Kathmandu, January 9:

The six-day long CAN Info-Tech 2007 kicked off today at an impressive inaugural ceremony at the Birendra International Convention Centre (BICC), Kathmandu.

The 13th edition of Nepal Information Technology Show and ICT Conference is being organised by Computer Association of Nepal (CAN) with support from both the government and private sector organisations and business institutions.

Started 12 years ago, CAN Info-Tech is the country’s biggest ICT show which has become an annual event for the confluence of latest technological development, products and services (both hardware and software).

Inaugurating the event, Saroj Devkota, vice-chairperson, High-Level Commission for IT (HLCIT) underscored the need for exploiting the existing huge potential and using ICT-enabled tools in realising a new Nepal as an e-Nepal.

“Our main agenda following the establishment of Loktantra is an economic revolution and drastic socio-economic transformation. The quest for a new Nepal will be accomplished by ICT and its comprehensive applications,” he said.

Promulgation of Electronic Transaction Act 2063 and Regulations (Cyber Law) is a good beginning and the government has taken the development of ICT as a high priority sector, Devkota added.

The government has formulated an E-governance Master Plan (EG MaP) with assistance from the Korean government. Talks are underway with the ADB for the implementat-ion of the plan, which is estimated to cost about Rs 5 billion rupees, Devkota said.

“Once the Master Plan comes into operation, we conceive that even remote villages of the country could be connected and access to information be ensured,” he said.

“Everything except ‘impossible is possible’ in the world of ICT. It is only the tool or the way, which can make the dream of a new Nepal come true,” said Biplav Man Singh, president of CAN. He proposed making new Nepal an e-Nepal, where ICT-enabled tools and services would be comprehensively used in all aspects of activities such as e-government, e-rupee, e-learning, e-commerce, e-ID and so on.

Singh said that Nepal could act as a digital bridge between the two giant economies of China and India. “Nepal being a digital transit point for a hardware giant in the north and software leader in the south, could generate business opportunities worth billions,” he said. “CAN Info-Tech is the numero-uno event in the IT sector in Nepal and has grown from strength to strength since its inception in 1995,” says C N Upadhaya, coordinator of the event. Recalling the past ev-ents, he says that the event began with just 17 stalls and received about 2,100 visitors over three days.

Experts in ICT conference

Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, January 9:

ICT Conference is a part of CAN Info-Tech, which has been featuring as a major event for the past six years. This year, ICE Conference brings leading national and international experts to suggest ways to boost Nepal’s IT development.

The three-day long conference will focus on ‘Building e-Nepal for Socio-economic Development.’

The conference is segmented into three themes—ICT Conference (January 10-11), Tutorial on January 12 and Workshop on Standardisation and Localisation on January 13.

Dr Guennadi M Fedorow, chief of ICT Policy Section at UNESCAP, will make a presentation on the main theme of ‘Building e-Nepal for Socio-economic Development.’

Presentation of Basanta Shrestha will be on ‘IT for Ensuring Environmental Sustainability,’ and Raju Chellam of AMI Singapore will make presentation on ‘Use of ICT for Development’.

Under the infrastructure development, Sagun Dhakhwa of Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya will make a presentation on ‘Including the excluded, ICT support for non-literate’, while Sarjan Maharjan and Ronesh Chitrakar will jointly present a paper on ‘Efficient approach for effective data management’. J K Mandal, J Paul Choudhary and S Das have a presentation on ‘Forecasting of Tea production using neural network based on fuzzy data’.

Nepal’s first VC

Kathmandu: Nepal’s first incubator and venture capital (VC) company Fortune Cookie Ventures Pvt Ltd has been launched at CAN Info-Tech 2007, today.

Fortune Cookie Ventures is an international joint venture set up by renowned ICT entrepreneurs in Nepal and Intelligent Capital LLC, a US-based international venture capital company.

The goal of Fortune Cookie is to provide incubation and venture capital to deserving innovators with promising ideas in the ICT sector. Fortune Cookie intends to invest up to Rs 100 million in Nepal’s ICT sector over the next two years through its activities. By creating successful ventures, Fortune Cookie would attract much needed foreign investment into the ICT sector.— HNS