Financial sector looks for ICT solutions among students

Photo: STAR

The power of youth can never be underestimated. The young generation is always brimming with new ideas, but alas, very little is done to tap into this resourceful treasure chest, especially here in Bangladesh. One such venture had been undertaken by D.Net (Development Research Network) and Citibank N.A. Bangladesh by organizing an IT case competition for students from various public and private universities of different parts of the nation.
The competition was the first of its kind in Bangladesh that involved the development of relevant and unique software and information system solutions by the students for the financial sector in Bangladesh. There were a total of 54 teams from 20 universities all over Bangladesh and they were judged by a team of 25 jury members who all belonged to some of the renowned institutions and companies of Bangladesh, based on project evaluation guidelines.
After an intense competition in the first two rounds, 20 teams battled their way to the second round. From these 20 teams, the best five teams were chosen to compete in the final round. The winners were finally awarded at a Gala event held at Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel Dhaka on November 10, 2009. The ceremony was attended by important officials from the ministries, central bank, diplomats and dignitaries, besides the students and their parents. A.K.M. Abdul Awal Mazum der, Secretary, Ministry of Science & ICT was present as the Chief Guest and gave away prizes to the teams. The winning team was the University of Liberal Arts, who received award money of USD 5,000.
Mr. Mamun Rashid, Managing Director and Citi Country Officer, Bangladesh said during his speech, "Today, IT is one of the talked about but unexploited industries of our country. Though we have had some success, we lag behind our neighboring countries in terms of employment and revenue generation in this sector. As such, the aim of this competition has been to help students improve their knowledge on the application of technology within the financial sector, thereby increasing the ability of the young generation to contribute positively to the broader economy"
The competition was ground-breaking for Bangladesh, as a number of innovative ideas have been yielded for the financial sector as a result of this competition. The University of Liberal Arts team, who called themselves the 'Geeks' developed an innovative solution for Extended SMS Banking. This service allows customers to use their mobile phones to perform their banking transactions round the clock through a route that is safer, more secure and more user-friendly.
A notable achievement of the contest was that the product developed by Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, one of the top five teams was appreciated by Data Subsystems Ltd. so much that they decided to fund the team in further developing the product. The product, called Ekushe-Finance is a crawler based focus search engine that will provide all finance related queries, business plan advisories, up-to-date information services including SMS based enquiry, transaction-related services and an all in one advertising system for finance related websites. Such a search engine had been unavailable in Bangladesh till date.
The competition targeted at promoting a culture of business and technology development amongst the future leaders of the country based on the local needs as well as global business demands. It is these youngsters who are going to lead the future economy of Bangladesh, and the competition provided them with a platform where they could express all the novel ideas and concepts that they had for a better Bangladeshi economy.
The Business Product Outsourcing (BPO) sector of Bangladesh has still not made its mark in the global economy. But Mr. Mamun Rashid expressed his confidence that it is not far when we see these students leading the BPO industries of the country that will provide much needed foreign exchange for Bangladesh.
In short, this competition could be considered as a head-start for many more such youngster oriented endeavors to elevate the IT and business standards of Bangladesh. These young minds are a depot of strength and imagination. Instead of wasting youth resources of the country into harmful student politics, more could be done in disseminating this force into other such productive undertakings.