OPEN Chapter and PakSMIT Meet Pakistani Researchers and Entrepreneurs
Cambridge, MA – 20 June 2013: The New England Chapter of OPEN - Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs of North America – and PakSMIT – the Pakistani Students Association at MIT – hosted an event in honour of a visiting delegation of Pakistani Entrepreneurs and Researchers on Saturday, June 15 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The delegation was led by Azhar Rizvi – one of the founders of MIT Enterprise Forum of Pakistan – an initiative developed in collaboration with the MIT Entrepreneurship Center with the charter of coaching and grooming Pakistani entrepreneurs and researchers and exposing them to international markets. At the event, Mr Rizvi outlined the strategy and direction of the forum, and informed the audience about several business plan competitions, training workshops and boot camps that have been conducted in Pakistan. He hoped that such initiatives will help develop an entrepreneurial eco-system that builds upon the synergistic talents of students, academia and industry.
Later, members of the delegation, many of whom have received seed funding for their projects from Pakistan’s National ICT R&D Fund, presented their work to an avid audience of more than 60 participants comprising of students, young professionals and entrepreneurs of the OPEN community.
Of particular interest was the work of Sadaf Sajjad – an Islamabad-based professor of clinical psychology who has developed a 3D computer game that is played by children with brain tumours. The activity helps these children in the healing process and in the reduction of side effects caused by traditional cancer treatment such as radio/chemo therapy sessions.
Shahid Mir – a Pakistani IT industry veteran – presented a cloud-based software product targeted for the Telecom industry that offers billing, CRM, and OSS functions. Mir feels that his ‘Telco Billing as a Service’ offering will disrupt the traditional billing paradigm of large amounts of money spent on software licenses and hardware to acquiring a service at a significantly lower cost.
Other members of the delegation included Dr Nazar Abbas of NUST School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Shahid Awan of Al-Khawarizmi Institute of Computer Science, Farrukh Malik of Discretelogix, and Syed Ahmad of DPL.
Charter/Board Members of the OPEN NE chapter and several participants showed keen interest in helping the delegation members in raising further investments for their projects and in forming partnerships with US-based individuals/organizations to introduce their products/services to the US market.
For additional information regarding this event or to find out more about OPEN, please contact us at
781-354-2977 or visit us at www.OPEN-
Newengland.com
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