Reap digital era's economic benefits
Reap digital era's economic benefits
Speakers tell programme announcing Fenox investment in Priyo
Terming internet's discovery as the biggest revolution after industrialisation, speakers yesterday stressed the need for Bangladesh to step up and reap the economic benefits of this digital era.
Quoting different international magazines and journals, State Minister for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Junaid Ahmed Polok said with the world's largest young population, Bangladesh has been ranked as one of the emerging ICT-based economies.
He was addressing a press conference marking an investment of Silicon Valley-based global venture capital firm Fenox Venture Capital Inc (Fenox) in Bangladeshi internet portal company Priyo Ltd (priyo.com).
Held at The Daily Star Centre in the capital, the ceremony also saw the launching of a new service of the internet portal called priyo.com/answers.
Zakaria Swapan, the company's founder and chief executive officer, said, “Priyo answers will reply to people's queries on anything starting from health to legal and relationship issues.”
Besides the Priyo team, Swapan named 17 people, academicians, politicians, IT experts, performers, lawyers, policemen, journalists, agriculture experts and photographers, who would be in Priyo's panel to answer related questions.
In response to a query, Swapan said it would take a maximum of one day to answer questions placed by website visitors.
Polok, chief guest of the programme and also one of the panellists, said the government plans to increase internet penetration in the country by 70 percent in the next four years.
“By 2015 every upazila and by 2017 every union will get fibre optic connections,” he said. “Local content in Bangla is necessary for these. Bangla content is also necessary for about 40 crore people who speak in Bangla worldwide,” he said, hoping that Priyo would nicely provide the service.
At present the country with a population of 160 million has 110 million mobile phone connections, of which 20 million is used to access the internet and 10 million use smartphones.
Abul Nuruzzaman, Fenox's Bangladeshi partner, said the company would invest US $200 million in the next 10 years into creating Silicon Valley companies in Bangladesh.
In reply to another query, Swapan said the Fenox investment would be used to develop engineering software for creation of an intelligent homepage that would suit the interest of individual users, get into partnership with content developers including leading newspapers, and for marketing and communication of the company.
Symphony smartphones will have an inbuilt Priyo application, said Swapan.