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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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10:04 pm
There is a common misperception in Pakistan that India’s IT success is the result of Indian government’s grand vision and smart policies. Based on my knowledge of the situation, nothing could be further from the truth. The Indian entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley have succeeded in promoting IT in India, in spite of the government, not because of it. It was their own desire to improve profits by taking advantage of India’s lower costs and availability of skilled engineers and programmers. The essential role the Indian government played started back in the 1950s with the establishment if IITs which have produced a lot of very good engineers and technologists. If the Pakistani government wants to help he IT sector or any other sector, they must focus on improving education in Pakistan.
12:01 pm
Riaz Haq, you have a very valid point. But let me add something to your point regarding first the Education improvement in Pakistan. Thanks to Dr Atta-ur-Rehman (really a great man in my view) we got numerous Universities and thousands of graduating Pakistani men and women every year, with more going abroad for higher studies and some even managing Phds.
But in general there is this big issue, every time I post an advert on Rozee for job, I have to go through scores of useless CVs and when I interview I need to look at morons sitting right across my desk. It often makes me wonder if we are already short of “the skilled labor”!
Maybe if Govt needs to do something now regarding education, maybe they should work more on Primary and Secondary education – so that at least we can have a student enrolling in BSc course who knows what is the meaning of having a LOGIC!
Anyway to the other point of Indians helping the industry rather than Govt doing so. Very true! expat Indians are the one who have totally changed the face of India globally through their tireless efforts! India was the first country to have an IT outsourced project back in 70s when Tata’s Information Systems unit made a project for an American hospital. Even then Govt had no input and even 30 years down the line Govt of India had little or no Input at all!
Today in Pakistan sadly, Govt is trying to do something about what it knows nothing (the circulation mechanism of the above cited email might be taken as exhibit-A for that matter) and sadly Pakistani exapts are busy complaining how bad Pakistan is doing rather than trying to bring in something valuable…
8:41 pm
For those interested in learning about the role of India’s governments in promoting business and industry, I recommend watching the Bollywood movie “Guru” that shows the travails of Dhirubhai Ambani, the great but illiterate entrepreneur and industrialist who created the Reliance Group behemoth. Two of his billionaire sons, Mukesh and Anil, are now among the top 5 richest people in the world. The movie might not be totally accurate, but it does capture the essence of India’s socialist government’s anti-business attitudes. For others, who sing the praises of India’s democracy, I would suggest “Sarkar Raj” that portrays the Godfather-like criminal, murderous behavior of India’s powerful politicians.
2:49 pm
This shows how serious our gov. is towards IT. A general questions email, how are they planning to bring to bring any improvement… huh
11:04 am
I just tried the url above but could not connected
I personally feel that we need to focus on two items desperately
- Integrate IT education with industry
- Improve level of ethics amongst IT professionals. I guess the whole society is struggling in this area … IT professionals being part of it …