Indosat Ooredoo Wireless Innovation Contest Goes Global
Jakarta. In its 10th edition, Indosat Ooredoo Wireless Innovation Contest, IWIC, organised by mobile network operator Indosat Ooredoo, went global, inviting young Indonesian and foreign techpreneurs to compete.
Among the countries participating in the mobile application competition were Japan and Myanmar. The competition ended on Wednesday (02/11).
For Indosat Ooredoo president director and chief executive Alexander Rusli it is high time for Indonesian developers to get ready for global competition.
"We are very glad to have foreign young developers participating in this contest providing an opportunity for Indonesia's best young developers to compete globally. This is also an opportunity to show what they're capable of and to create high-quality applications for Indonesians," Alexander said.
He expressed his hopes that IWIC will support the government's target for Indonesia to become the key player in digital economy in Southeast Asia.
Out of 3,592 software proposals, IWIC jury chose 34 winners.
For the past 10 years, IWIC has opened international opportunities to Indonesian technpreneurs. One of the last year's winners, Temu Jasa founder Hardian Prakasa, participated in Tech in Asia Conference in Tokyo on Sept. 6-7, where he presented his application.
This year's contestants participated in a series of events, including the Campus Roadshow, Kids Hackathon, Developer Hackathon, Developers Challenge, two-week Entrepreneurship Bootcamp, and Developer Conference.
During the conference on the digital world they could present their ideas in front of the industry experts, investors and potential sponsors.
IWIC has special categories: Youth with Disabilities and Woman and Girls. The latter saw substantial increase in the number of proposals.
"One of the aims of our corporate social responsibility [CSR] program is to increase the number of women connected to the internet. This year we saw a significant rise in the number of female participants, indicating that women do play a role in developing the digital world," Alexander said.
IWIC is Indosat Ooredoo's CSR program in education and innovation.
The company has 80.5 million customers and more than 3,000 employees. Last year it won the Asia Pacific Stevie Awards for the Most Innovative Company of the Year.
Tags: Keywords: