Greater Bangladesh: Hybrid Future City Summit Annual Meet 2020 Concluded with YY Ventures Partnered Master Class of Social Innovation, South Asia Ecosystem and Active Pipelines with Bangladesh Impact Investing
On 16–17 December 2020, the 5th Annual Meet of Future City Summit was successfully held globally, with Cyberport in Hong Kong used as the studio. The event was jointly sponsored by InvestHK (Government Department of Foreign Direct Investment) and Cyberport Hong Kong. The summit recorded over 390 nominated delegates from 49 countries in Asia, Europe, Africa and North America with over 34,000 organic audience reach while streaming. Since 2016, Future City Summit has been highly engaged by the Bangladeshi young entrepreneurs, scholars and technologists. This year, the Summit partnered and earned support of the YY Ventures in Bangladesh.
The Master Class during the Future City Summit 2020 with the theme “Reinvent Resilience through Social Innovation and Three Zeros” was co-hosted with the YY Ventures, a leading social innovation community and incubator, founded by Shazeeb M Khairul Islam(Obama Scholar), Founder & Managing Director of the YY Ventures. The session was attended by over 100 delegates from Asia and Africa.
The Future City Summit Annual Meet 2020 was hosted by the Good City Foundation, a multilateral non-profit development organisation based in Hong Kong and Southeast Asian cities, founded in 2016. The 5th Annual Meet was themed “Global Post-Pandemic Recovery” with a series of thought-leadership dialogues with influential figures such as Stephen Phillips of InvestHK, Tazin Shadid of YY Ventures, Petrider Paul(Tanzania) of African Union Youth Advisory Council, Ismail Abu Arafeh, Head of Solutions Mapping from the UNDP in the Palestine, and Retnam Shanmuga of ASEAN Smart Cities Network, along with multiple side sessions.
As an overall achievement, a global-scale moonshot ecosystem composed of 22 countries with members in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Middle East and Africa pledged at the closing ceremony to collaborate with members of Emerging Future Cities Network formed in 2018 and international high-level communities such as ASEAN Smart Cities Network and G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance. A 10-year agenda objective was then set forth to impact 100 emerging cities of 500,000 population each through digital urban innovation, advanced public policy and governance entrepreneurship.
With the primary interest of collective development of startup and innovative technology pipeline by the foreign direct investment promotion department of Hong Kong government, InvestHK, the Good City Foundation continued to establish and build stronger startup and innovations network in Bangladesh to source and incubate potential impact startups and stage social entrepreneurs and founders to the international communities through Hong Kong and Asia. Different innovation funding and financing opportunities would be established in the coming year with different venture capitals in Hong Kong and Mainland China in the regional interest in South Asia through Bangladesh.
“The engagement of Bangladeshi in Future City Summit and related programs has been since 2016 the first Annual Meet of the Summit. It has been empowering and allowing more young communities in the country move upward and connect to global ecosystem and opportunities.” — Shadman Sadab, Director of Public Private Partnership by Youth of Good City Foundation.
The partnership with Bangladesh communities with YY Ventures for continuous top-notch urban technology sourcing in the South Asia and showcase with the leaders in the local innovative communities in the Palestine will continue with the upcoming side events of World Economic Forum special annual meet in May in Singapore, along with the support by Invest Hong Kong and YY Ventures, during the Startmeup Festival in May at the same time.
The 5th Annual Meet was supported by a wide spectrum of stakeholders including UNDP Palestine Innovation Accelerator Lab, Global Shapers Ramallah Hub, African Union Youth Advisory Council, Global University Incubator, Generation T(Gen T) Asia, Yunus Environment Hub, YY Ventures, Golden Age Foundation, Hong Kong Social Enterprise Summit(SES), Independent Power Producers Forum(IPPF), Venturous Group, Aclan Pakistan, Nepal Academy of Science and Technology(Nepal Innovation Digital Network), Sustainable Finance Initiative, Generation Hong Kong, LAB.PH, Urbunx, PropTech Institute and production house DECT Production.
