Shell Tameer Awards 2017 - Recognizing Bright Business Ideas of Pakistani Youth

Karachi - The biennial Shell Tameer Awards took place at the British Deputy High Commission in a ceremony attended by prominent industry and business leaders as well as young entrepreneurs of the country. The jury comprising established professionals judged the top 12 finalists in four categories.

The final winners were:

1. Khizr Imran - Jaan Pakistan, Bright Energy Ideas Award: An energy innovator, researching and producing affordable and clean energy solutions for low-income communities across Pakistan. These cooking stoves reduce harmful emissions by 80% and enhance combustion efficiencies by 60%, and consequently fuel savings.
2. Zarak Shah – HomeStoves, Empowering Women Award: a tech start-up, aimed at empowering housewives through a mobile food delivery app with a network of home-based female cooks looking to generate income using their cooking skills. Homestove currently has a network of 100 chefs that are homebased housewives.
   
3. Muhammad Qasim - AMDEN, Sustainable Social Change Award: a social enterprise, providing livelihood funding model to marginalised communities through an innovative revolving fund. The fund provides affordable access to credit to start businesses in areas of goat and poultry farming and kitchen gardening. Through his innovative social enterprise, AMDEN is impacting 425 chronically poor households in Southern Punjab province. AMDEN currently employees 21 people with a net annual profitability of US$ 155,580.
   
4. Muhammad Waqas - WonderTree, Technology Innovation Award: WonderTree, a technology innovator, has developed a gaming platform that promotes learning and therapy in autistic children through games. The games have easy to personalise content for children of ages 5 and above, for their varying needs. Due to lack of awareness, limited resources and accessibility, parents have to go through great hassle to make appointments for specialized therapy sessions. Wonder Tree is impacting over 100 children by offering their product to three special schools and a hospital in Karachi and Islamabad.
   

Shell Tameer Awards is a nationwide competition that recognizes and rewards the entrepreneurial creativity and talent of young Pakistani entrepreneurs and provides them with a platform to further their business ideas. Hosted by Shell Tameer, the Awards recognize and reward the brightest business ideas. Since its inception in 2003, through the Tameer platform, over 1000 businesses have been setup, 12,000 aspiring entrepreneurs have been trained and over 800,000+ youth have been engaged on enterprise development to date.

At the event, Jawwad Cheema Managing Director of Shell Pakistan Limited said: “Shell Tameer Awards are a fundamental part of our enterprise generation efforts in Pakistan, providing young Pakistani talent with a platform that highlights their achievement and elevates them as role models to spark socio-economic progress and change. If we hope to provide youth with meaningful career options, we must continue to create such opportunities for them to shine – and I congratulate our winners here today on their incredible achievements.”

British Deputy High Commissioner, Belinda Lewis also addressed the audience on the UK’s support for such initiatives that provide livelihoods and work towards the country’s economic development and progress. During her address she said, “The British Deputy High Commission is a strong supporter of entrepreneurship initiatives. We are honored to collaborate with Shell on the Tameer Awards competition. I would like to express how pleased I am with what I have seen and heard today. I commend Shell for its leadership role in raising corporate social responsibility standards in Pakistan and urge and encourage other private sector companies to follow this exemplary model.”