
The Board reviewed and approved the final RFP for “Tech-city”, which is an incubation project for IT start ups. The RFP will be opened for all 16 domestic and international experts in the field for bidding who have submitted their EOI earlier.
Tech-city project is an information and communications technologies development project focusing on creating strong economic impact by successfully supporting start-up and emerging technology companies to create and/or commercialize knowledge intensive products and services through establishment of a purpose built incubator. The Tech-city project will also provide virtual tenancy to incubates outside of Islamabad.
The Minister categorically stated that this project is amongst our government’s top priority areas, therefore, timeline which has been set by the Board should be strictly followed and contract must be awarded to the successful bidder in accordance with agreed timeline of 7th January, 2016 positively, without any further delay.
Anusha Rahman stated that Government is keen to nurture entrepreneurship and work on capacity building of human resource in the ICT sector. Therefore, this National incubation project will serve both purposes. She further said that the prime object of the ICT R&D Fund Company is to promote Research and innovation in the country. Hence academia and industry both have to be engaged for achieving the desired goals.