mBillionth 2016 Award

Bangladesh's AppBajar wins mBillionth 2016 Award -The Asian Age

News: https://dailyasianage.com/print-news/27016

AppBajar, the multilingual customer to customer marketplace of Android mobile applications of Bangladesh has won the best South Asian mobile telecom technology and innovative competition mBillionth Award 2016 in 'Business and Commerce' category. The award giving program was held in recently at New Delhi, India.

It was organized and hosted by the Digital Empowerment Found-ation (DEF) in partnership with Google and Qualcomm and was also the 7th mBillionth Award Ceremony held. AppBajar Chief Executive Officer Shafiul Alam said: "We did not expect to be winner, there were 16 more eligible opponent. I dedicate this victory to my country.'' He said, "It's really extraordinary to win such an award in South Asia with a project which had started just seven months ago" The mBillionth Award South Asia is an annual award ceremony initialized in 2010 and since then awarded for innovations in mobile communications in South Asia.

With its mission stated "to recognize and honor excellence in mobile communications across South Asia recognizing and felicitating mobile innovations, applications and content services delivery", the award is open to governments, individuals, private sector companies, academic institutions, and NGOs in any of the eight SAARC countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka).This year, the mBillionth Awards received 348 entries from India, Afghanistan Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Malvides, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal, of which 69 were shortlisted as Finalists. Bangladesh had 6 finalists in this competition.

AppBajar is a app focuses on Bengali apps but supports apps in English, Hindi, Chinese and Japanese. Technology software companies and independent developers can upload and sell their apps. The platform doesn't charge any fee thus developers can list their products on the platform free of cost. User can buy apps with points available in their account by linking their AppBajar wallets to local/international payment systems like bKash, Visa, master card, paypal etc. Users can invite friends to use the platform and earn referral points, apps can be bought and gifted to friends and family. AppBajar is striving to make buying and selling of apps simple and safe. Customers and developers (prospective buyers and sellers) can interact and communicate with each other through social chat options. In addition to understanding the working of a mobile app, customers also demand customised app ideas for their businesses which developers fulfill within a time-frame and cost.

As of now, AppBajar is focusing on Health and Education mobile applications to promote the use of technology. The team behind AppBajar believes that a mobile phone can deliver solutions to the people who need it as grassroots and can transform the lives of thousands of people in Rural Bangladesh.AppBajar, a localized marketplace similar to globally accredited Google Play Store offers its developers copyright protection and promotes the concept of paid applications to enhance the IT industry in Bangladesh.

Developers get the payments in their registered bank account monthly. Prices of apps start from 1 BDT. The platform also promotes paid listings and advertisements on its platform.AppBajar app has 9000 downloads, 9300 registered users and 50,000 social media followers. To promote app developing culture in Bangladesh, AppBajar is going to conduct a training of 50,000 app developers.