KARACHI: Standard Chartered on Friday announced winners of Women in Tech program and some seven women led companies have won up to Rs 1.5 million in seed grants. Standard Chartered launched Women in Tech (SCWomenInTech) in Pakistan in March 2019. This programme was aimed to promote the economic and social development of women in Pakistan through innovation or technology led entrepreneurship.

Standard Chartered, in partnership with INNO Ventures Global (Pvt.) Limited has announced the top seven winners of the SCWomenInTech Programme 2020, a global programme aimed at supporting gender representation within technology-based entrepreneurship. The announcement of the seven women led businesses was short-listed from over 280 applicants, each winning up to, Rs 1,500,000, in seed grants for their businesses. This year in addition to the regular five grants the programme had announced two additional grants for "Covid-19 relief-based projects".

The seven businesses were selected from a pool of the top 23 teams that have been through the #SCWomenInTech programme incubator for three months. During this time, they were offered coaching, mentoring and business management skills to grow their businesses to the next level.

The seven winning companies for 2020 are Connect Hear of Azima Dhanjee, CreditBook of ImanJamall, OrbitEd Wajiha of Habib & Naveera Waheed, PakAgri Market of Ayesha Ahmed, Scaryammi of Ayesha Nasir, Foster Learning of Hira Javaid and Skin Deep International of Sadaf Mohyuddin.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020