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To help the ever growing entrepreneurship culture in Pakistan, an initiative has been taken by Mr. Hamza Matin (CEO of EDP Services (Pvt.) Ltd) to launch the All Pakistan Entrepreneurs Exchange. This effort will help a lot of current and emerging entrepreneurs in this country. Under the umbrella of APEX, initiatives were also taken for the launch of Young Entrepreneurs Syndicate (YES) and Social Entrepreneurs Academy (SEA) which would provide platform to young entrepreneurs, students and academic institutions to interact for the development & training for setting up their businesses. We live in a country full of problems, so this means that there are a lot more opportunities here as compared to any other place. So, we need to identify problems, build a solution and get supported by organizations like APEX. According to their website

The All Pakistan Entrepreneurs’ Exchange is a volunteer-driven non-profit organization whose mandate is to support young people in business. Aimed at business owners, APEX provides its members an opportunity to learn from one another’s experiences and take advantage of peer support and mentorship as they grow their businesses.

•    APEX connects Pakistani entrepreneurs with each other both physically and via the internet. APEX facilitates connections with government, industry service providers, other businesses and the media. APEX works with private and public organizations to provide members with relevant and timely information and tools to strengthen their businesses.

•    APEX is the place where entrepreneurs feel confident they will meet like-minded individuals and can comfortably discuss the daily successes and challenges they experience in their businesses.

•    APEX provides its members with opportunities to learn not only from each other but from individuals with recognized expertise. APEX will also endeavor to share information on various external programs and services that may be of value to its members.

APEX is a pitch-free environment where members meet their peers and confidently and comfortably share their triumphs and challenges.

Disclaimer: This is not a startup company - These are some bright young students, they only needs encouragement and motivation. Maybe their current solution is not that good but still we all start with low quality solutions and improve it over the period of time. Lets look at this from that point of view.

Optical Character Recognition is a unique approach developed for recognizing isolated character that requires less complex calculations but still giving adequate results. In case of document image recognition, an additional step of detecting lines of text and possible set of character among those lines is a requisite. There are numerous methods available for character recognition. From numerical and statistical approach to AI based approach in an increasing order of their recognition accuracy, respectively. None of the approaches stated has recognition accuracy of 100%.Even the humans are not credited with absolute recognition accuracy. The main objective of the recognition software is to help its user in more physically tiring and cumbersome work of actually typing the whole document especially for a user. The error correction still resides with its user only. Hence, a recognition accuracy of even about 90% gives very satisfactory results. Apart from all this, the image quality also plays a very important role in the recognition accuracy.

So, a research project named Urdu OCR – A Digital Dream from Usman Institute of Technology fulfilling the needs. The team members of this project are Abdul Wahab, Shuwair Sardar, and Muhammad Abdul Sammad Khan. First prize winner of Combat 2008 (Software Competition – PAF Kiet) and Software Exhibition (Software Competition – SZABIST). Great work guys!

Urdu OCR is developed for first time. It has not been developed yet. The need of this product is in the printing media like Urdu news paper and magazines. It is useful in converting the books of Urdu in digital format, the large amount of useful and heritage data in Urdu language which are in vanishing form can be saved in digital format. It can produce electronic books and digital Urdu library online.

Innovation is the definite device of entrepreneurship. The action that empowers resources with a creative ability to create wealth. The vision of the Web Funters. – http://www.webfunters.com/ is established on the same rationale by two young entrepreneurs Mohib uddin and Aly Abdullah; both 19. Mohib is a practiced Copywriter, Blogger, Internet Marketer, Communications Specialist and a self-made entrepreneur. So far, his goal is to reach high revenues by the end of his first year on their enterprise venture Web Funters, which is by winter of 2009. Mohib was a Media Sciences student at a reputable university but his erratic behaviour and destructive lifestyle soon got him turfed out. He laid waste to the varsity’s conference rooms, the classrooms, and even common corridors, tossing things out of the place. Aly’s expertise covers Search Engine Marketing, Blog Integration and Website Development. He has been a thriving freelancer as well as an industrious entrepreneur. Aly’s persona is designed to be consistent, efficient and studious. He’s currently doing BS in Public Administration from the University of Karachi, Department of Public Administration.

The company is aiming to inject fun into producing juicy web portals and ventures. They are seeking finance to mass produce their ideas and have been visiting entrepreneurship technology conferences to gain some local exposure.

Nearly half a dozen “Funter” web products are under-construction or planned. A few of their accomplished products include:

MindCafé – http://www.mindcafe.org/: MindCafe is a blog about mind power dedicated to offering you with news, discoveries and advice regarding mind power, self improvement and tips on how to maximize your subconscious mind power to revolutionize your life.

FamousLogos – http://www.famouslogos.org/: Famous Logos is a website solely dedicated to offer you reviews, information and suggestions about world famous logos. It is a comprehensive website which enables you to understand a logo design of a company in a logical way.

DubaiJobber – http://www.dubaijobber.com/: DubaiJobber is a rapid growing community linking employers with talented people. Because of its simplicity, DubaiJobber is attracting companies to utilize the site to find their ideal employees. The website is also connecting job seekers with employers in search for their perfect job.

01 Interactive – http://www.01interactive.com/: 01 Interactive is a leading Web Design Studio based out of Karachi, Pakistan.

Disclaimer: This is not a startup company - These are some bright young students, they only needs encouragement and motivation. Maybe their current solution is not that good but still we all start with low quality solutions and improve it over the period of time. Lets look at this from that point of view.

Shahzaib Khan, a 21 year student from CIS Department of NED University presents you with a system that not only makes the customer life easier but will also make company gain profits. We all sometimes order food like pizza from PIZZA HUT or any other item from food chains like KFC, McDonalds and so on. Order has to be made from either your telephone or cell phone. Calling and placing an order gives a lot of problems, both to the customer as well as for the company.

How this system will work? People who are having their accounts already present just need to use the SMS formats to basically place an order, at Companies end a System is present that will automatically process the order without any human interaction & will confirm the order, its time for delivery, its price to the Customer and provides order details to the company. This how, an automated purchasing system is created. This automated system provides the following capability:

• System is fast, efficient & processes the order within 10 Seconds

• System is reliable because of less human error chances

• System is secure because of the security gateways

• Customer itself interact with the System so no human is required for data entry

• Less costly for implementation at lower level

• Cheaper for the customer as well as for the company since SMS cost few paisa

• Customer after placing his order sends an SMS for confirmation of the order

• Since in Pakistan, Mobile is a craze so it’s a big opportunity for the company to promote its product to its customer using Mobile-Commerce

• Provide user with the facility to access their account details, Latest Menus their Prices

• If one user is having an account & its being used by other so both will be provided the confirmation & the one having the account can cancel the order so making the system intensively secure.

What SMS Based Purchasing System can do for U? Helps You grow your Business. Can integrate with your current Delivery System that enhances your business for door to door delivery. Handles the Purchases Automatically and makes the Supply Chain Flow efficient. Helps you promote your new products to your Clients (Mobile Marketing Campaign). Making your delivery system fast, efficient & cost effective.

After all the success of SI, followed by a successful session at NIIT for students. Finally! something is happening at the academia end, a Technology Incubation Centre. More help! more startup’s!

“Technology Incubation Centre (TIC) is an initiative of the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Pakistan to bring local academia and industry closer to each other. TIC is the first Technology Incubator of Pakistan established in academia. One of its major thrust is to incubate technology based start-up companies thus promoting entrepreneurship among researchers and technically skilled people. It is aimed at identifying opportunities of collaboration between industry and academia for the purpose of finding solutions to industry specific problems and new product development. TIC has a three pronged strategy i.e. incubate start-up technology based companies, collaborative research with industrial partners and engineering services for industry and SMEs.

TIC is among a number of other new NUST institutes being established at H-12 sector of Islamabad, Pakistan. The buildings and facilities of TIC at H-12 are expected to be made available by the year 2009. This facility will also act as an inward window for industry to NUST R&D resources and outward gateway for Researchers of NUST wishing to start their own business. It is planned to have floor space available for more than 70 hi-tech start-up companies at our new campus at H-12."

Starting off my journey at Green&White by publishing the thoughts of Asim Imtiaz, a young guy, a dreamer who wants to revolutionize the computer industry. You can reach him at FuzedBulb

Stand back all bosses! A new breed of workforce is about to attack everything you hold sacred: from giving orders, to your starched white shirt and tie. They are called, among other things, “The Echo Boomers.” There are the Generation Y, born in the 80’s, and they’re rapidly taking over from the baby boomers who are now pushing 60.

They were raised by doting parents who told them they are special, played in little teams with no winners or losers, or all winners. They are laden with trophies just for participating and they think your business-as-usual ethic is for the birds. And if you

persist in the belief you can, take your job and …errr…well…shove it.

The workplace has become a psychological battlefield and the millennials have the upper hand, because they are tech savvy, with every gadget imaginable almost becoming an extension of their bodies. They multitask, talk, walk, listen and type, and text. And their priorities are simple: they come first.

Faced with new employees who want to roll into work with their iPods and flip flops around noon, but still be CEO by Friday, companies are realizing that the era of the buttoned down exec happy to have a job is so dead. It’s a future of sweet talking bosses, no more “Pay your dues just like I did.” If this generation knows anything, it’s that there are more jobs than young people to fill them. The attitude is ‘If you don’t want me, Mr. Employer, I’ll go sell myself down the street. I’ll probably get more money. I’ll definitely get a better experience. And by the way, they’ll adore me. You only like me.’

And in case you are wondering why FORTUNE has selected Google as the number 1 employer, it’s because of the fact that they are truly a GenY’ers paradise. Watch out this video.

Source: CBS, 60 minutes, “The Millennials are coming“.