In today’s world of information and communication technology, an obvious gap between industry and the academia is observed. This has provoked a need of building bridges between the two sides which has not been given much attention by the corporate sector lately. This also gives birth to the concept of entrepreneurship. KalSoft feels proud to be the pioneers to promote the concept of entrepreneurship among students. For this purpose, KalSoft has recently been the integral part of several academic related activities such as Professional Competency Program (PCP), NED’s TechElite 2008(All-Pakistan Software Competition) and most importantly, PinnKal. Derived from the word Pinnacle & KalSoft, PinnaKal was a nation-wide product idea & concept competition program that was launched in 46 I.T Universities with over 500 undergraduate students participated in the first stage. The purpose behind ‘PinnaKal’ was to motivate I.T students to address real-life business problems and let them explore their hidden talents to bring out ingenious solutions/product ideas. The other aspiration was to inject the industry specific knowledge and make them think out of the box beside their daily academic activities in order to enhance their technical & professional competitive skills. The launch of such novel activity has opened new doors for I.T professionals to extract ground-breaking artifacts from the fresh breed of computer graduates and recognize the best of the best in the professional field. Also for the first time, students had been provided a platform where they can directly share their revolutionary ideas to the top I.T think tanks with the sense of security and the dream of joining hands with KalSoft to convert their outstanding ideas into professional marketable products.

PinnaKal has been a great success throughout the inception till conclusion. The vision and concept has been highly appreciated by the universities.

“KalSoft’s special focus towards the education industry is extremely praiseworthy. The unremitting efforts and initiatives to minimize the gap are truly remarkable. We are pleased to be a part of KalSoft’s vision and with sheer gratification, I would look forward to make this bond stronger in future. I must also congratulate KalSoft for setting high standards and concluding the PinnaKal event in a highly successful manner”, says Mr. Umer Shafique, Senior Research Associate, Faculty of Engineering Sciences, GIK Institute of Engineering Sciences & Technology.

Students from 46 I.T Universities came up with their innovative product ideas related to different verticals of human life. In the final stage, top five innovative ideas were selected from a bunch of more than 93 proposed business plans. These groups competed in KalSoft Academy on Saturday 9th August, 2008. Students and faculty members traveled from different corners of Pakistan to make their way to the event. The idea presentations was followed by an Awards Distribution Ceremony where the honorable minister of Information Technology, Mr. Raza Haroon was the Chief Guest along with Mr. Abdul Ghani Syed, a learned scholar as the presiding guest and Mr. Khurram Hanif Kalia, President & CEO, KalSoft as the guest of honor. Apart from the certificates of appreciation and winning shields, amazing Cash Prizes and latest notebooks were also distributed among the participants. Faculty members and entrepreneur students, who are doing their final year university projects under the supervision of KalSoft, received appreciation shields from respected I.T Minister, Government of Sindh. Mr. Raza Haroon & Mr. A.G. Saeed later commemorated to the beauty of the event with the words of appreciation about the concept of the event and conferred their motivational speeches which greatly stimulated the moral of the audience. In the end, Mr. Khurram Hanif Kalia presented honorary shields to Mr. Raza Haroon & Mr. Abdul Ghani Saeed.

The list of winning groups is as follows:

Later students and faculty members visited KalSoft offices where they were given a brief about KalSoft’s success story, operations and departmental activities.