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General
Team at Qurtaba have added another front to their impressive Urdu language based apps, they have launched their Alif Bay Pay app for Amazon Kindle, as well. Earlier it was released on iTunes.
I love what Qurtaba are doing in a niche area of Urdu Language. Although their start was from Nan-Map for which they now have an iPhone App.There love for Urdu language related apps has been flourishing in recent months. Most of their apps are doing very well on app store, some impressive numbers for their popular Urdu apps are as follows.
Urdu Writer: 10K downloads in 3 months – average 200 downloads…
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Featured Startup General
I happened to be in Quetta on a business trip last month with no idea of where to dine alone. Being a typical Lahoriite, a die-hard food lover, it matters to me that I try the best food of the place I visit. So this is where FCPakistan came to my rescue. I simply logged in, typed in my desired specifications and got atleast 5 suggestions.
The listing included their opening times, specific facilities like ease for physically disabled customers, credit card acceptance, smoking areas, take away facility, whether valet parking was available or not, and even directions to get there! What more could you want.
Although that was the…
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Featured Startup General
If you have any thing to do with entrepreneurship, its impossible you have not come across Jawwad Farid either in person or in virtual world of his blogs and judging different events realting to startups in Pakistan. He is also the author of Reboot which we reviewed a while back.
Jawwad has been writing on Finance, Risk and Treasury for some time now on learning corporate finance.
I guess that has lead to FourQuants.com. FourQuants helps people understand concepts related to finance. Following topics are mentioned in about us section of the website
- Risk management
- Derivatives products
- Option pricing models
- Basel and capital adequacy regulation
- Financial modeling
- Treasury
…
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Coffee Session General Marketing/Adv
OLX is a global online retailer and auction site. They have an impressive footprint in a little less than 100 countries, each with their own specific domain (like .pk for Pakistan and .in for India).
In Pakistan they have been operating under olx.com.pk for some time with people using it to sell things online.
Recently they have started advertising heavily on Television, a medium seldom used by online businesses previously. The ads (two of which have appeared ) are witty and fun to watch.
The most important factor of these adds is that they are being advertised on media which previously none of our online businesses have used.
Most of…
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General
Round 1 of TiE is about to reach its completion on 22nd of Jan, 2012 at Marriott, Islamabad in which ten teams will participate. Four teams will be shortlisted for the level 2. I also had the opportunity to participate in TiE All Asia Business Plan Competition 2012 along with my team members in the first few stages of level 1. Although we didn’t have the chance to go beyond stage1 but just participating helped us understand our own idea better and to polish our proposed technique along with development of a solid business plan. TiE all Asia Business Plan Competition provides a platform for generation and development of new…
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Announcements General Mobile Apps Software & I.T.
TenPearls has announced the successful delivery of mobile apps for Dawn.com on multiple platforms, including Apple iOS (iPad and iPhone), Android and Symbian (Nokia). The mobile apps have received great feedback from the users from around the world. It may be worth mentioning here that DAWN.COM is the #1 English News website from Pakistan averaging over 16 million page views a month, and 3.1 million unique visitors from around the world.
More details can be accessed at mobile apps for Dawn Media Group by TenPearls.
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General
CIO Pakistan started blog awards last year. Its is a good sign when some one takes initiative and starts some thing new. However its also difficult to introduce this into an already budding field of new media in Pakistan. Last years (or two years back now since its 2012) Awards were initiated so as it is expected it faced initial growing up pains. It always takes time for such thing to wins the trust of the community. And bloggers are one of the most hard people to win over, most of these are rebels in their own rights people who have started blogging to show the world their opinion…
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Featured Startup General
Pakreport.org a tool which was instrumental in gathering statistics during the massive flooding in Pakistan, has created another study/stats gathering tool for our electoral activities. Interestingly its called do we vote
With political scene in Pakistan heating up it provides very valuable information to party supporters and their leaders. A quick look at it shows the all known facts that people in rural areas take their voting more seriously than all of us supposedly educated and enlightened urban population.
Pakreport.org was an initiative launched by Faisal Chohan of BrightSpyre during the floods, the effort enabled people on the ground to send sms (the most spread out communication medium in country)…
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Featured Startup General
This is a revelation that came to me when I recently quit my comfy corporate job for the second time. If you are below 40 and some one asks you about how is your job going and your answer is not in tune of “I like my job because I love the work”.
You need to pause and asses your career, last time I answered this question my answer was “I like the job, because the benefits are good”, and that made me think (offcourse there were other factors as well). But if you are doing a job in which to satisfy your own self you have to look at…
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There’s an exciting new program for entrepreneurs in Pakistan. As you can read below, Busines Acceleration Program is a joint effort of MIT Club of Pakistan Enterprise Forum and OPEN to promote innovation in Pakistan. Here’s the introduction about the BAP from the MITCEF website:
3:50 pm
I think we are already missed some of the workshops
4:01 pm
Can we still participate in this program? any member of MITEF can answer this?
4:15 pm
I wish I can participate in this.
9:06 pm
The submission info is available at:
http://mitcef-pakistan.org/bapsubmission.htm
Please let us know about your submission experience.
Yes, the first workshop was earlier this month but I hope there will be more.
11:16 pm
Companies who want to participate in the Business Acceleration Program (BAP) can still do so as the Application Form (AF) submission date has been changed from August 15th to August 22nd. For details visit http://www.mitcef-pakistan.org/bap.htm . The eligibility criterion is available at http://www.mitcef-pakistan.org/rules.htm . The Application Form can be downloaded from: http://mitcef-pakistan.org/bapsubmission.htm . Please email queries to bapinfo@mitcef-pakistan.org .
7:08 am
Sad to see this
Participants Eligibility Criterion:
• Only for registered IT/ITES Companies.
• Companies must have been in operation in Pakistan for at least 3 years.
• The average revenue for the past three years should be between US$ 0.1 to 3 Millions.
9:07 pm
The date for the application has been extended from August 15th to August 22nd.
11:07 pm
Is there any platform for young graduates/professional to present their ideas where we don;t have these kind of limitations?
6:02 pm
I was reading the requirements to participate and the funniest thing was “At least three years of existence and annual revenues of more than $0.2M” If someone has sustained a business for over 3 years with annual revenues exceeding 0.2M in Pakistan, i dont really think they need mentoring, the should be a part of the mentoring team.
This should be directed towards fresh graduates with fresh ideas and no experience.
1:59 pm
@Anonymous – i totally agree, at-least they can offer a parallel track for fresh graduates.
5:29 pm
Have you seen the PTA competition for students?
http://greenwhite.org/2007/08/20/pta-gold-medals-for-outstanding-research-projects-in-it-telecom-for-students/
6:22 pm
Please note that there is a major Business Plan Competition planned by TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) around December 2007 in Pakistan. This competition will target Start-ups and fresh graduates. MITCEF-OPEN decided not to compete with this activity thus offered a complimentary program. This ensures that both fresh graduates/start-up and existing companies who are struck at one level are helped to accelerate to the next level. Please note that for the industry in Pakistan to grow and prosper, we need organizations of all sizes from a few people shops to organizations that employ thousands of people. We have broken the 200 employees’ barrier and now need to break 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 employees’ barriers.
It is my firm belief that we all need help and mentoring whether we are at US $ 20K, US$ 2M, US$ 20 M or more and there are people out there who can provide help. If this was not the case then Consulting firms like Earnest & Young, Peat Marwick, etc. would not be so successful.
6:56 pm
@Babar – Yes, i have seen that, it says “Final Year Student of HEC Recognized Universities”
@Zahir – It is good news for us, i have seen many videos of the TieCon 2007 held in india and it is a great idea to tie innovators and investors.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=TieCon&search=Search