Startup weekend starts with a Bang!

So Startup Weekend Lahore started with a bang, There were 22 outstanding startups who launched on the event. If you were unfortunate like I was and did not attend the event in person, or you are resident of another city, twitter was buzzing with what happened at the event.

The Hastag for event was #swlhr and just going through it tells what a wonderful event it must have been.

I am grateful to Sohail Abid for making our lives easy and doing a great listing of products and results of the event (his Twitter Id is @SohailAbid ).

Whatever account I am covering is coming from the tweets, so if…

Google Allaince to Promote Tourism in Punjab

LAHORE: Pakistani authorities and Google have signed an agreement to use Google Maps to promote historical and tourist sites across the country’s most populous province of Punjab. Under the agreement, Google Inc will promote historical and tourist sites on the internet, particularly Google Maps, to promote worldwide awareness about Punjab’s heritage.

So Punjab government came up with another interesting stunt of publicity by signing an MOU with Google INC. in order to promote so called cultural heritage and historical tourist sites and that only for one province. What are we promoting here? I thought there was already much difference among provinces and related concerns.

Which heritage and historical places are we…

Google outreach and innovation event in Islamabad – Five seats for Greenwhite readers

Google Technology User Groups Islamabad chapter is holding an event in Islamabad on 17th of February.
Title is “GTUG Islamabad- Google outreach and innovation”

Organizers were kind enough to keep five seats for Greenwhite readers for this limited seats events.

To avail this you will have to use code “greenwhite” as Coupon Code while registering at http://islamabad.gtugs.org/

Details of events are

Event Time:

We are hosting another GTUG Islamabad event on 17th Feb, 2011 at ZABIST Islamabad from 4:00 pm to 6 pm.

Who can attend?

GTUG events provide an excellent opportunity for developers, technology evangelists to discuss their projects and talk about technologies where they are working.

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What are you doing this weekend? How about creating a Startup!

All of us have some dream one breakthrough idea that we think can be game changer. However most of us keep pushing it back for some time later.

If this sounds like you, you have a chance to redeem yourself Startup Weekend is coming to Lahore at LUMS. You get to sit with others with same passion and get two days to materialize your dream.

Details can be found here excerpts from site.

After meeting global success, Startup Weekend (SW) is coming to LUMS this month. In this 54-hour activity, startup enthusiasts (developers, marketers, designers, and others) come together, share ideas, form teams, and launch a startup!

If you are

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Qurtaba takes their Urdu App to Kindle

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…

Food Connection Pakistan

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…

FourQuants.com Jawwad Farid’s new venture

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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OLX Pakistan Investing heavily in advertisement

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…

TiE, All Asia Business Plan Competition

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…