Anas Niaz, founder and chief executive officer of Bioniks, will represent the Karachi-based AI-driven bionic limbs company at a high-level side event titled Women’s Economic Empowerment, Partnering for Progress, held during the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Niaz, a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, cofounded Bioniks in 2016 alongside Ovais Hussain Qureshi after launching his earlier venture Viscous.co in 2015, and the company has since grown into an AI-driven prosthetics maker empowering over 700 individuals globally with low-cost, 3D-printed bionic arms priced at roughly a tenth of comparable international devices costing 20,000 dollars or more.
The side event is being convened by Government Offices of Sweden’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs, UN Women, and For All Women and Girls, bringing together leaders, investors, innovators, and women entrepreneurs to discuss partnerships that advance women’s economic participation globally. Niaz’s inclusion as a speaker connects directly to Bioniks’ recent work through the Bioniks Scanning App and its AI-powered prosthetics pilot programme empowering rural women with disabilities, work carried out in partnership with Australia Awards Pakistan, the Australian High Commission in Pakistan, and UN Women Pakistan, giving him a specific, recent body of work in the exact intersection of gender equality and assistive technology the New York panel is built around.
The event is scheduled for Thursday, 24 September 2026, from 8:30 to 10:15 AM, at the Swedish Residence at 600 Park Avenue in New York, positioning Niaz among a select group of global speakers addressing high-level policymakers and investors during one of the UN calendar’s most concentrated weeks of diplomatic and development-focused programming. For Bioniks, a company that has already drawn recognition from Forbes, Saudi Gazette, Deutsche Welle, and Futurism, as well as awards from GITEX Global and The Startup Gen, speaking at a UNGA side event convened jointly by a European government and UN Women extends the company’s institutional credibility into a genuinely high-level diplomatic and policy setting rarely accessible to Pakistani health-tech founders.
Niaz has previously described the rural women’s prosthetics pilot as only a starting point, noting that many more women and girls with disabilities, particularly in rural and marginalized communities, still need access to assistive technology, rehabilitation, and pathways to economic independence, and that the next chapter must be about scaling those solutions through broader partnerships rather than treating inclusion as a pilot exercise. His UNGA appearance offers a direct platform to pursue exactly that kind of partnership building, bringing Bioniks’ specific model for combining low-cost assistive technology with disability inclusion directly in front of the investors and global partners the event is designed to convene.
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