The 2016 GIST Tech-I finalists have been revealed and two Pakistanis have managed to scrape their way through to the final round of the competition.
Just a few days ago, we reported about how 5 talented Pakistani individuals and startups had made it to the semi-final round of the Tech-I competition in. Two of them were in the Startup Phase, the existing startups category, and the other 3 were competing in the Idea Phase, the category for entrepreneurs looking to bring their startup ideas to life. Yesterday, the top 15 finalists for each category were unveiled and two Pakistanis have been selected, one for each category.
Finalist- Startup Phase:
WonderTree is an e-learning startup by Waqas Muhammad that offers an interactive e-learning platform for special children to enable them to educate and train themselves in a better way, providing them academic as well as functional education.
Finalist- Idea Phase:
Carespare Tool, by Saima Hanif, is a novel diagnosis test tool for Hepatitis c, a chronic liver disease, providing 300 percent less expensive and more accurate test results.
Pakistan is now one of the 24 countries represented in the finals.
This year the GIST Tech-I Competition received a record 1,075 applications from 104 countries and territories. The semi-final round alone attracted 431,655 votes.
“Global Innovation through Science and Technology”, or GIST for short, is a US initiative to empower young innovators and its annual competition. The organization is responsible for arranging a global entrepreneurship competition called the GIST Tech-I which attracts the most promising entrepreneurs from emerging economies. The winners are decided by an online public voting and entrepreneurship experts decide who competes in the Tech-I Finals.