To encourage Pakistani girls to prepare themselves for opportunities offered by the booming ICT sector, Telenor Pakistan celebrated the ‘International Girls in ICT Day’ where it held an awareness session for female students of class 8 to 10 at GSIS School and College, Islamabad, followed by setting-up of an ICT lab at Hamara School, a private school cum orphanage in the outskirts of Islamabad.

The purpose of the awareness session was to educate young girls on the importance of pursuing higher education in math, engineering, computing, and sciences so they are prepared to land bright career opportunities that the ICT sector has to offer.

The young students were informed that ICT companies across the world are looking to attract and promote women, not only because achieving greater workforce diversity is good for business, but also because increasing women at all levels has shown positive impacts on the companies’ financial performance. Two Telenor Pakistan female employees also trained schoolgirls on using the internet safely for fun and learning.

“We at Telenor Pakistan believe in an inclusive working environment and encourage women to prepare themselves to benefit from the opportunities ICT sector holds for them,” said Irfan Wahab Khan, CEO, Telenor Pakistan. “The representation of women in all of our initiatives from employment opportunities to mentoring entrepreneurs and youth empowerment measures is something we never compromise on.”

Telenor Pakistan, being the country’s leading ICT player and a catalyst of ICT-powered digital revolution, has a clear view of where the sector is headed and what it lacks most – the unequivocal answers being ‘immense growth’ and ‘women’ respectively.

The company believes that a more gender-balanced ICT sector will offer fulfilling mid- and high-level careers, and enable highly talented women to springboard to the top of the career ladder.

Telenor supports United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular the SDG 5 that is aimed at achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls through, Information and Communication Technologies.

The observance of ITU’s Girls in ICT Day was an extension of the organization’s efforts to support that very SDG and promote women’s inclusion in the mainstream employment scene.

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ICT Award 2017

Continuing its streak of recognition for innovative telecommunication products and services, country’s top cellular operator and digital services provider, Telenor Pakistan, has been awarded the “Excellence in Telecommunication” award at the RCCI ICT Award 2017 by the Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce and Industry organized the 3rd RCCI ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Awards at a local hotel in Rawalpindi that was attended by Ms. Anusha Rahman, Minister of State for Information Technology and Telecommunication and Dr. Ismael Shah, Chairman Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, among other dignitaries of the industry. On behalf of Telenor Pakistan, the award was received by Muhammad Aslam Hayat, company’s Chief Corporate Affairs and Strategy Officer.

Telenor Pakistan was chosen by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority as the winner of the category.

Sharing his thoughts on the achievement, Mr. Aslam Hayat said,

“We are humbled to have been honored with the RCCI ICT Award. At Telenor, we stay committed to our mission of empowering the people of Pakistan which is also convergent with the Government’s long-term vision for the country’s growth. We thank the Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce and Industry for this honor and are enthused to continue serving the people of Pakistan with the same passion.”

Through the annual ICT Awards which started in 2015, the Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce and Industry cements its efforts to encourage investment in the ICT enabled sector of Pakistan and honor the Pakistani companies at the cutting edge of technological achievements.

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Irfan Wahab Khan, CEO, Telenor Pakistan and Saira Iftikhar, CEO at PLDDB
among their teams at the signing ceremony at Telenor Headquarters in Islamabad

Pakistan’s foremost telecom and digital services provider, Telenor Pakistan, has joined forces with Punjab Livestock & Dairy Development Board (PLDDB) to enhance women participation in agriculture and farming sector. The collaboration will promote awareness on nutrition, dairy, livestock, agriculture and livelihood related issues through Telenor Pakistan’s communication platform in the province of Punjab.

Under the agreement, Telenor Pakistan will launch a dedicated IVR helpline on its mobile agriculture service Khushaal Zamindar for female farmers to sensitize them about making smart choices in order to maximize their revenues from agriculture and farming. The free-of-cost service will be initially launched in five districts of Punjab to gauge the impact and will be subsequently extended to other parts of the province.

Currently about 20 percent of the 2.5 million Khushaal Zamindar users are females. Telenor and PLDDB aim to ensure further uptake through the females-centric helpline which will provide female farmers localized, contextualized and customized information about livestock, health and nutritional requirements.

Through the simple and user-friendly service, the female farmers will just need to dial 7272-51 to access the relevant information, a number where 51 denotes the percentage of women population of the country.

In view of multiple social barriers that resist technology uptake for women, Telenor Pakistan and PLDDB will organize multiple female-only live shows to foster awareness about the usefulness of mobile technology vis-a-vis the agricultural growth. Female farmers will be able to call and ask questions to access real-time information from female agriculture experts and nutritionists at the show.

“An overwhelming majority of women, about 72 percent, is in one way or the other associated with the agricultural sector whose contributions go unnoticed and unappreciated,”

said Irfan Wahab Khan, CEO, Telenor Pakistan.

“We are collaborating with PLDDB to empower them so they can play a more significant and impactful role in the larger economy. Telenor Pakistan is expanding its mobile agriculture service Khushaal Zamindar to incorporate a dedicated female farmers helpline which, in its core, is an acknowledgement of the contributions of these brave women who work tirelessly without eying any appreciation. With the help of PLDDB, we will run a mass awareness campaign to enhance their participation in agriculture and farming which will go on to positively impact the country’s economy.”

Commenting on the development, Saira Iftikhar, CEO at PLDDB said,

“We are thankful to Telenor Pakistan for extending their technical support and expertise to this project which aims at augmenting women participation in Punjab’s agricultural and farming sector. The Government of Pakistan is keen to ensure the role of women in national development, who constitute about 51 percent of the population.

PLDDB and Telenor Pakistan will run an awareness campaign focusing on women farmers to encourage women participation in the process and will extend technical support and advice through a dedicated helpline. I am hopeful  that with the ubiquitous presence of telecommunication technology, we will be able to effectively disseminate the message, monitor progress and provide advisory services when needed to increase the country’s agricultural and livestock yields manifold.”

Telenor Pakistan has forged multiple collaborations and has launched many initiatives to explore the full potential of the agriculture sector of Pakistan, which is the major contributor to the national economy.

Its Khushaal Zamindar farmers’ advisory service provides localized and relevant information to farmers to help them make informed choices to increase their agricultural produce.

Besides improving the agricultural yield, the use of agriculture advisory services will help attain a daily increase of 0.5 liter milk per animal for 5 million livestock farmers of Punjab which will go on to add PKR 250 billion to the rural economy.

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According to the recent news Easypaisa is soon going to be redirected to Tameer Bank.

Telenor Group acquired Tameer Bank last year. this year the Easypaisa management will be transferred to Tameer Bank.

With the time and technological development the people of Pakistan have been attracted towards the branch-less banking. Easypaise no doubt has over the years promoted the safest, reliable and flexible branch-less banking and has introduced new ways of payment for the people of Pakistan.

Telenor Easypaisa now becomes part of Tameer Bank, Pakistan

After the Easypaisa comes under the control of Tameer Bank, Ali Chaudry who serves as the CEO and President of Tameer Bank will handle all the affairs of Easypaisa and Tameer Bank. It is planned that Easypaisa will continue to use the same office that it used to work in, when it was under the Telenor Group.

After the transfer, Easypaisa’s balance sheets will be visible under Tameer Bank and not Telenor Pakistan.

After the transfer Easypaisa is going to have its own digital agency, PR agency and various vendors that it requires for its day to day operations. As said that it plans to use the formal Telenor office spaces, to add to this we must say that this is only for few cities.

Telenor and Easypaise may remain intact to each other but it is not possible to cut off completely. They can charge each other for different services.

Source: ProPakistani

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National TV will soon caste the second season of iChamp powered by collaboration of Telenor Pakistan and Facebook. iChamp is supported by these two leading companies and it is a knowledge based internet competition.

With the second round of the competition to be on aired in 2017, iChamp aims for a learning based activity. They want to promote safe use if internet by children. The Facebook Free Basics program enables the users to connect many websites and this program will support iChamp Pakistan.

The competition is not for a single district or a group of schools but it is a nationwide competition that includes students from 76 districts across all four provinces, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir, an estimated 600,000.

First the students will be provided with learning handbooks and resourced and then training and competitions will be held among students across Pakistan. Then three students will be selected from each school to participate in district level competition.

Next, the district level competition will be held at district HQ’s. Three students will be selected from each district.

In the next phase, is a provincial competition where again three students will be shortlisted from each province.

The third phase will feature a provincial level competition to be held at the respective provincial capital where the district-level winners will compete and only three winners will be selected from each province.

A total of 12 students will compete in a reality show that will be aired on Nation TV.

After 15 episodes a Grand Finale episode will be aired on the TV where the competition will be held on effective use if internet.

Ime Archibong the Director of Partnerships at Facebook said,

“We are excited to be part of the Telenor iChamp which is a transformative initiative that aims to bridge the digital inclusion gap amongst the underserved youth in Pakistan,”

Irfan Wahab Khan the CEO of Telenor Pakistan also said on the occasion,

“We have brought more than 50 million people online globally through Free Basics and through this partnership with Telenor iChamp we hope that every parent and student in Pakistan can take advantage of the internet for their learning and development.”

He further added,

“It feels great to be back with the second, bigger and better installment of our Internet Champion program.”

Moreover talked about the significance if the initiative. He was of the view,

“Children are the future of our country and us at Telenor Pakistan are ready to go the extra mile to support and empower our youth. With a mission of empowering our society and a relentless commitment to promoting digital inclusion in the country, we will continue our efforts in the same direction with a passion that will help nurture a responsible digital generation.”

iChamp set its feet in Pakistan in 2012. The first round was launched in 2012-2013.

In the first round students from 1,603 schools participated and the initiative was able to train 632,289 students nationwide and about 61,380 got ‘highly trained’.

Telenor recently has launched a safety guide for parents and children. For convenience the guide comes in English and Urdu languages.

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The Chairperson of Telenor Group, Ms. Gunn Wærsted, visited Telenor Pakistan recently. During her visit she made sure to meet all officials and top management representatives. During the meetings the main focus was to discuss the strategic plans of Telenor.

The chairperson also met Ms. Anusha Rehman; she is the Minister of State for Information Technology & Telecom. They discussed the developments in ICT sector of Pakistan. Telenor’s efforts towards the development of Pakistan were also the part of the talk.

Gunn Wærsted said,

“Telenor has a long term commitment to Pakistan, which is evident from the level of investment that currently stands at US$ 3.5 billion since its inception in 2005.”

She added,

“Driven by our vision of empowering societies, our success to date has been built on a simple realization: mobile communication, financial services and internet are not luxury goods for the few; they are for everyone and Telenor Pakistan has played a vital role in the realization of this vision.”

According to Ms. Wærsted to bring about digital growth in Pakistan, predictable regulatory frameworks are needed.

She also congratulated Telenor Pakistan for winning ‘Transformation Award’ ad praised it for all the initiatives by Telenor Pakistan that led to their success in Pakistan. She added that she is expecting same dedication in future.

Irfan Wahab Khan the CEO of Telenor Pakistan said,

“We welcome Ms. Wærsted to Pakistan and extend our heartfelt gratitude to her as well as the Group for recognizing Telenor Pakistan’s journey of becoming a digital services provider.”

Mr. Khan further added,

“We believe that her visit is yet another testament to Telenor’s sustainable investments in Pakistan and its contributions to the socioeconomic development of our society. Operating in Pakistani since 2005, we have made significant contributions to Pakistan’s economy and society, touching lives in a number of ways.

Apart from our expansive network footprint covering 84% of the country’s population, we have made a fiscal contribution of over US$2.3 billion through direct and indirect taxes, generated over 180,000 indirect and induced jobs in 2015 alone, contributed to the GDP, launched initiatives to empower youth and women, and made result-oriented efforts toward digital and financial inclusion in the country, as evident from Telenor’s Global Impact Report by KPMG.”

Ms. Gunn Wærsted was elected as Chair person on 14 January, 2016. About 214 million people are associated with Telenor Group in 13 markets. It has emerged as one of the largest communication networks.

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According to a press release, “The Startup Struggle” was held by Velocity. Velocity is a Telenor Pakistan’s accelerator program. The Startup Struggle was a powerful event that was attended by entrepreneurs and the young startups.

The event highlighted the problems like:

》Why startups fail?

》What must be done to help startups succeed in the Pakistani market?

The event was graced by four prestigious mentors.

1) Usama Shahid – ex CEO and Founder of Meri Taleem,

2) Junaid Malik – Founder of NutriNysa and Raise d’Bar,

3) Shehryar Hydri – Director of Marketing and Operations at Convo,

4) Jeremy Higgs – Co Founder of Eco-Energy.

Besides them from all across Pakistan 80 Pakistani startups related to different types of setups, joined the dynamic event.

The event activity featured the stories of entrepreneurs and startups that had experience either failure or success. They also spoke about the struggles they did to achieve their goal. Moreover they discussed recoupment. The 5 hours of the group activity did not only feature the stories but it was a great platform for people associated with entrepreneurial system of Pakistan to discuss the problems and best possible solutions for their problem in presence of mentors.

In the event the main thing that was highlighted was that the basic reasons the startups in Pakistan do not achieve popularity the success they aim for include  inadequate funding, bad launch timing, compromised quality of product, a weak business model or absence of it, and above all, lack of passion.

It is a fact that to hit it big it is important to work hard, be determined and have all necessary sources. The idea is not just enough to run a successful company.

Since years now many accelerators have sprung up in Pakistan and they a running successfully. The main reason for this is that there are many new startups and people are attracted towards the entrepreneurial field.

Telenor Velocity has made many efforts to solve issues and has helped many startups but unfortunately only dew names can be seen on the success graph. This indicates that there is a need for programs to hold more events like this to help entrepreneurs.

“Telenor Velocity” is Telenor Pakistan Startup Accelerator. The main aim of the program is to help the startups to reach market within six months. Telenor Velocity makes it possible by accessing Telenor Pakistan’s scale and assets including data analytics, retail and digital distribution network, API platform and online payments solution.

This is not the only one step taken by Telenor to promote the digital technology in Pakistan. The company has tried to take many initiatives to promote the digital technology in Pakistan and so far has remained successful over r the period of almost 12 years.

Telenor Pakistan is one of the top telecommunication services that run successfully in Pakistan. The service started in 2005 and since then it has managed to bag over 39 million subscribers. More than 2,500 employees work in the company.

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According to the buzz Pakistan’s second largest mobile operator has decided to shut down all its sales and support service centers in Pakistan.

Telenor has 17 support centers where hundreds of people are working and as a consequence of this sudden decision the employees are going to lose their job. Customers now will turn to 289 franchises that are opened in many cities across Pakistan to get after sale services.

According to what Telenor has planned Franchises will be renovated and equipped with all features that are needed to give after support services.

These measures are being taken to give best possible facilities to all the customers.

Telenor is of the thought that now the customers use online portals and helplines to resolve problems so they don’t need any such facility.

Where employees are concerned Telenor is trying their best to complete the process soon and in an efficient way. It is offering them  compensations, medical allowances, bonuses and all necessary support to them.

Telenor Pakistan has about 36 million subscribers over Pakistan. It has a network of over 200,000 retailers, franchises and support centers. In fact Telenor Pakistan customer service centers were operating very well.

Lets see for the further details from Telenor Pakistan.

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Telenor’s Easypaisa signs an agreement with EFU Life Assurance Ltd. under which Easypaisa will extend its services  to get faster insurance premium collection from EFU Life’s clientele through Easypaisa’s wide network in Pakistan.

On 30th December 2016, the agreement was signed by Muhammad Yahya Khan, Head of Easypaisa, and Taher G Sachak, MD & CEO, EFU Life Insurance. EFU Life is Pakistan-based life insurance company, offering a wide range of insurance products to its clients.

Sharing his thoughts on the development, Muhammad Yahya Khan, Head of Easypaisa, said,

“We are glad to extend Easypaisa’s services to support EFU Life Insurance for insurance premium collection from across the country. Easypaisa, with the help of its expansive network of agents all over the country, will be instrumental in facilitating smooth and convenient collection of premium for EFU.

The agreement comes in connection with Easypaisa’s commitment to facilitate everyday transactions as part of its long term socioeconomic empowerment goals. We will continue to forge partnerships and support interoperability to enhance financial inclusion in Pakistan.”

Speaking on the occasion, Taher G Sachak, MD & CEO, EFU Life, stated,

“Customer centricity is the core of our business.  As the leading life insurer in Pakistan, we believe in connecting with our clients by giving them greater accessibility to our products and services through expansion of our distribution footprint and investing in IT solutions, and also by continuously striving to serve them better.”

And further he said;

It gives me immense pleasure to have partnered with Easypaisa for our payment solutions, giving our clients the ease, flexibility and access to pay their renewal premiums in a reliable and secure manner through the vast network of over 77,000 Easypaisa outlets and retailers.”

Easypaisa being Pakistan’s pioneer branch-less banking service has been transforming the banking and finance scenario in the country. Recently Easypaisa has won the financial innovation award 2016 in London .

Telenor’s Easypaisa has played an essential role in bringing banking made easy for everyone in Pakistan.

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Another Pakistani network wins an award. This time it is the most used method of money transfer, Easypaisa. Financial Innovation Awards 2016 were held as usual by London institute of Banking and Finance. In the category of Most Innovative Application of Technology Easypaisa stood on top. List of Winners.

The website of London Institute of Banking and Finance read,

“Located in shops in over 800 towns and cities, Easypaisa now has the largest financial footprint in the country and moved nearly 3% of GDP in 2015.”

When from 19 categories of Financial Innovation Award, Easypaisa made it top five and then bagged an award too, Muhammad Yahya Khan who is the Head of Easypaisa made a speech saying,

“It is a great honor for Easypaisa to be a globally recognized mobile money service. We deem this award a testament to the trust our customers have in us and the recognition of our efforts in capitalizing technology for positive social change.”

Easypaisa was launched in 2009 by association of Telenor and Tameer Microfinance Bank. It is Pakistan’s first ever branchless network. Since 2009 it has served people with its great facilities and quick money transfer.

We all have at times used Easypaisa; the experience would have been good and easy. Adding to this it definitely is the best use of technology.

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