Azerbaijani "Braille Teach" startup becomes second in Paris
By Leman Mammadova
Azerbaijan's "Braille Teach" startup has taken the second place in Zhijiang Entrepreneur international entrepreneurship and innovation competition held in Paris.
Zarifa Mirzoyeva represented the Azerbaijani startup team. The device presented at the competition was invented for children with visual impairment to learn the Braille alphabet in many languages.
"Braille Teach" startup device allows learning Braille alphabet, figures and symbols through 8 interactive and entertaining games. This device currently supports Azerbaijani, English, Russian and German languages and can also be programmed in many more languages.
It should be noted that the winning team of the Paris competition will participate in the grand final of Zhijiang Entrepreneur to be held in Zhijiang, China, in November. The winner will receive 50,000 yuan ($7,265) and other support.
Zhijiang Entrepreneur international entrepreneurship and innovation competition is an arena to bring together the most innovative entrepreneurs in the world and encourage the best of them. Zhijiang aims to become an international innovation center by attracting the world's talents through this competition.
It is noteworthy that Azerbaijan has recently ranked 47th among 188 countries in the Global Startup Ranking.
As the startups are mainly related to the development and application of new technologies, Azerbaijani Ministry of Communications and High Technologies is taking important measures to support startups in the country. Earlier, the State Fund for Development of Information Technologies under the Ministry has been established to be engaged in providing investment.
Recently, a joint consortium has been established with the participation of the Innovation Agency under the Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies, AzInTelecom LLC and companies Lenovo, Nutanix, and iQRex to ensure the participation of startups in tenders held by various government agencies and individual companies, as well as in important projects and to support them in this field.
The consortium will provide local startuppers with an opportunity to get access to various financial sources, to take part in important projects, including large and medium-sized tenders.
Today, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is engaged in promoting the protection of intellectual property by ensuring administrative cooperation of the unions created by the participating countries.
Azerbaijan joined to the WIPO in 1995. Currently, Azerbaijan is a party to many WIPO-administered treaties.
The Azerbaijani government and WIPO signed a memorandum of understanding for the development of intellectual property sphere in Azerbaijan and the expansion of international cooperation in this area.
---
Leman Mammadova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @leman_888
Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
