PASHA Bank PR & Marketing Head: Inspired by Youth Innovation

Interview 

PASHA Bank recently sponsored the Green Project: Smart City Hackathon as part of their 2017 CSR strategy to support environmental projects. 

The Smart City Hackathon hosted by the Caucasus University in Tbilisi, Georgia, was organized by the startup accelerator ‘C10’ and the management company for startup accelerators ‘Blender’. The Georgian Innovations and Technology Agency supported the organization of the event, where teams of students competed while introducing innovative solutions to improve the environment of Tbilisi through ecology, parking, traffic or any other issue related to making life in the city better. The evaluation of the teams and their projects was made according to whether the solution represented could be applied in real life and whether it was original.  The winners were announced last Sunday, one of them, the Smart Road project, receiving a special prize from PASHA Bank.  

GEORGIA TODAY met with Anano Korkia, PASHA Bank’s Head of Public Relations and Marketing Department, to talk about the bank’s CSR activities and why they chose to support environmental projects in particular.

Why did PASHA Bank choose to focus on ecology as a part of its CSR Strategy for 2017?

Today, for the modern consumer, the trend for CSR activities is ever more apparent. At the same time, millennials need a different approach even in terms of marketing communication. Ecology and environment are very important themes, and we can see the trend evolving now in Georgia, too. And when you’re a big commercial company, you have strong resources to deliver the message that environment and ecology are the issues that matter.    

Why did you decide to support Smart City Hackathon?

The idea of the Smart City Hackathon to find innovative ideas for making life in our city better, with a possibility to have a strong ecological emphasis, grabbed us.  We had already financed educational projects and language courses, but this year, our objective is to support Green Projects and initiatives. 

Last year, as a gift to our business partners, we planted 2017 pine trees in Borjomi where, in 2008, a large area of the forest was burned. 

I think that it’s very important for businesses to play a part in raising the awareness on ecological and environmental issues and I also believe that in Georgia, communicating and spreading information about these activities is vital; it’s highly motivating for other companies and individuals to start their own initiative alternatively, or join already existing ones.

Tell us more about the Smart City Hackathon

The jury members were all from different companies. We evaluated the originality of the idea, the adaptability of the project, whether it would be possible to apply and realize it in real life, and the ability of the participants to make a presentation of their innovative ideas and solutions.  One of the projects that drew my attention, and it turned out to be one of the winners, was the project Doorstory, from 8th graders Giorgi Vekua and Lasha Bokhua, an application with which, through QR codes placed at particular doors, you can listen to the history of  public figures who lived there - you can even choose the language in which to listen to the narrative. The moment you start the application, it shows where you are and points to the place with a history, to which you can then listen, with an animated video of a ghost telling you the story. 

Imagine how useful this could be to Tbilisi Municipality, or the Tourism Administration, and it’s not a project that would need a big financial investment to be realized.  

The winners who were awarded with the prize from PASHA Bank (1,000 GEL) were Giorgi Ghonghadze, Nikoloz Moniava and Davit Natadze with their project Smart Road, a concept to equip roads with specialized sensors that save electricity. The lamps on roads will be turned on only when the vehicle is 500 meters away from the point. The authors of the project had not only estimated but precisely calculated what the saving cost would be and it appears that one family could use the electricity saved in one day on 10 kilometers of road to power their needs for 4 whole months!

They presented it almost as clearly as in a professional business-plan and made a prototype so we could see the project in action, with a little toy car passing along the road and the light switching on. Very impressive!  

Another of the four winners of the hackathon was Valar by Luka Lomtadze and Nika Alavidze, a mobile phone payment system application that identifies where you are and offers you the chance to pay, so when you get on the bus for example, a pop-up suggests paying the bus ticket through a mobile wallet. The last team of winners was the CROWD FoUNDation, acrowd-funding platform represented by Soso Chkhaidze, Tazo Arunashvili and Mari Amashukeli for a project on developing city infrastructure, and namely for improving hygiene and cleanliness in the Tbilisi under-passes.  The team invented a solution with sensor technologies that can sense movement and light up the area the moment someone tries to urinate there. The members of the team plan to launch a crowd-funding platform to assist the urban development and infrastructure improvement of the city.             

I was really impressed. Of course, their solutions might need improvement to be implemented for the future, but still, it was wonderful to see how passionate they were about what they do. Many of them had mobile applications or websites prepared in just one day, and they were all very dedicated, worked really hard and it was both very interesting and empowering to see that nearly half of them had ideas related to volunteering.

How would you summarize 2016 for PASHA Bank?      

We organized business forums, meetings and conferences throughout the year and, of course, we will continue to do so. I would like to mention the support we provided to the SOS Children’s Village, our financing of English courses for the whole year for university applicants who live there, and another project we had, when PASHA Bank financed a summer camp for university applicants from socially vulnerable groups in Kobuleti, Adjara.  I’m mentioning these because CSR and such activities in particular are extremely important for us: it’s through them that we attempt to change other people’s lives and try to make them a little better.  

Nino Gugunishvili