Good news for Startups in Islamabad – SI# 8 on April 4

What’s really amazing about SI sessions is that you do one and the next moment people want to know when the next one is going to be. They don’t just ask once – they actually nag you until you give in and give them a date and time.

Having just been through the last extremely motivating one in Karachi, we started being asked about when the next one would be in Islamabad. NIIT had offered the venue and Brightspyre had said they would do whatever needed to be done in terms of logistics and spreading the word. A date was suggested and we’re on for Friday evening.

Date: Friday April 4, 2008
Venue: NIIT Seminar Hall, Chib Plaza , Chaklala Scheme III, Rawalpindi
Time: 5:30 – 9:00 PM

The bad news is that most of the usual suspects are not going to be there unfortunately due to other commitments (guys, you will truly be missed). However, the good news is that there are some really exciting people on the panel who have loads to share.

Here is the list of panelists so far:

- Rana Saad, CEO, PI Sigma
- Murad Akhtar (Tintash)
- Mansoor Salim, CEO, Jin Technologies
- Faisal Chohan, CEO, BrightSpyre
- Babar Khan, Country Manager & Co-Founder, Ikonami
- Adnan Shaukat, CEO, Classic Entertainment, Internet Radio
- Amir Jahangir, Consultant CSF and Social media entrepreneur
- 2 NIIT Alumni (details are awaited)
- Osama Hashmi (Green and White)
- Jehan Ara, President, P@SHA

Our host is Dr. Arshad Ali and his team at NIIT.

The theme of this event has been picked by the audience:
Starting Up: the first essential steps

Register NOW for this not to be missed event:
http://www.niit.edu.pk/Seminars_workshops/pages/startup/index.php

A photo report of SI# 7

Role playing makes learning so much easier. And it is a lot more fun too. So on Saturday when CEOs from IT companies decided to show young entrepreneurs and wannabes how to approach a customer and get his/her attention, it was indeed the place to be.

You will not be surprised to learn that even successful and accomplished entrepreneurs find their legs turning to jelly when faced with a customer as difficult and arrogrant as FQ decided to be that day.

Jawwad has written in great detail about the event so i shall try and just do a photo report.

Here’s someone just waiting to pounce on his next victim. Look at the expression – not to be missed that’s for sure!

Then there are those who look quite innocent but poor Rakesh didn’t know what hit him when Adnan (also known as Boat to his friends) started firing questions at him. But Rakesh won this round. Somehow he managed to get Adnan to agree to mentor him one-on-one and to give him a desk at PixSense where he could totter around and decide which of the 4 ideas in his head is worth pursuing. Hmmm … lucky kid!

See the photo Jawwad told me not to use – where FQ seems more drawn to his blackberry than to the interesting pitch emanating from JAF. But what is not in the picture, is what Jawwad said next, to suddenly draw Faisal away from his little gadget. All this is happening while Fawzia (wife and primary investor in Alchemy) watches indulgently.

It was nice to finally meeting Fariha Akhtar. She has finally taken the plunge – resigned from her job and decided that she is going to be an entrepreneur. Good for you girl! If you want to bounce ideas off any of us, feel free to do so anytime. Fariha is a smart cookie you know. She had brought along a friend whom she’s been trying to convince to join her in her new enterprise hoping that she too would be bitten by the entrepreneurship bug. And, you know something, I think she was.

And then there is young Talha who has been at several of our SI’s. He is ready to jump ship. I just know he is. He was there with a ready-made team eager, bright, possessing that special spark. Absolutely wonderful to see.

The mentoring sessions were so intense. This was the kind of follow-up event that was needed. We are bound to see some great ideas being nurtured through these events. These young people are headed for greatness. It will be great to watch them get there and to play a teeny weeny part in getting them started.

Thanks go out once again to Adnan Agboatwalla for providing the venue and to Yusuf Jan, Owais Zaidi, Imran Zia, Jawwad Farid and Faisal Qureshi for sharing. That’s the way to go guys!

Dr. Umar Saif – we are so proud of you

Dr. Umar Saif, Professor at LUMS, believes that we need to glamorize Research if we are to achieve excellence in Higher Education.

Well, he has started the ball rolling on the path to making research look pretty sexy. What am I talking about?

A paper that Dr. Umar Saif co-authored with students and colleagues at MIT has been awarded the Mark Weiser best paper award at IEEE Percom’08! The Mark Weiser Award is the highest award of recognition for a researcher in the field of Pervasive Computing.

This is the first time it has been awarded to a paper with a byline of a Pakistani university. Percom is ranked in the A+ category in the CORE list (widely used for ranking conferences in CS); as the premier conference in pervasive computing, percom had an acceptance rate of ~11% this year. An extended version of the paper will appear as an invited paper in the Pervasive and Mobile Computing Journal later this year (PMC).

A copy of the paper is posted at:
http://www.cag.csail.mit.edu/~umar/publications/percom08-goals-web.pdf

The system was featured in several technology magazines, newspapers
and blogs. BBC published the most “sensational” story (and Umar believes it is the best picture in popular media): I think the one taken by Jawwad at SI#6 was much nicer (the one above): http://www.pervasive-cmi.csail.mit.edu/news/3583479.stm.html

Umar and his team started this work over 4 years ago, when they wrote the first position paper on what we dubbed goal-oriented programming. This paper laid out the early vision of a system that may be programmed with human intent, rather than complicated computer jargon. The system
became the center piece of Project Oxygen at MIT ($45Million project) and became a progenitor of several follow on systems in this area.

The vision paper: http://cag.csail.mit.edu/~umar/publications/ubisys.pdf

You may download the following video to see the system (and Umar Saif) in action: http://cag.csail.mit.edu/~umar/tmpmovies/mov1.mpg

Other noteworthy work done by Umar and his team in the area of research in the last 6 months include

1. A project that got funding from Microsoft Research (Poor Man’s
broadband) was featured in New Scientist (a first for Pakistan).
http://www.cag.csail.mit.edu/~umar/NS-PMB.pdf. This was also the first
time a research project in Pakistan was funded by Microsoft Research
(LUMS press release:
http://web.lums.edu.pk/umar/press/microsoft.asp.html

2. They just got a large collaborative research program funded in
collaboration with UC Berkeley (by USAID/HEC). This research program
is focused on Developing-world technologies and the work will be
jointly carried out with Eric Brewer’s TIER group at Berkeley
(http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu). Our side will be led by my team at
http://www.dritte.org and http://newt.lums.edu.pk — with
participation by PTCL, VU, NADRA, PITB and DSD.

3. They will be running a course with Univ. of Washington (Seattle, UW)
on developing-world technologies in a week’s time. The lectures will
broadcast live on LUMS campus and Umar Saif will be guest lecturing in a
couple of sessions via a video link. There will be other guest lecturers
from MIT, CMU, Berkeley and Microsoft. Course website (still
evolving):
http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/csep590b/CurrentQtr/

Happy Co-existence Day!

HAPPY Good Friday
HAPPY Holi
HAPPY Nauroz
HAPPY Eedé Meelaad-ün-Nabi
HAPPY World Anti-Racism Day

I love the concept! Thanks Zak!

http://www.kidvai.com/windmills/2008/03/day-of-days.html

Let us co-exist and celebrate our diversity – not just one day of the year but all 365!

Important Reminder – SI # 7 tomorrow in Karachi

Date: Saturday, 22^nd March
Venue: PixSense – 172/P Najeeb Corner, 4th Floor, Block 2 PECHS Karachi
Time: 3 pm – 6pm

Topic: “The secret of pitching…

How to convince customers to give you time, money and respect”

Panelists: Faisal Qureshi, Jawwad Farid, Adnan Agboatwalla, Imran Zia, Yusuf Jan, Owais Zaidi

and of course I will be there!

Thanks to Adnan for letting us use the PixSense venue yet again and for providing soft drinks to gulp down the Pizzas that Jawwad is insisting on ordering.

An online marketplace for social good? Hmmmm

Those kids have done it again! When I think that they can surprise me no further, one of them goes and does something like this! What am I talking about? The Lootmaar.com team have pulled another rabbit out of their proverbial hat. Their online marketplace was moving along quite smoothly when what do they do? They combine the Internet and the glamour of pop stars to raise money for social good. Let Adnan Haider tell you all about it. It certainly is the coming of age of the Internet in Pakistan. Way to go guys!

Don’t you just love what Google does with its logo?

This is what I found at google.com today. It is meant to mark the first day of spring. Amazing! I remember so many that I have seen before. Here are a few – and they are not necessarily the coolest ones but they are nice too.

Guest article from Sarah Shaukat of YouPark.com

Stay a step ahead of consumer demand

The emerging energy crisis all over the country especially in the urban areas has adversely affected the commercial, industrial and domestic life for people of Pakistan. This has landed the country in a complete state of flux. As a result of the current political turmoil coupled with the energy crisis, no foreign investment is forthcoming. Despite these prevailing conditions of the country, there are still few committed individuals’ who belief in their capabilities and stay focused towards achieving their goals.

One most proud example is of Farrukh Abbas, 25 years old Pakistani who co-founded Mobile Weaver at the age of 22, along with his two European companions Babar Baig and Umar Akram, with a promising hope of making it big one day. These three entrepreneurs started a small venture in 2005 by the name of Mobile Weaver based in Islamabad and Copenhagen.

The motivation behind the startup was based on a simple idea that connects the mobile developer community with the mobile consumers by uniting them on one platform. They started up by picking up the best selling applications and games from the world wide developers and selling them to consumers through a content delivery platform. In this whole process the developers were provided with the major share of the earnings. Some big names for developer partners include Spb Software House, Mobifusion, Sunny Soft, Beiks, Mobisystems, Shapes Services and many others. The company’s flagship product, Youpark.com is an online storefront that provides users with an exclusive catalog of interesting mobile applications and games for platforms like Symbian, Windows Mobile (Smartphone and Pocket PC), Palm OS, Java as well as Blackberry. They offer latest mobile software and games for leading mobile manufacturers such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, HTC and many more.

In a very short time the company has partnered with the leading mobile distributors such as Bright Point Inc and many clients in Italy, France, United Kingdom and Norway. Mobile Weaver provides solutions to these distributors, so that they can market and sell devices along with their device specific applications and games. Mobile industry in Pakistan is dominated with few big names of mobile distributors such as United Mobile and Mobile Zone. The main challenge for mobile distributors in Pakistan is to come closer to their customers by providing them value in their services. Mobile Weaver possesses the same endeavor of providing innovative solutions to the distributors of Pakistan so that they can offer consumer an easy access to exciting world of mobile content.

Pakistan is one of the world’s fastest-growing cell-phone markets, with user numbers growing by 73% as compared to the last year. The country of 160 million currently has 67 million cellular subscribers. Consumer expectations are increasing and their loyalty to service providers is low. They want a lot more than beautiful ringtones on Valentine’s Day or greeting messages on Eid day. This growing awareness in consumers has made them sophisticated enough to know where and how to find the right deal. With the rising maturity in content market, Pakistani people want value added services such as feature rich applications that can fulfill their needs whether they are business, travel, lifestyle or entertainment.

As the market shifts from technology-based to consumer-driven, it is essential for the Pakistani mobile players such as telcos and mobile distributors to squarely match the requirements of mobile consumers. To provide consumers with innovative and value added content is exactly the goal Mobile Weaver is pursuing. This objective can only be achieved by accepting the emergence of mobile content at the right time and responding to the increasingly changing demands of mobile consumers.

About the Author

Sarah Shaukat is a qualified software engineer, presently working with a software house based in Islamabad. She’s an experienced technical writer as well, and possesses in-depth knowledge of cellular industry specializing in the areas of mobile content and mobile application development.

By popular demand, the next SI is set for March 22 in Karachi

Event: Startup Insiders session # 7
Date: Saturday, March 22 2008
Time: 3 pm – 6 pm
Venue: PixSense (172/P Najeeb Corner, 4th floor, Block 2 PECHS, Karachi) – thank you Adnan

The Topic:

“The secret of Pitching…
How to convince customers to give you time, money and respect

The Entrepreneurs who have confirmed that they will be there:

Adnan Agboatwalla, co-Founder, PixSense
Jawwad Farid, CEO, Alchemy Technologies
Faisal Qureshi, CEO, Kolachi Advanced Technologies
Yusuf Jan, CEO, Mixit Technologies
Imran Zia, CEO, Vahzay Inc.

and of course your favourite moderator, moi, will be there!
No need to register. No registration fee. Just show up. And snacks will be provided! (As you can see, I am pre-empting all the questions. )

Speaking of snacks, Jawwad Farid says he will provide the pizzas! That’s the spirit Jawwad! If food for thought doesn’t motivate them, the food will!!!

Owais Zaidi of Access Group will also be there.

I saw something today that made me smile

What a nice way to start the morning! Cops in Pakistan are usually very different from cops in the more developed countries (although some of the horror stories from the developed world may be worth relating some time). You are normally prone to avoiding them rather than approaching them if you are facing a problem. So imagine my surprise this morning when at a busy intersection, I spot this cop assisting two young children to cross the street – actually holding their little hands and making sure that they make it to the other side of the road safely. It was really a sweet thing to see.

Maybe we don’t give these guys enough credit. A little benefit of the doubt is perhaps in order? Naaah maybe not! But there is hope for them yet … maybe if they were paid well and trained well and held to account, we would see a change. What say you?

FQ bids adieu to Breakfast at Dawn

Wonder how many of you have noticed that Faisal Qureshi has been missing from Breakfast at Dawn all this week ?  Those who were used to waking up to the banter of Ayeshah Alam and Faisal Qureshi at 7 every morning, have found that Faisal has vanished. Well,  it is official – FQ has left Dawn News. Why? I will let him tell you.

A little bird tells me he will be back on air as early as Saturday March 22 on another channel. FQ fans watch for it!

Us and the big guns!

Imran Zia of Vahzay, Zafar Khan of Sofizar, Jawwad Farid of Alchemy and I didn’t miss the opportunity to have a picture taken with the big guns – hey guys you think Junaid Iqbal of BMA Capital qualifies as a big gun?

See some familiar old faces?

More behind this handshake than meets the eye

Just being friendly? Or is there more behind this Hussain Dawood-Ken Morse handshake? The word is that Hussain Dawood, Farrouk Captain and some other hotshot business tycoons are working with Ken Morse, the MD of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, on setting up a LUMS-like business school in Karachi – in fact, better than LUMS is what they are saying. Is there any truth to these rumours? Well, apparently Ken Morse spent the early part of the afternoon on Thursday locked up in a room with the rich and famous of the Karachi business community discussing the idea. Watch this space for more info as the dust settles.

T-shirt at a price

I finally got a TicketNest.com t-shirt from Zafar Khan of Sofizar – in fact he gave me two so I would stop complaining. But at WHAT price? He told a room full of people at an industry event that he had discovered that I was bribe-able – YIKES – and that t-shirts were an adequate enough bribe. Ouch! I guess he is not aware that lunches at Sakura (sushi, prawn tempura and the tarkay walay kaylay) are a lot more effective. Lovely t-shirts but at what cost! <Sigh> How will I regain my much-valued reputation for integrity? Zafar how could you??

Above are some pictures of Zafar sharing his business secrets with the Alchemy team while Jawwad and Imran Chishti and Imran Zia watch with amusement.

MITCEF Entrepreneurship Program – now at Karachi Sheraton Hotel on March 13

Launch of Tech Angel Network (TAN), Cambridge Advisor Network (CAN) &
Business Acceleration Program BAP-2008 and Viewing of “Are you ready for IPO”
Date: March 13th, 2008, Time: 3-7 PM
Location: Karachi Sheraton Hotel
Program:
• Welcome Address, Dr. Zahir Ali Syed, MITCEF 3:00-3:10
• BAP-2008: Dr. Zahir Ali Syed, Co-Chair MITCEF 3:10-4:10
o Views on BAP-2007, Jehan Ara President P@SHA
o BAP-2007 Finalist Testimonials (Alchemy, Sofizar, Softech & Tohfay)
• TAN & CAN: Mr. Azhar Rizvi, Vice Chair MITCEF 4:10-4:40
o Perspective on Entrepreneurship, Mr. Sami Askari, Chairman CSP
• Hi-Tea 4:40-5:25
• Address, Mr. Farrokh Captain, Chair MITCEF 5:25-5:30
• Broadcast Viewing: Mr. Ken Morse, MD MIT(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Entrepreneurship Center 5:30-6:30
o Introductory Remarks, Mr. Ken Morse
o “Are you ready for IPO” DVD, Excerpts, Viewing
• Q&A 6:30-6:50
• Vote of Thanks: Mr. Junaid Iqbal, MITCEF 6:50:7:00

Contact Information:
Mr. Shafi Shaikh, MITCEF Secretariat;
Phone: +9221 568 4157, 568 4859; Fax: +9221 568 8259
http://mitcef-pakistan.org , info@mitcef-pakistan.org
Dr. Zahir Ali Syed, Co-Chair, 0300 823 2348
Mr. Azhar Rizvi, Vice Chair, 0300 828 2649