Initiative
Bangladesh has exceeded the 50 Million mark in mobile phone dispersion and the number just keeps on growing. As more and more mobiles are reaching the hands of new users, the potential for mobile application & services is growing accordingly. This is where Grameenphone & Microsoft realized the potential of mobile based applications and dared to dream, to build a local developer community to address the void in the application development segment and encourage localized applications. Thus, Aloashbei was born. On June of 2009, Grameenphone & Microsoft signed an agreement to build a mobile application platform jointly to address and provide resources and tools to the thousands of developers in Bangladesh. It has now become a full scale development community of 1,200 developers, fostering growth of IT talents of the country. On the 29th of December 2009, Aloashbei, the first ever mobile application development platform in Bangladesh had its soft launch. 70 developers were invited at that event that sparked the interest of developers from all segments of the population. Within a short period of 3 months, registered users exceeded the 1000 mark. During this timeframe, the project has organized 7 workshops in different universities where it was welcomed by the students, faculty members and stakeholders.
Aloashbei aims to be the number one destination for developers and potential developers to acquire knowledge for mobile application development, gather resources and also be the community of choice for related information. Through the Aloashbei portal, developers will have the chance to showcase their talents and even go commercial if their application develops market demand. Aloashbei from time to time will be holding mobile application based contests and events to encourage developers and provide opportunities to highlight developer skill and talent.
Aloashbei Mobile Application Development Contest
Grameenphone Ltd. and Microsoft Bangladesh Ltd. jointly launched "Aloashbei" - Mobile Application Development Contest on June 16, 2010 at a local hotel. Honorable State Minister for Science and Information & Communication Technology Architect Yeafesh Osman was present as the chief guest on the occasion. Mr. Mallick Sudhir Chandra, Commissioner, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission; eminent educationist Professor Jamilur R. Choudhury; Mr. Oddvar Hesjedal, Chief Executive Officer, Grameenphone; and Mr. Feroz Mahmud, Country Manager, Microsoft Bangladesh Ltd. were present on the occasion.
Aloashbei Mobile Application Development Contest is open to any person who has interest for mobile software development. Prizes include BDT 500000 for the winning application; and BDT 200,000 & BDT 100,000 as the second and third prizes respectively. All winners will also get a chance to commercialize their application with Grameenphone, subject to commercial attractiveness. Grameenphone will give an additional BDT 500,000 for further development of the software, if it is chosen for commercialization.
This is a call for all our software developers to get their keyboards tapping and churn out some much demanded mobile applications. It is the first of its kind with a lot more to follow. Developers from all over the country competed against each other in this one of a kind online talent hunt.
Grand Final Ceremony
The winners of Aloashbei, mobile application development contest have been awarded in a gala ceremony on Sunday ,31st Oct 2010 at Pan Pacific Sonargaon.Architect Yeafesh Osman, state minister for science and information and communication technology handed over the awards as the chief guest of the event. Grameenphone CEO, Oddvar Hesjedal, country manager Microsoft Bangladesh, Feroz Mahmud and Mahboob Zaman, president of Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) were also present at the occasion.
Out of 180 stunning applications, which were submitted by various universities and software firms for Aloashbei competition, Khoj the search became champion. It was developed by Md. Avishek Ahmed, M Parvez Rashid and Khalid Mahmood lecturers of American International University-Bangladesh.
Heartiest congratulation to them for their excellent achievement.
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