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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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4:02 pm
O yes, quite right… I am working as a team lead after roughly 6 months of industry experience in software dev. and looking for MBA now… thinking of starting it this summer.
But, I think that is the right move after Team lead as I think that path helps in managing teams effectively and climbing the promotion ladder in hierarchy.
Mansoor, you are quite right that most people have off shore project experience more because more work related to web dev. has become the part of life there, not in Pakistan. Think about this that how many companies in Pakistan are doing business via there websites. Mean while i have seen companies in Canada(affordableprogrammers.com) doing their soul business via their website and google Adwords.
But the trend is changing with competition between different DSL companies, internet trend is growing.
5:07 pm
Mostly true, but many old software firm (Systems Ltd. for example) do have Architect level positions, and some firms have more than 7-8 levels of heirarchy.
On the last point, I think that the educational institutes are churning out CS grads in greater numbers than ever before, and the people who qualify for managerial positions are mostly sitting (or plan to be sitting) outside of Pakistan.
So IMHO, the ratio of available manager monkeys to available code monkeys has not changed/will not change significantly – though the gap in experience between these two species will probably widen as “good” people still prefer to emigrate after a few years of experience.
11:52 pm
Great post Mansoor and most of the trends you mentioned are very true. We at Zigron have tried our best to change few of these trends but its not always that easy.
- We are addressing few of these issues by having an absolute flat structure. Within Zigron titles dont matter rather what your role is and that is up for grabs for anyone.
- We are trying to create an environment where every role has its own growth path plus better salaries. We are discouraging our team to not only think about being a Manager. For us “Management” is just a task.
- We are pushing hard to create Architects role and one such position is in play but again it takes time for all of us to realize the importance of such role.
Overall I think young resources who are not aware of Pak IT Industry are more adaptable to such new approaches thats why I think we as an industry need to reach out more to students and explain to them that you can have a big pay day even if you work in QA if thats what your passion is.
5:10 pm
Designers are missing from most of the companies, if you think designers are redundant compare Apple with Microsoft.
9:48 pm
@aa
You are right generally designers are not properly appreciated but I think its slowly changing.. you can look at firms like CDF software and us where User Experience is a very major core…
4:15 am
Let me add few things… people are preferring MBA over CS because for our industry it doesn’t matter you have done some good research … but ‘oh! an MBA can manager technological better?’ (wow) ..
Industry should identify their problem in order to motivate people to find the solutions of those problems by doing research in our local universities instead depending on others!
Surprisingly, most of the companies having very few posts of senior technical level like Architecture, whether I believe there should be one post associates with each project like PMs.
4:16 am
@previous post
‘oh! an MBA can manage technological people better?’ (wow) ..
8:18 pm
most of the graduates prefer fat salaries over actual learning. The problem is with the schools and people that influence them. They keep telling them (dictating them) to do THIS, because this ‘ll get ‘em THAT.
They hardly listen to what they are really passionate about.That’s why after 2-3 years they start realizing they’re stuck in the wrong places.
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish
Steeve Jobs
Increased collaboration between the schools and industry players is required for sharing knowledge which would help fresh graduate to think about the big picture.
4:58 pm
thanks for the input everyone. just a clarification, i did not write this article, just reposted it. it was originally written by Ahmed Siddiqi.
my next post is going to be on middle tier people, the ones who manage various aspects of development lifecycle rather than doing them.
these people form a necessary part of the organizational structure which is looking to expand beyond the 25 person glass ceiling most software companies seem to be hitting here.
11:11 pm
In Pakistan the sooner people realize this, the better it is. Those who are software engineers they should rather focus on building their coding skills. Learn different tools used in the industry, Learn different programming languages but should have deep understanding for one. Here in US, the software developers command very high salary. It is because it is easier to learn soft skills (project management etc) than technical skills. People with technical skills never go out of jobs. Software developers even with just BS can command salaries from $60,000 – 120,000. After 5-10 years of experience, you can be an Architect or Sales engineer and can command even higher salaries. So, don’t down play software engineering. Similarly, you can do well as database administrator, database developer, Linux system Administrator, Windows System Administrator, Quality Assurance Engineer, Project Management etc.
People should NEVER do project management after ONLY 6 months of developer experience. You will never be a good project manager and your skill set will remain mediocre. In US, my few friends are doing project management after spending many years as developer.
11:35 pm
I have a question for you guys.
What is the name of the company in Pakistan which builds the fleet/work force management software? I knew the name but have forgotten it. It was something like Tracker or tera data.
If you guys know please give me their correct name and web address. Thanks
7:40 pm
It is very easy to critisize. The thing is what an individual has done in this regard.
If we all produce good solutions then we will inshAllah beat the international market sooner or later so start working on it.
10:30 am
Dear friends：
Good day!
This is Jacky from Oner Electronics Technology Limited. in China. We are an announced company in manufacturing and trading covert vehicle tracking and personal tracking , GSM/GPRS/SMS based, for AVL, fleet tracking and truck tracking, personal security, Home alarm.
With our versatile devices, high quality and competitive prices, it will be good for your market and benefits. Pls visit our website http://www.oneralarm.com .and check the details about our product.
Own Online Tracking Center Service FREE with your logo and contact info! With an account, Real-time tracking, history playback, and setting are OK! http://www.onertrack.com Demo Login ID: test, password: 1
Our tracker can Cut off the car power/fuel supply by SMS, to stop the car ,so pls don’t worry about ur car
Look forward to do business with you!
Thanks and Best regards!
Jacky
Company: Oner Electronics Technology Limited.
Skype: onertrack5
Email: oneralarm05@gmail.com
MSN: oneralarm05@gmail.com