Five Women led companies win up to USD 10,000 in seed funding
Karachi (Muhammad Yasir) – Standard Chartered, in partnership with INNOVentures Global (Pvt.) Limited, is excited to announce the five winners of this year’s Standard Chartered #SCWomenInTech Programme 2019. Today’s event saw five women led teams shortlisted from over 80 applicants win up to USD 10,000 in seed funding for their businesses.
The Chief Guest at the occasion was Mr. Zubair Gilani, Chairman Board of Investment.
The five teams were selected from a pool of the best 18 teams previously shortlisted and went through the #SCWomenInTech programme for two months where they were offered coaching, mentoring and business management skills to grow their businesses to the next level.
The five winning companies for 2019 are:
- Plate 101
- Relive Now
- Dot-mind unlocked
- Trashit
- Closet
The awardees will be supported with extended mentoring and milestone-based disbursement of the winnings for a period of 9 months.
Speaking at the event Shazad Dada, CEO, Standard Chartered Pakistan mentioned, “#SCWomenInTech is another first by Standard Chartered where we are focusing on developing and empowering women entrepreneurs. I would not only like to congratulate the winners of our programme but also all the entrepreneurs who have been part of our journey. Together they are positively transforming our country’s economy and creating more job opportunities and avenues for Pakistani women and youth. Just like the Bank, you are striving to be a force for good, promoting sustainable economic and social development in the markets and communities where we operate.”
Standard Chartered launched Women in Tech in Pakistan in March 2019. This programme aimed to promote the economic and social development of women in Pakistan through innovation or technology led entrepreneurship.
The teams were shortlisted based on performance in the programme’s 100 points criteria as follows:
- Must be a women-led business
- At least 1/3rd of the Founders be women
- Woman Founder(s) has been around for at least 1 year
- Must be a technology venture or a traditional business seeking to use technology to significantly grow
- Registered (Pvt) Ltd. Company
- Between 3 months and two years at the time of application
- Significant Growth and/or Impact potential
- Must have an initial plan to scale or be technology enabled to scale by using $ but also mentoring and other support.
- SC’s investment in the business/venture must make a material difference
Details of the Winners:
Closet
Everybody wants a Sabyasachi Lehenga, events at courtyard and 10-15 dishes. But most of us can’t afford the dream and hence take huge loans and then stay in debts for years to come. And this is not just for wedding clothes, for regular ones, a lot of time, energy and money are wasted by people in hopes of looking amazing all the time.
Hence to facilitate people to look great without spending an arm and a leg, Closet was established. Closet provides amazing clothes at 10% of the price that are freshly dry-cleaned and sent right at the customer’s doorstep a day prior to their event and picked up the very next day of the event. On the other hand, these clothes are taken from other people who have already spent that amount and have their dresses up in cupboards as liabilities. In this way, we are providing people, especially women to earn while being at home just by lending their extra clothes. The amount is transferred to them through easypaisa or bank transfer thus making them financially included. Closet believes in financial inclusion for the unbanked and is making a path for women to adopt banking.
TrashIt
TrashIt is a social enterprise working on organic waste disposal by making nutrient rich compost, and empowering the citizen to adopt sustainable lifestyle by providing eco-friendly product line. Our core business is to recover organic waste from its source (food vendors, restaurants, industry and households), recycle it to make compost using our own research driven method, and sell it to home gardeners, retailers and farmers. TrashIt is a movement to make citizens more responsible and an active participant in reversing climate change. We conduct compost workshops, provide compost consultation, and create Eco spaces on rooftops.
https://www.facebook.com/trashIt.pk
DOT
DOT has developed a headset that reads brain wave activity and uses artificial intelligence to diagnose various mental disorders and treat them through mobile application games with neuro-therapy.
Starting with ADHD and Autism, we have tested our headset on over 500 individuals and seen improvements in mental health up to 85%. We will be partnering up with the Center of Autism (C-ARTS) in Karachi to distribute our headsets and use that data to further refine our application, catering to autistic kids.
Plate 101
Plate 101 is a marketplace in form of mobile application (Android, iOS) to enable women to sell their home cooked food and make them more financially independent. Plate 101 has taken a step to promote women empowerment with the use of technology. We are basically working as a connector and bridging the gap between sellers and customers.
We are building brands of our vendors and giving them opportunity to reach to potential customers. All they have to do is that upload the meal on our app when its ready. So what makes us different is we are offering ready-to-eat food and we are Geo-Location based.
We launched this App in January 2018 and till date we have empowered more than 200 women and delivered more than 16000 order with the gross revenue of 3.2 million rupees.
Relivenow
Relivenow is a social enterprise that was founded in 2018 by Amna Asif. Relivenow focuses on mental health advocacy across Pakistan and provides cloud based solutions for help for mental health to make it anonymous, affordable, convenient and accessible to all. Relivenow has been able to successfully cater to clients from seven different countries including Pakistan and continues to build more efficient services to help the masses. We have conducted numerous online and offline events that have reached thousands of people. Our founder is a Nest Alumni, a Westerwelle Foundation fellow, participant of TechCamp global South Asia, SocEnt Academy Impact Link fellow and a grant recipient of a collaborative project funded by the U.S Consulate. Relivenow has been featured in BBC Urdu, Hum News, GNN Morning Show, Synergyzer Magazine and The International News.
