Last Wednesday, The Indus Entrepreneurship Conference was hosted at Sheraton Karachi in collaboration of Torque (SoL). It was a one-day networking and learning opportunity for all those who wanted to find the entrepreneur streak in themselves by taking inspiration from engaging with successful entrepreneurs.

The day started with the session titled ‘Tales from the Trenches’ where the leading entrepreneurs presented their tales to the audience. If I had to review each in a one-liner then it would be this way. Puzzle by Adil Moosajee, Owner of Ego, was all about, to quote him, ‘Either find a way or make a path of your own. Work with happy people and others should be OUT.’ Reboot by Jawwad Farid, CEO of Alchemy discussed about learning from failures because ‘Before you can win, you have to lose’ and to be an entrepreneur, it is important being comfortable about what you are therefore looking behind is okay unless you don’t get obsessed about it. Adversity by Sameera Raja, Owner of Canvas Gallery, talked about her Breast Cancer Adversity and conquering it while managing her life. She emphasized on scheduling not only your work but how you present it to your audience. Appetite by Shahzad Ali, CEO of Student Biryani talked about how his father through his resilience from his humble beginnings made Cafe Student to a brand Student Biryani. The only favorite story for me was of Jawwad Farid because it talked about starting up a new venture and its hurdles. Others had stories which was about evolution or say an effort to sustain the previous family businesses.

Next up was ‘Investing in Change: Empowering Social Entrepreneurs’ by Batool Hassan, Business Development Manager at Acumen Fund. This was the most fruitful of all. She discussed about the idea of Philanthropy 2.0 where the products don’t need to be free but affordability and dignity should be brought into the market. Examples of Khuda ki Basti, Saibaan and other creatively planned projects were shared to illustrate that businesses can be run for social development and you don’t only get your capital back but reasonable profits can also be generated, if you are not running after the greed of money. She was kind enough to answer our questions even during the lunch break.

TieCon Debate was honestly more about pulling legs of each other. The topic being ‘Conventional Wisdom is becoming increasingly irrelevant’ itself had its flaws. In my honest opinion, any kind of wisdom can be relevant if you know how to mold and use it for your good. Personally Shahjehan Chaudhry stood out because he played the game pretty intelligently and fairly. Unilever representative at the against panel, was all rhetoric and made less sense, still won the debate and as Hassan Rizwan of Prymus Technologies rightly commented that surely ‘our education system is flawed.’ Sadly, people usually like how things are presented than the actual content. Next time it should be a discourse instead of debate. Thankfully lunch came in as a relief.

After lunch it was very apt to have a musical performance when people would usually go into the snore zone. Alan Simon from Taal Karisma introduced his Percussive Fusion Band and gave the people an insight on how band indulges in different beat cycles which haven’t been explored much before. Their each track was a delight and body percussion that they presented was pretty decent as a lot of people claim about the art but their performances eventually come flat. Ustadji their debut single is up on the radio and a must listen.

Skype helped with video-conferencing where Jahanzeb Sherwani, Founder of Jugaari shared his i-phone app experience with techies.

Birds of a feather featured Breakout sessions on various aspects of entrepreneurship skills like Bootstrapping, Branding, PR, Team Building and Social Media, where participants divided into their respective interest groups. Small focused groups surely brought a lot of ideas and learning on board.

Dr. Umar Saif who is Associate Professor at LUMS talked about pitching ideas to VCs. He gave an impression that VCs don’t pay much heed to your product, vision or technology but they invest more on the quality of team. Therefore it is the time when project becomes fund-able, as in at the point of take off, that it needs to be pitched else it would be too early or late. This was followed by Adil Saleem of Seen Report who shared his experience of making dream of this portal a reality which was also incubated by Dr. Umar Saif.

Last up was Asad Umar, CEO Engro Chemcial who talked about Making Your Move! The talk highlighted that once you start running your project, your business model should keep on updating and your passion should be supported by intellect whereby you know how to probe questions on achievements and move forward.

Every speaker highlighted about asking yourself that is it really your dream to become an entrepreneur?, if yes then one should not wait for being experienced as it would never be enough. Moreover an entrepreneur should be reading to take the tough part and learn from the mistakes. Social Media was also discuss at length which become a low or no-cost tool for marketing the businesses. Next time it would be great if Social Entrepreneurship takes the lead or maybe a whole conference can be dedicated on the subject.

Kudos to Sabeen Mahmud, the president of TiE to come up with an interesting line of speakers in such trying times and Shireen Naqvi with her Torque team for managing the conference on such high standards.

PS: The food was really good =D
PSS: I love the conference logo and badge.

Read more

Technology Cafe, a new social technology company, will be introducing their RF Platform in this event which is about how students can earn money while they study and yet be acknowledged by people in the industry for their work. The event is free and open for all.

Perks:
FREE distribution of Win 7 CDs
T-shirts
Prizes.
Musical Concert (Performances)
Food/Refreshments

The event is on Saturday 7th November 2009, at Mohammad Ali Jinnah University, (located near CITIBANK Shara-e-Faisal), from 5-9 pm.

Sunday 1st November, 2009 saw Russian extreme sport star Valery Rozov accomplish an incredible stunt. The 44-year-old jumped from MCB Tower -the tallest building in Pakistan with a height of 116 meters, with 29 levels and 3 basements.
Despite of the unfavorable wind conditions, Valery decided to jump. Deploying parachute 3 seconds after the jump, an unexpected turbulence occurred. Based on his experience he managed to land safely on the side of the building.
Pedestrians on the street were shocked to see a person jump from a building as such a feat has never been attempted before in the country’s history.
Speaking after the jump, Valery said that: ‘I feel honored to come to Pakistan & to do the first Base Jump ever in the country, and that too from the tallest building.

Image & Text credits : Demotix.com

NRO, known now as National Robbers Ordinance is soon be tabled in NA and two parties will play a key role in its winning or loosing. This will be also the test of their “political morals” and principles since both have made much noise about the two major political parties of corruption and transferring money abroad. Moreover the “sarmayadarana” “jageerdarana” mantra is also deafening our ears since 70s as well as ANPs socialist makeup (esp the fuss they created during elections). We shall see how much their motives match their words in practicality and who is willing to give up “zaati mafad” for “ejtamai mafad”. Keep in mind, i am not using  “abstain” as a separate option as its obvious abstain means to support the motion. It is when these tests are thrown at the leadership when we see the true color of personalities. Will “principles” stay high or “siyasi mafadaat” we shall see shortly.

 Loading …

Read more

Noise, distortion, disruption and poor reception was part of the package for PTCL landline customers, and it used to be worst during the rains but all that seems an issue of the past as Pakistan Tele-Communication Limited has finally decided to relive us from all the unwanted disruptions by replacing the old rotten Distribution Point Boxes (DP) with the new and better ones across Karachi.

But this was surely out of the necessity as their new three in one telephone landline connection providing both television channels and internet broadband over the same single pair wire couldn’t possibly have worked seamlessly without better contact joints.

I hope PTCL understand the necessity and importance of quality service and continue to provide their valued customers with the service they deserve.

During a phase when the country is at target of some unfortunate incidents, Goethe-Institut Karachi with efforts of it’s Director recently celebrated Sufi Week which tried to create awareness and discourse about a softer and peaceful dimensions of Islam.

It started with an exhibition titled ‘Troubadours of Allah’. The pictures of this collection were shot by Horst A. Friedrichs in the Indus Valley, Sindh and displayed Sufi Musicians of the region. Images are a good mix of documentation of not only the sufi shrines and artists but also aesthetics, material culture and symbols.

Some of the images depict interesting moments including ‘a fakir wearing kajal in his eyes‘, and ‘an image with carvings focused while a person praying is in a shallow focus’. The placement of the photographs could have been more properly planned to illustrate an essay and some pictures with long exposure did remove details. There was also grain in some of the prints. Out of few long exposure shots, only one picture pleased my eye, that of ‘two static almost marrying sitars with movement of people behind’. The exhibition is opened till 20th November 2009 for public.

Next was the Sufi Concert where the audience got chance to hear the soulful voices of Abida Parveen from Pakistan and Fareeda Parveen from Bangladesh who sang awe-inspiring poetry of various Sufi Poets.

It was followed by a lecture session next day which I would like to review later.

Karachi police has done well till now to tackle the terrorist threat, though there is a huge potential of any incident anytime. This pic below i took an hour back reminds us of the situation we are facing. Apparently nothing extra-ordinary happening in it but i’ll tell you. These 4 jawanz on 2 bikes were constantly being a pain in my *** since neither they were leaving the fast lane nor allowing me to pass. What more, they were even not allowing anyone to come close. On two occasions the guy sitting back at right used hath ka ishara asking me to stop (sort of) to stay back on 2 turns. While seeing these vehicles was routine in KHI this never happened before, except for VIPz obviously. For a moment i felt myself being a terrorist. From their perspective i guess they were doing the right thing because we already know how the terrorists were attacking the officers these days. Recently we had 2 brigadiers being attacked, one got killed. And i think we should support them and bear inconvenience for a while.

But this is not the point i wanted to make here. My point was does the officer sitting in this vehicle understands how their decisions in one era create a huge impact for the future generations? Does he understand that this “TERRORIST” is their product from GHQ laboratories of 80z/90z. That he (and his org) is equally responsible for all the mess along with weak political setups. We cant allow them to simply incite religious emotions at one time for Jihad and then take a U-turn after 2 decades. The question , we , as citizens be asking these fellows is, now that they are feeling the heat, will they not repeat history and have they understood well the old quote : As you sow so shall you reap. We cant allow our ARMY to manufacture one WHOLE NEW GENERATION of JIHADIST and push the EXIT button on a call from Washington. As that creates million jobless Jehadist who cant be integrated into rest of the society.

We strongly need to tell them that please clean your own mess first before you EXIT.

Who can guarantee that our karta-dhartaz are not planning PROJECT-JIHAD v.2 once we are done with this “inteha-pasandi” mess. Are we learning from history or just passing a difficult phase?

Delivery currently only availabe in the Karachi Metro area.

Wednesday, 07 October 2009 Deals

Deal 1 – Serves 4 people ………………. 530.00 PKR
1 Jumbo Biryani
4 Shami Kababs
1 Raita
1 Salad
1 Pepsi

Deal 2- Servers 1 Person ………………. 150.00 PKR
1 Single Biryani
1 Shami Kabab
1 Raita
1 Soft Drink 300Ml

Deal 3 – Serves 2 People ………………. 220.00 PKR
1 Double Biryani
1 Raita
1 Zarda
1 Soft Drink 300ml

Deal 4 – Servers 8 People ………………. 1.050.00 PKR
2 Jumbo Biryani
8 Shami Kababs
2 Raita
2 Salad
2 Soft Drink 1.5L NR

Deal 5 – Servers 12 People ………………. 1.650.00 PKR
3 Jumbo Biryani
12 Shami Kababs
3 Raita
3 Salad
2 Zarda
3 Pepsi 1.5L

Deal 6 – Serves 1 Person (BBQ) ………………. 165.00 PKR
1 Chicken Tikka
1 Paratha
1 Soft Drink 300ml

For more : momskitchen

In my recent blog here I wrote about my adventure of paying bill through Telenor’s new service easypaisa. After that post, I got a chance to discuss this with an official of Telenor, in our discussion he tried to tell me that it’s a new system and it was expected that it may take some time to get matured; he also assured me that they are working very diligently to gather the feedback from customers about the new service.

Yesterday when I came back home, the same SSGC bill was waiting for me. So once again the tough task was upon me, this time I went to the Telenor franchise. After waiting for around 5 minutes they called me, and my bill got paid with some glitches of course.

One of my other concerns was the Fee charged by Telenor to accept this bill. I would not use a service like this if I have to pay Rs. 10/= on a utility bill of Rs. 140/=. I personally think the rates should be lowered and brought to an acceptable and cheaper range. I would rather use options like internet banking or phone banking to pay my bills where the Fee is negligible to none, varies from bank to bank.

After all this, I come to this conclusion that we should adapt new technologies and appreciate companies who took such initiatives, but services like this should be cheaper and more people friendly.

After my bill payment I received this SMS on my Mobilink network from Telenor.
Trx ID 324**** Rs 140.00 paid by 0528**** to SSGC at 12:19:23 on 23/10/2009 Fee charged is Rs 10.00.

Updated on : 2:30 PM – 6 November 2009 [MEDIA CLARIFICATION]

Islamabad, November 05, 2009: Recently, media has reported that IESCO and LESCO have asked their customers to not deposit their bills at Tameer bank’s easypaisa retailers. IESCO and LESCO have taken the position that they do not have an agreement with Tameer bank for bill collection through this channel.
Read more

With ever growing POWER crisis the news below comes as a fresh hope that our corporate players are not far behind in thinking initiatives to share their responsibility for the country.

Warid has recently commenced an outstanding project of implementing Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution based on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. This initiative was taken as part of Microsoft’s early adoption Program for this cutting edge virtualization technology. Warid Telecom was amongst the pioneer customers in the MEA region in implementing VDI solution under this program.

Microsoft held a commercial launch of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 in Pakistan. The event was held in Sheraton Hotel Karachi on 22nd October 2009. It is the largest outreach to IT Decision Makers, IT Professionals and Developers in Microsoft’s history. . Read more

Abdul Sattar Edhi makes the nation proud one more time by wining a prestigious United Nations prize for his services in promoting tolerance and non-violence. Edhi shares the $100,000 prize money with Franois Houtart of Belgium and will receive the award on November 16, the International Day for Tolerance. They won the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)-Madanjeet Singh Prize on the unanimous recommendation of an international jury to UNESCO.

UNESCO has following tribute for Edhi’s services  :

” Abdul Sattar Edhi ((Pakistan) for his life-long efforts to ameliorate the conditions of the most disadvantaged groups in Pakistan and South Asia, and to promote the ideals of human dignity, human rights, mutual respect and tolerance. ” read more

[ image : shahidul ]

Yesterday I decided to pay my bill using Telenor’s new service which (acc. to Telenor) allows customers to pay hassle free utility bill. I am a mobilink user so I called telenor’s UAN (111-345-100) to inquire about easypaisa shop location in my locality. The call center guy who was entertaining me was definitely from Lahore as he told me that there is no easypaisa shop in Gulshan-e-Iqbal . I didn’t believe him because Gulshan-e-Iqbal is big town so I asked him “dost may khod website pay daykh lon ga . . List of easypaisa shop aap ko shayed pata nahi hay”. When I reached home I was happy to know that there is one easypaisa shop in locality. I went to shop keeper for mentioned purpose but the guy there replied “Bhai I am out of credit so can’t pay your bill”. (Normally every mobile phone shop has few thousand rupees credit which is credited by mobile phone companies which shopkeeper use for services like easy load etc ).

In the morning I went to Telenor franchise at Guslhan-e-Iqbal which is near my house to pay my bill but after 7-10 minutes waiting customer service woman after confirming from another woman told me our easypaisa system is not working and system will take around an hour to work. Finally I paid my bill in Citi bank branch in a typical desi way standing in queue.
So this was my Easypaisa adventure

Following are the service charges for utility bill payment service with easypaisa.
(Bill Amount) – Fee (PKR)

PKR 0-1000 10
PKR 1001-4000 15
PKR 4000+ 25

If you see your bill closely you will find that bank charges are already in utility bill which in my case was 8 Rs.