Startup 'Trash It' wins She Loves Tech Pakistan

The winner will represent Pakistan in the global competition to be held in Beijing

KARACHI: Anusha Fatima of Trash It, who does not want her country to become a garbage dump, has won the She Loves Tech Pakistan, a global competition for women.

The competition was organised by CIRCLE Pakistan, an organisation founded by Sadaffe Abid which works for women's empowerment through entrepreneurship, advocacy campaigns and research. The final round of the competition took place at the city campus of Institute of Business Administration. The jury included Prof of Entrepreneurs & Innovation Imran Sayeed, , OPEN Karachi President Zakiuddin Ahmed, Startup Adviser and former IBM Chief Executive Officer Humayun Bashir and Ayesha Khan, Associate Director for Portfolio at Acumen.

Fatima will now represent Pakistan in the global competition of She Loves Tech to be held in Beijing. Currently a student of computer science at Habib University, she is interested in civic hacking and sustainable community models.



Complaining is easy but taking responsibility and acting upon commitment is a challenging task for people, Fatima says. "Through my startup, I am investigating and devising a model for efficient organic waste disposal especially for households. I have been fortunate to be a runner up at Startup Weekend Karachi, 2017. It all began from there. The team, idea, inspiration and the fire to make it happen," she added.

The first runner up at the event was Samar Hasan, who came to the competition with the idea of 'Mera Paisa', a startup that she has recently co-founded. Her company is focused on harnessing ideas for transformation and making strategic interventions in enterprise development, institutional development, governance and democracy, dialogue and advocacy and other areas.

'DoctHERS' was declared the second runner up, while the third runner-up was 'Sehat Kahani', which was an idea and startup of Dr Sara Saeed Khurram. Sehat Kahani co-founder and chief executive officer, Dr Khurram, tried to initiate a community innovation hub based in Pakistan. Sehat Kahani works on improving basic health care in communities through a spectrum of services focused on primary health care consultation, health awareness and health counseling.



Besides Trash It, Mera Paisa, DoctHERS, and Sehat Kahani, the other startups included SheKab, Qayyam, ELN, Kafayak, IoTA, Aurat Raj and Edvon.

United States Agency for International Development Deputy Mission Director Denise Herbol was the chief guest at the event. Despite progress, working space for women in Pakistan as well as across the world is very limited, she said, adding that women face discrimination when they are employed or even they decide to run their own business.

It is good to see such great ideas based on technology presented by these women, said Herbol. Such ideas provide financial freedom to women who also have responsibility of taking care of their children and home, she added.