Your Tech Story

Tech Story

Farhan Masood- A college dropout to multi-billion dollar bio-metrics startup

Inspiration, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

Asia is now becoming a hub for innovative startups that dare to dream and innovate big time. One such startup is SoloInsight, a Pakistani startup that has built fastest 3D facial and iris recognition algorithms. SoloInsight is  founded by Farhan Masood. Farhan is a well known entrepreneur and inventor.

Farhan the founder and CTO of biometrics security startup SoloInsight dropped out of college at the age of nineteen and is a self-taught technology inventor since then. He has received 34 international and 5 local awards. He started his journey from zero and today his company is operational in seven different countries and has a worth over 10 million dollars.

Hard work, commitment & perseverance
Masood was lucky enough to get his hands on gadgets and technology at a very early age. He got fascinated  about computer software and engineering, but could not afford to buy the technology books. But he had a thirst for knowledge and curiosity about how things work. So, he made friends with a shopkeeper who would allow him to spend hours in his book store. He would bunk classes and read about computing at the bookstore all day long.

Thirty-five-year-old Pakistani national Farhan Masood got the attention of media and people when he developed Urdu graphics and the Persian language script for the Internet. He was just 19 then. This success gave him enough reasons to drop out of  the college and pursue his dream.Farhan Masood

His global recognition and interviews in national and international media landed him on an advisory position with Pakistan Govt.  During his job, he helped government translate and digitize land records, which were previously only stored in old style, physical files. Later he moved to Dubai to start his own firm (an advertising technology startup called Quick Fix Solutions) and worked on several projects, including websites for the Dubai e-government, Enoc, Eppco and Dubai Internet City.

Birth of SoloInsight, a patented technology
After watching watching the Tom Cruise movie ‘Minority Report’ (based on future technology), Masood decided to  work on iris recognition technology. In 2010 Masood moved back to Pakistan to work on SoloInsight.

SoloInsight is a global recognition software platform that helps companies accurately and efficiently manage ingress and egress to increase safety, ensure compliance, and save money. SoloInsight using its patented technology helps businesses increase productivity & profits.

For past 10 years, SoloInsight is tapping a billion dollar biometric devices market. SoloInsight has 119 clients and 114000 daily users. SoloInsight counts companies like US Apparel, Nestle, Pepsico, PEL, and the Pakistan Army as clients.

The journey
Masood wasn’t born with a silver spoon, he worked hard all his life to live his dream and make Pakistan proud. It was his father who encouraged and developed his interest in computing.

His continuous achievements and enthusiasm has made him an inspiration for many young entrepreneurs. His journey wasn’t that easy after all. For once he thought that his dream was shattered, when he needed money for his startup and his visa application was rejected due to political events. He has now moved his business to America and made a big name across the globe.

Farhan’s focus now is to transition into “Internet of People”, an unexplored idea. Other than being a recognized technologist and innovator, Farhan is well known for his philanthropic activities. The entrepreneur was awarded a Global Innovation through Science and Technology competition award by US Vice President Joe Biden in Turkey, for running the country’s largest blood donation network called Bloodline. Farhan Masood runs a movement called Pakistan Go-Green, which was the subject of a Digital Revolution case study at the Cambridge University.

 

Alok Kejriwal- From making socks to leading online game company

India, Inspiration, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

The thinker + Doer = Rodinhood says his Quora profile; Alok Kejriwal is the man who changed the pace of India’s online gaming industry. Rodinhood is inspired from Rodin – who sculpted ‘The Thinker’ and Robin Hood who ‘got things done’.Alok Kejriwal

Born on 25th December, 1968, the renowned CEO and co-founder of Games2win is known to the world as Rodinhood. Alok Kejriwal is an entrepreneur who knows how to utilize a problem as an opportunity to build business around it. He started his journey by joining his family business of socks manufacturing at the age of 18, while he was still in college. After 10 years, he moved out of the family business and started something of his own which was not into manufacturing. He went on to venture in mobile and then online games.

Making of the Rodinhood

As they say, leader is  one who knows the way, shows the way and goes the way. Alok Kejriwal is a true leader and has proved his leadership, honesty and truthfulness in every walk of life. He started his socks business around 1989. Once when his socks factory was preparing Argyle socks order for a leading retailer he noticed an issue with packaging. He picked up one bundle of socks and opened it like a consumer for final inspection. As he ripped the adhesive sticker from the socks, he was thunderstruck as the thread of the small ‘criss cross’ lines that make the Argyle pattern so famous began ripping out of the socks. The shipment was ready to be shipped in 3 hours and the socks had PASSED inspection from Europe and India. Without worrying about extra cost of building top pair of socks and losing credibility or business he decided to be truthful and informed the buyer. This critical decision earned him a lot of respect in the eyes of buyer. The buyer was so delighted and grateful that he not only paid for extra cost but also gave many more orders in future.

In 1998, Kejriwal founded an online contests portal company named Contests2win.com (C2W) with a borrowed laptop and only Rs 5,000. He realized the power of internet while working in the family business. During this time, he used the internet for information on spare parts on company websites. “I got fascinated with the power of Internet to distribute knowledge and thought of building business around it.”, Alok once said.

Later, he launched a venture entitled “Mobile2win” in china in 2001. Mobile2Win organized mobile competitions and promotions on mobile interactive platforms. In 2003 mobile2win operations were also started in India. He got the VAS Business of Sony Channels’ singing show Indian Idol. Alok was one of the pioneers of ringtone business. He did create a lot of value and money before mobile companies and tv channels themselves started doing this business to maximize their profits.

Mobile2win was doing fantastic but due to funding, scale and other issues, Alok was  asked to leave mobile2win. However, this sad exit turned out to be good for him in long turn. He got million dollars on exit from mobile2win which he invested in conetst2win. Later the Indian arm of mobile2win went to Chandigarh (India) based company for no cash deal while Chinese mobile2win got acquired by Disney.

Taking the legacy forward, he came up with a new venture Games2win in the year 2007. Today, Games2win is ranked among top gaming site across the world. The most popular game at Games2win is Parking Frenzy and has about 20-25 million downloads. Besides Parking Frenzy, another 15 of their games have 1 million downloads now.

As the popularity increased, Games2win discovered that thousands of other websites and blogs were embedding Games2win games on their sites. Instead of blocking games on other websites or sending them copyright infringement notices, Alok and his team used an innovative idea. They started displaying Ads within the game whenever it was played on a website other than Games2win. Suddenly their success metric changed to the number of websites illegally embedding their games. More the embeds, more display ads, more revenue.

Although not being a great supporter of mobile only approach, he moved Games2win from a top game company to a mobile games company while struggling with static traffic in 2010. Games2win started focusing on mobile games and stopped making web games in 2014. New games are only available for smartphones. However, you can still play old games on their website.

Tough calls and work life balance

Entrepreneurship is bed of thorns. Being a successful entrepreneur and a successful father, husband at the same time is not that easy. You are always occupied with business deals, meetings, and dinner with clients and what not. Alok Kejriwal is married to Chhavi Kejriwal and has two daughters. In his blog “would you marry an entrepreneur? “, he jotted the pros and cons of marrying an entrepreneur. Topping it with his own story, he recalled a real life incident.

Can you imagine where was he when his second daughter was born? Hospital? No, you got it wrong! Well he wrote,” I skipped visiting the hospital and escorting my wife and my newborn daughter (my second child) home, because that evening I was signing some term sheets of my first venture contests2win.com in the lobby of The Oberoi in Mumbai.”

Startup mentor, critic and attention grabber

Alok never shies from going public with his views on different startups and their business ideas and many times he has been proved right. Alok criticized the app only approach of Myntra and Flipkart which turned out to be true after these companies rolled back their decision.

The the blue eyed gaming champ also criticized then Housing.com CEO Rahul Yadav for two Housing.com hoardings that were barely visible behind trees which attracted a sharp reaction form Rahul Yadav.

Alok kejriwal

Alok kejriwal rahul yadav

Amidst all the criticism, chaos and challenges, Alok kept pushing himself and continued to grow as an entrepreneur. He knows the art of being in news and use the right opportunity at right point of time.

Alok belongs to that rare breed of successful entrepreneurs who go extra mile to help budding entrepreneurs achieve success. This “Crazy Internet Entrepreneur” of India is playing the role of a startup mentor and motivator. Alok runs Rodinhood.com where he and fellow Rodinhoods share their experiences related to startups, products, teams, marketing & business. Nothing can beat such startup stories and experiences in helping budding entrepreneurs run their show successfully. He and his team of volunteers organize The Rodinhoods Open House(TRH) in different cities of the country for free. TRH helps startups meet industry leaders, pitch their product to investors and network with fellow entrepreneurs.

A TRH workshop in progress

His favorite advice to entrepreneurs is

“To go where no man has gone before…” (from Star Trek).

Jack Ma: A self made billionaire

Inspiration, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

E-commerce is one of the fastest growing segments in the industry. Many young entrepreneurs have tried their hands in this field but very few were able to taste success. One such hugely successful eCommerce business is Alibaba.

The man behind this extremely successful ecommerce business is Jack Ma. Today Ma the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group has an estimated net worth of $25 billion. Who would have imagined that a 5 feet tall Chinese man will lead Alibaba to a record breaking $25 billion IPO and become 18th richest person in the world? Alibaba’s IPO was bigger than Google, Facebook and Twitter combined.

Determination & persistence paves the way
Ma was born in Hangzhou, China. Lack of resources was never a excuse for him to learn or do something. In Childhood Ma developed a desire to learn English, so he started to converse with foreigners. For nine years he used to guide foreigners around the city for free to learn English. This opened the door to many entrepreneurial skills; from interacting with people to knowing their thought process; this somewhere pushed him to develop his own views on capitalism and entrepreneurship. During this course he became pen pals with one of these foreigners, and she nicknamed him “Jack”, because his real Chinese name Ma Yun was too difficult to pronounce.

But before he became the richest person in China, Ma went through a lot of rejections. Can you imagine the man behind Alibaba’s success was rejected by three universities?Quote JackMa2

Today world’s top universities and business schools like Harvard take pride in inviting Jack Ma for guest lectures whom once they were not ready to give admission. He was rejected by Harvard 10 times as a student. Jack Ma learnt from failures than through the formal channels of education.

He applied for 30 jobs and got rejected. Jack Ma once said, “When KFC came to China, 24 people went for the job…23 people were accepted. I was the only guy who wasn’t.” His journey from a failed man to a successful tech leader & entrepreneur is exemplary .

Ma’s first date with internet and rise of Alibaba
“Beer” was the first word that Jack Ma searched for on the internet- Really? Beer? Well, during his trip to US, he searched for “Beer” and then “China”, when no results came up, he decided to set up a Chinese website. He saw the web as the future of business and even tried to register the name Internet!
In 1995 he along with his wife and a friend founded an internet company called China Yellow Pages. This company made 5,000K Chinese Yuan (US$800K).

In 1999 he started Alibaba, a B2B marketplace along with his 17 friends. He chose the name Alibaba since it was unique and easy to spell and people were able connect with this name very easily. Alibaba.com allows merchants and companies to trade products online. Within a short period of time Alibaba became one of the largest websites online.

Ma is a larger-than-life figure. Even after reaching the great heights, Jack Ma is the exceptionally optimistic and determined. His journey to success is definitely one which will inspire you even in your darkest days. Jack Ma believes that “If you are still poor at 35, you deserve it!” His journey is a perfect example of a rag-to-riches story. The most important lesson is- when the dream is big enough, the facts don’t count.

Most of us indulge so much in making excuses about things that we even forget to make the best of every situation. We all give countless excuses everyday like lack of money, lack of good education and people around us always discourage us. The same was the case with Jack Ma, he had nothing to push him forward but his strong desire to excel made him the man he is today.

“We are never in lack of money. We lack people with dreams, who can die for those dreams” – Jack Ma

Elon Musk- A tech founder on a mission to save and change the world

Inspiration, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

This is the age of Tech Entrepreneurship and startups. From Steve Jobs to Bill Gates there are many tech founders who have made it big into technology that has changed the world and impacted our lives drastically. Today entrepreneurs are thinking beyond online ecommerce and taking huge risks to make world a better place. For many tech founders money is not the only thing that matters. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and his wife pledged to give away most of their wealth for social causes. Bill Gates is a well known philanthropist. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is running so many campaigns in the world to improve education, health and lives of people.

Elon Reeve Musk is one such great tech entrepreneur and new age philanthropist. Unlike others his philanthropy is driven by technology that aims to make world a better place to live. The real-life inspiration for Iron Man’s main lead character Tony Stark, Musk has interests in industries like automotive, aerospace, solar energy, energy conservation, satellite and high-speed surface transportation. Working more than 100 hours a week and drawing just $1 as salary, Elon is on a mission to save and change the world by investing and nurturing companies like Tesla, SpaceX, and Solarcity.

ELON MUSK
ELON MUSK

Have you heard about Blaster? Blaster is a game that was made by a bored 12 year old in 1984. This 12 year old was none other than Elon Musk. Elon Musk one of the founders of PayPal became a self-made millionaire at the age of 27, when he sold his first company, Zip2. By age 41, his estimated net worth had surpassed $1 billion, and today, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO has an estimated net worth of $10.5 billion. Most of his innovations seem straight out of a sci-fi movie.

Tesla Motors
Musk co-founded Tesla Motors, a company that designs and manufactures premium electric vehicles. Tesla was able to succeed in the electric car market where other large manufacturers failed due to lack of innovative ideas.
Elon recently launched the Tesla Model 3 at the Tesla Design Studio in Hawthorne which will hit the market in 2017. The new model starts at $35000 and accelerates to 60mph in 6 sec. This is a next level car with exciting features. It’s Musk’s vision and innovative ideas that has led to the making of this different league model. More than 1,80,000 pre-orders were received by Tesla in a day for Model 3. Tesla is also planning to enter India in 2016.

Success of Tesla has paved way for vehicles that are stylish, feature rich and cause less harm to environment.

SpaceX
Before the closing of PayPal, he had already started dreaming about a greenhouse, “Mars oasis” which he wanted to land on mars.

Musk decided to start a company that would build affordable rockets, using vertical integration and the modular approach of software engineering. Those ideas resulted in his launch of SpaceX in 2002. His long-term goal is to help humanity through SpaceX by creating a true spacefaring civilization.

Creating a reliable rocket that successfully gets into space was not an easy job. No one wanted to invest in SpaceX because everyone believed it to be over ambitious and a venture with pretty less hope of being successful . Musk invested his own personal funds worth $100M in SpaceX. However, SpaceX was on the verge of closing due to lack of funds when three attempts to launch a rocket failed. In 2008 SpaceX did a launch of Falcon 1 launch vehicle which failed. Elon took the stage and motivated employees for the next attempt saying that rocket science is not an easy thing and failures are bound to happen. Motivated team investigated the issue and was ready with next rocket in 7 weeks which otherwise would have taken a year for any other company. On sept 28th SpaceX successfully launched the rocket and became world’s first private venture to launch rocket in earth’s orbit. An achievement that was limited to only 6 mightiest nations of the world. After this SpaceX got an offer for $1.6 billion to carry out 12 launches for NASA.

Another feather was added to Musk’s cap last week after the launch of futuristic pop-up room and landing of the unmanned Falcon rocket at Atlantic sea. SpaceX resumed station deliveries for NASA on Friday and landed its booster rocket on an ocean platform for the first time.The innovations at SpaceX has resulted in cheapest cost of launching rockets in the history.

SpaceX is currently working on a new spacecraft, which will allow humans to travel in space and take ride from earth to moon. SpaceX is making a much larger rocket that will be able to bring 100 people to Mars at once. Google and Fidelity has now invested in SpaceX.

Success of SpaceX is the result of Musk’s quest of a fantastic future. His vision is worth appreciating. Take a bow!

Solarcity
The company was co-founded by Elon Musk in 2006. Solarcity produces the world’s most efficient rooftop solar panels with a market cap of just under $6 billion and has become the largest installer of solar panels in the US. Solarcity is now building the country’s largest solar panel-manufacturing factory in Buffalo.

Tesla and SolarCity companies are making a pollution free, environment friendly renewable energy future a reality.

Man at the helm for an innovative future

Musk “the world’s most remarkable living entrepreneur” is undoubtedly an epitome of an entrepreneur, inventor and a business magnate. He is truly the real life Iron Man. In case you don’t know, parts of Iron Man 2 were actually filmed inside and outside of SpaceX and musk even had a cameo in the film.

His ideas are the most ambitious ideas so far. He is a true leader who can envision and lead people to a better world and better future.

You can read more about ELON Musk and his future plans in the book Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.

Weekend projects that became million dollar products

Inspiration, Story, Tech Story / By

As they say, ideas come to many but there are few who go ahead and give them a try. Similarly most people never pay a heed to their hobbies. Hobbies always take back seat given the time and money constraints. But those who fulfill their hobbies, live a life full of energy and satisfaction.

Hobbies if executed with passion, can be rewarding too. Like Walt Disney whose hobby of doodling and sketching turned into a multi-billion dollar business or for that matter Bill Gates whose hobby of programming turned into what we know today is Microsoft.

Here we are talking about two side-projects that were created and executed over a weekend which later turned into million dollar businesses. Joe Gebbia, Brian Chesky & Noah Kagan, If you don’t know them and what did they do, read on. All these turned their side projects in great startups  worth millions of dollars.

AppSumo: Noah Kagan
AppSumo is a daily deals website that promotes great digital products (application software, eBooks) and online services (online training courses). Founded in 2010 by Noah Kagan, AppSumo today has more than 700,000 users and revenue in millions.

Noah Kagan once a top performer in Facebook held 20,000 shares (0.1% of the company) which would have made him millionaire. However, as the fate would have it, he was fired in less than a year. Noah always wanted to do something of his own. For the same reason he left Mint forfeiting his shares worth $1.7 million. Noah Kagan started a gaming company KichFlip (Gambit) which probably got shut down due to Facebook’s policies.  Gambit was created over a weekend by Noah and his friends which grew to $1,000,000 plus business by end of year.

During his stint with Gambit Noah realized that it’s pretty difficult to get customers and he decided to do something for apps to get customers. He realized that people were discussing different products on forums like Reddit and would love to get those for a discount. This led to creation of AppSumo. AppSumo the core product was built over a weekend by hiring freelancers from Pakistan for $50.  Noah

AppSumo started listing products for some commission which  would help startups that needed such platform to market their product. He struck his first deal for selling ‘imgur Pro’ and made his first dollar. He validated the idea with 200 sales and thereafter never looked back. Today, AppSumo lists tons of apps and online training courses.

Story of AppSumo and Noah Kagan is not ordinary. After forfeiting lucrative plush jobs and millions of dollars, starting a new business over a weekend and to take that to million dollars revenue is just amazing.

 Image courtesy: http://okdork.com/

Airbnb: Brian & Joe
Two designers unable to pay rent decided to rent out 3 air mattresses along with breakfast to earn some money, that’s how Airbnb was born. In the year 2007 Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia didn’t have enough money to pay rent. Seeing an upcoming design conference in San Francisco as an opportunity to make some quick bucks, they created a website, airbedandbreakfast.com.

After few days, they got their first three customers paying them $80 each. At this moment they realized the potential of this business and decided to take it forward. However, these two entrepreneurs instead of creating another renting website decided to do something different. They decided to enable local people list their rooms for travelers visiting the city for conferences, trade fairs or festivals.

Airbnb

In the initial years, they had no office and they mainly worked from the flat they had. A year later when their team grew to 15 people they set up their first office in San Francisco, California.

In 2008 it was election time in US and Barack Obama was going to address 80,000 people in  Denver at the Democratic National Convention. There was a shortage of hotel rooms in that area. They got a major boost from this room scarcity. They played smartly by offering special cereals in the name of Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s for $40 which generated more than $30,000 which paved the way for expansion.

They expanded rapidly from then on by including properties between market and CouchSurfing. In 2009 they raised an initial funding of $20,000 funding which led to another $600,000 from venture capitalists.

Several mergers and acquisitions of Accoleo, CrashPadder, Localmind paved the way for their international expansions. Airbnb now deals in properties ranging from hotels to islands to bungalows. Today Airbnb have their offices internationally from London to Delhi to Cuba to Singapore and many more.


Video credit: fundersandfounders

There are problems around us needed to be solved. There are solved problems which needed to be optimized. Don’t put that compelling idea which comes to your mind to hibernation. Go ahead and give it a shot. You never know you would end up creating something like Airbnb or AppSumo.

Who invented email? Shiva Ayyadurai or Ray Tomlinson

India, Story, Tech Story / By

A google search for “Who invented email” returns the name of an India-born scientist Shiva Ayyadurai who allegedly invented email at the age of fourteen.

Shiva

Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai was born in Mumbai (Bombay), India. He along with his family left to US at the age of 7. He studied computer programming at New York University and later joined MIT to get four undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in addition to PHD in biological engineering. Shiva as he is popularly known, also founded a company worth $200 million called Echo Mail.

According to various internet sources including Shiva’s own website, at the age of 14 he wrote a software program to automate the conventional paper-based interoffice communication system of University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). While computer to computer communication was already in use, Shiva claims that he was the first to introduce essential email features that we use today in the year 1978. He introduces the email terms like From, To, CC, BCC, Forward, Reply etc in his program.

In the absence of patent laws Shiva applied for copyright for the program called “Email” in 1982. V.A. Shiva still holds the copyright for the program and the term “Email”.

Copyright Email

He has been seeking public support for quite some time to strengthen his claim after there has been a controversy on who invented email. He has also published a book called “The Boy Who Invented Email & His 7 Secrets of Innovation” which talks more about his invention.

The controversy: Is Shiva Ayyadurai the man who invented email?

Critics say that in 1982 Shiva just copyrighted the term ’email’ and a program he wrote and that such digital communication between computers existed long before 1978.

In 2011 Time published an interview with Shiva titled “The man who invented Email” crediting him as the inventor of email. Major controversy started when posts related to email invention on The Washington Post and Huffington post were trolled with nasty comments and facts that refuted Shiva’s claim. The Washington Post updated the post and clarified that Dr. V. A. Shiva was not the inventor of email.

Many people credit Ray Tomlinson of Cambridge-based BBN Technologies as the first person who used @ symbol in 1971 to send messages between computer terminals. Later many others built upon Tomlinson’s work and devised their own methods to share information over the network. Shiva claims that those earlier systems and other ARPANET programs were merely a way of simply sending and receiving text messages. His Email program, on the other hand, was invented specifically to replicate paper based mail system used in office electronically and comprised of elements & features which a standard email system today have.

Noam Chomsky professor emeritus of linguistics and philosophy at MIT supports Shiva’s claim and was quoted by Wired as-

“Email, upper case, lower case, any case, is the electronic version of the interoffice, inter-organizational mail system, the email we all experience today — and email was invented in 1978 by a 14-year-old working in Newark, NJ. The facts are indisputable”

Chomsky’s argument is that Ayyadurai received a formal copyright registration on his email program in 1982, and that in 1977, David Crocker — who worked on the ARPAnet and has criticized Ayyadurai’s claims — wrote that “no attempt is being made to emulate a full-scale, inter-organizational mail system.”

“Given the term email was not used prior to 1978, and there was no intention to emulate ‘…a full-scale, inter-organizational mail system,” as late as December 1977, there is no controversy here, except the one created by industry insiders, who have a vested interest,”

Whether or not “Dr. E-Mail”, VA Shiva Ayyadurai invented the email, he is an authority on Email technology, e-marketing and biotechnology.

Right now Shiva is busy with his bio-tech startup CytoSolve. CytoSolve has developed the world’s first computational platform for scalable integration of molecular pathway models. You can read more about Shiva on his website, inventor of email, history of email, Wikipedia and make your own judgement. Shiva’s website is full of documents, web references and scanned newspaper clippings that talk about his side of story.


Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Interviewed on CBS TV

Image credit- http://www.inventorofemail.com/