Advancing Innovations

INTERVIEW

Advancing Innovations

Waqas Mirza, CEO of Avanza Innovations, shares with The Sustainabilist his insights on future cities’ technologies

What 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.

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.

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.

is helping our customers in the following areas:

• Digital Government Transformation: we help and enable government entities achieve paperless journeys for its individuals across multiple organisations;

• 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;

• 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. 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.

What is the UAE’s main current organisational challenge and do you believe that its solution can be found in other digitally transforming cities around the world? Establishing and running a business in the UAE is much better than most countries in the region. There are still areas of improvement that can be automated, and I am aware of initiatives and projects that will address some key problems that businesses face today, right from company incorporation all the way to seeking permissions, NOCs and other certificates from government entities.

The government sector is extremely forward-thinking and is constantly trying to improve services for consumers and corporates.

A similar mindset in the private sector is, however, missing. Banks for example need to completely change their outlook on SMEs especially on the lending side. Similarly, other sectors need to rally behind their regulators and help address

transformation. Every city has different challenges and aspirations.

Blockchain enables smart cities’ e-infrastructure to become secure and efficient at the back-end. “

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the challenges that organisations in general and SMEs in particular face in the UAE.

Many speculate that the full potential of future cities will be undermined if the transition is not executed optimally. How can the full potential of future cities be heightened? There is no formula to such a

However, there are a few guidelines that need to be followed. Some guiding principles that we educate government leaderships on are stated in the following:

• City transformation agenda has to be led by a responsible and an all-encompassing office or organisation. This organisation should have the big picture view of the “Future State” and should have the foresight of putting different pieces of a multi-year transformation journey together.

Government entities and private sector should have the autonomy of taking on transformation projects in their own domains while the Transformation office acts as an enabler and counsellor only.

• Leadership should define transformation KPIs and set up award and recognition models to keep entities on their toes.

Projects should be prioritised on the basis of the number of people’s lives a project impacts.

City transformation journeys involve a lot of pioneering work – which means at times there is no precedence for the kind of project that is being undertaken.

17 Mistakes will be made, miscalculations will happen. Therefore, it is very important to have the agility and an adaptive approach to alter the course and overcome setbacks while ensuring end objectives are achieved.