Tech Camp in Peshawar equips women with digital skills

Budding female entrepreneurs of Peshawar got a chance to learn new ways of implementing tech within their businesses at the first-ever women-only Tech Camp in Peshawar. From the 31st of January to the 2nd of February 2019, Peshawar was host to a significant number of female entrepreneurs who were eager to find out how to use technology to their business’ benefit.

The boot camp was organized by Impact Dynamics in collaboration with Daastan and was powered by the US State Department. The event was held in National Incubation Center (NIC) Peshawar and was also supported by the Google Business Group (GBG) Peshawar branch.

The 3-day camp aimed to empower and educate the women of Peshawar, the capital city of the KPK region. The boot camp featured eleven industrial experts from across Pakistan such as Urooj Hussain, Syed Ommer Amer, Haroon Q Raja and many more. Participants took part in fast track courses on rapid prototyping, social listening, growth hacking, and interface designing among a host of several other subjects which were aimed at helping female entrepreneurs refine their ideas and concepts before they go to the market.

The 11 speakers spoke on subjects pertaining to their area of expertise and here’s a quick recap of what each of them addressed:

1. Rapid Prototyping by Roshaan Saeed, Product Strategy Designer at Stipples,
2. Social Listening by Danish Ejaz, Digital & Outreach Lead at Impact Dynamics,
3. Growth Hacking 101 by Maryam Arshad, Founder & CEO at Impact Dynamics,
4. Interface Designing by Shehryar Khan, Design Head of the KPIT Board,
5. Leadership by Kayenat Hameed, Project Coordinator at Impact Dynamics,
6. Pitching 101 by Madiha Parvez, Head of Telenor’s Velocity Program.
7. Personal Branding by Haroon Q. Raja, Founder & CEO at Happy Cloud,
8. Google Ads by Lalsayd Mohmand, Community Manager at Blimp,
9. Digital Marketing (from basics to conversion) by Urooj Hussain, Associate Director Starcom MediaVest,
10. Content Writing by Syed Ommer Amer, Founder & CEO of Daastan
11. Digital Storytelling by Kiran Fatima, a freelancer/filmmaker.

Speaking at the occasion, the Founder & CEO of Impact Dynamics, Maryam Arshad said,

“The program outline was designed in form of a journey that startups go through in their life cycle and the tech and business skills they need as part of the process. It included by starting at the earlier stage of creating pitches and negotiating, incorporating design and digital storytelling, adding growth hacking time to time to enhance their business and personal branding through the online interface as well as offline.”

The primary objective of this Tech Camp was to focus on women-led startups and SMEs (small to medium enterprises and to enable them to build a better online presence in order to upscale their businesses. The Camp’s organizers duly recognized the fact that technology can be a make or break factor in the success of a startup and thus wanted to ensure that women entrepreneurs are aware of how to utilize technology in the best manner possible.

Tech Camp Peshawar, being the first event of its kind in the city of over 8 million people is likely to take the role of a trendsetter in the Pakhtoon metropolitan. The fact that it focused on equipping the budding entrepreneurs with the right tech tools and knowledge required to make their respective startups successful shows how important tech is nowadays.