The Sustainabilist | SMART CITIES
INTERVIEW
Advancing Innovations Waqas Mirza, CEO of Avanza Innovations, shares with The Sustainabilist his insights on future cities’ technologies
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hat does Avanza Innovations do and what solutions does it bring to the market? In a nutshell, Avanza Innovations uses blockchain technology as a vehicle and “trust glue” that brings organisations together to solve a common problem or achieve a common goal.
is helping our customers in the following areas:
Avanza Innovations is the latest venture of Avanza Group - a 20-year-old technology power house that serves over 300 customers across 45 countries. We launched Avanza Innovations in 2018 to focus on nascent technologies such as blockchain, AI, and robotics.
• Financial Regulation & Supervision: we set up national scale platforms that help address an area of regulation or compliance such as trade finance risks, paperless artefacts exchange, and more;
Within two years of inception, Avanza Innovations has achieved the biggest market share of production-grade blockchain implementations across numerous verticals in the MENA region.
• Trade & Supply Chain: we help large enterprises, ports authorities, customs authorities and numerous other stakeholders automate crossorganisation information flows in areas of procurement, government NOCs, logistics operations and many other areas of the overall trade supply chain.
With our 20 plus blockchain projects championed by leading enterprises and tier 1 government entities, Avanza Innovations 16
• Digital Government Transformation: we help and enable government entities achieve paperless journeys for its individuals across multiple organisations;
How is Avanza Innovations encouraging the development of smart cities? Most of our projects are being championed by government entities who are taking the next leap of automation and innovation by rallying their eco-system partners to collectively improve customer service and the pace of information flow. These projects eliminate the use of paper in government services, help make back-end information exchanges between entities much more robust, and have a safety net of trust and transparency across all parties. So, while on one hand smart cities need a coherent services layer to engage with its residents in real time, it is equally (if not more) important that the building blocks and foundation of these services are secure and can withstand internal and external threats and risks. This is where blockchain enables smart cities’ e-infrastructure to become secure and efficient at the backend, so that organisations can add smart solutions and services on top of this base.
