Local Mentors:

1. Adnan Lawai (Karachi)
   
   
   Adnan Lawai, is Chief Executive Officer of Folio3. Adnan has over 12 years of experience in product development, sales, business development and marketing. Prior to Folio3, Adnan was Chief Technology Officer at Clickmarks, a venture backed company focused on providing a rapid, cost effective solution for performing integration and wireless enablement of enterprise applications. At Clickmarks, Adnan was responsible for defining and executing on the technical direction of the company as well as its key technical sales and marketing activities, including its alliances with Sun Microsystems and Plumtree Software. Before Clickmarks, he was a Member of Technical Staff at Silicon Graphics (SGI), where he worked on Digital Media, Advanced Graphics, and led SGI's involvement at the MPEG-4 forum.
   
   Adnan has also worked at General Instrument (now part of Motorola) and as a graduate researcher at the MIT Media Lab on digital video and on advanced modem design. He has a BS and a MS in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
   
   
2. Dr. Altamash Kamal (Karachi)
   
   Altamash Kamal is a pioneer in the technology sector in Pakistan. He is currently the owner and CEO of XIBER.com (www.XIBER.com), the first and largest Internet Company in Pakistan, which manages and operates the DAWN.com site (5 million page views per month, which is by far the largest Pakistan-focused web site), DesiStore (launched November, 1999 with annualized revenues of $ 150,000) and DesiChat. XIBER.com also offers complete solutions for web companies, and employs 60 people. Prior to creating XIBER.com, Altamash started up, expanded and later successfully sold off Wavetech, Pakistan's first commercial microwave technology provider. Altamash Kamal also serves on the Board of Directors of Pakistan Telecom, and is a member of the National Tax Administration Reform Taskforce. Altamash received his Ph.D. degree in nuclear engineering from MIT.
   
   
3. Amer Hashmi (Karachi)
   
   Amer Hashmi is the President & CEO of Si3. He spearheads the firm's strategy, cultivating its overall business and client base, and governing successful delivery of integrated technology solutions to clients. Amer has previously held senior positions at MCI Systemhouse, IBM Global Services and A.F. Ferguson & Co. (a member firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers). Amer's experience in building and running professional service ventures coupled with his knowledge of
   
   A graduate of the prestigious IBM Executive Forum and Senior IT Advisor to Commonwealth Society of Canada, Amer has also been an active member of the esteemed Project Management Institute, U.S since 1997, and was certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP) in 2000. Amer has been presented a Leadership Award by the US Ambassador to Pakistan and acclaimed by the US State Department for his exemplary leadership triumphs.
   
   
4. Dr. Amir Matin (Islamabad)
   
   Aamir Matin has over 25 years of work experience, both as an entrepreneur and also with large corporations. During his years with the Ministry of IT, he was actively engaged in promoting entrepreneurship within the Pakistani IT sector and in developing linkages between R&D and industry. His current role at Cisco also involves identifying new business opportunities and partnerships that can benefit Cisco's business in the Middle East and Africa region.
   
   
5. Ashraf Kapadia (Karachi)
   
   Ashraf Kapadia is a very senior IT Professional with over 35 years of experience in the IT Industry. He started his career by joining IBM Corporation as an Apprentice Systems Engineer in 1971. After 30 years with IBM, he left to join Visionet Systems, Inc. as Vice President (Operations) in New Jersey, and is currently working as the Managing Director of Systems Limited. With 700 employees, Systems Limited is the oldest and one of the largest IT services company in Pakistan.
   
   During his long career, he has worked in various technical and managerial positions in Pakistan, England, France, Italy, United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America, and has been involved in many large and complex projects.
   
   Ashraf Kapadia is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Visionet Systems, Inc. and Systems Limited. He is also the President of the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) and serves on the Board of Directors of the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB). He has also served on the Management Committee of the Karachi Institute of Information Technology (KIIT) and as the Chairman of the Computer Society of Pakistan.
   
   
6. Fahd Bangash (Lahore)
   
   Fahd Bangash is Chairman & CEO of amaana, a technology platform for instant secure payments in emerging markets. He founded amaana in early 2004 and is in the process of taking the company beyond a successful Beta launch in Pakistan. Previously he was with Palm where he was an eMarketing Specialist with the Business Marketing Group. Prior to that he held engineering and professional services positions with MarketFirst Software. He holds a bachelors degree in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.
   
   
7. Faizan Buzdar (Islamabad)
   
   Faizan is the Founder and CEO of Scrybe Corp ( www.iscrybe.com ) a startup known for its ground breaking online organizer as well as the unique 'viral' video used for it's beta launch. Scrybe has recently closed a Series A round of funding with Adobe and LMKR. http://iscrybe.wordpress.com/2007/08/08/adobe-and-lmkr-invest-in-scrybe/
   
   Faizan has a passion for User Experience and HCI, which has helped position Scrybe as one of the most innovative and interesting applications on the web. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/technology/circuits/02proto.html?ref=technology
   
   Prior to founding Scrybe, Faizan has more than 7 years of Product Management experience in Enterprise class products. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Electronics.
   
   
8. Ghulam Nurie (Karachi)
   
   Ghulam Nurie has over 25 years experience in electronic design automation and semiconductor industry. He has held senior engineering, marketing and management positions at number of leading US companies including Sperry (Unisys), Tektronix and Synopsys. He is a veteran of five startups in Silicon Valley and most recently co-founded Atrenta Inc, the first predictive analysis company for semiconductor design. He is experienced in raising venture capital for startup companies and frequently advises VCs on investing in high technology startups. Ghulam holds BS and MS in electrical and computer engineering from University of Wisconsin
   
   
9. Monis Rehman (Lahore)
   
   Monis Rahman is the Chairman and CEO of Naseeb Networks, Inc., a Silicon Valley new media company with offshore offices in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. Mr. Rahman has founded and run several companies ranging from Internet startups to chip design consultancies. He has raised venture capital for two Internet startups in Silicon Valley, and has nine patents to his credit. Mr. Rahman started his career at Intel Corporation where he was a key member of Intel's microprocessor design team. He completed his undergraduate degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and did graduate work at Stanford University in Computer Engineering. He has been featured by numerous magazines and newspapers including CNN, InfoWorld, Red Herring, Infoweek, The Chicago Tribune, The Miami Herald, The Oakland Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Spider.
   
   
10. Muddassar Malik (Karachi)
    
    Muddassar Malik is the CEO of BMA Asset Management Company. He was previously Director and Head of Research of BMA Capital. He did his MBA, Finance and Corporate Strategy form MIT Sloan School of Management, Masters degree in Political Economy, from London School of Economics & Political Science and Bachelors degree in Economics from London School of Economics & Political Science.
    
    
11. Naeem Zamindar (Islamabad)
    
    Naeem Zamindar is the Head of Strategy & Business Development at Mobilink. Naeem Zamindar has been involved in entrepreneurial activities as an entrepreneur, venture capitalist and in currently running the strategy and business development role for the most successful technology company in Pakistan, Mobilink. He is also a contributing author for the defining book on entrepreneurship published by TiE , "The Last Mile" - on how to build a winning company.
    
    Naeem has been involved in starting up and building Mobilink. Naeem holds a MBA from INSEAD, was Certified as a Public Accountant from the State of Washington, and received a BBA from University of Texas at Austin.
    
    
12. Owais Anjum (Islamabad)
    
    Owais is heading Numetrics’ offshore operations in Pakistan, a Cupertino based company, which is a leading provider of enterprise software and services for product development lifecycle management (LCM) in the electronics industry. He was instrumental in bringing and setting up Numetrics’ offshore operations to Pakistan two years ago and is dedicated to making it a success story. Prior to this, Owais worked in the Silicon Valley for 6 years, 3 of which were with Numetrics as Software Development Manager. Earlier, he worked with CresSoft and later with KAPS Computing, both based in Lahore.
    
    Owais has also been working very actively with OPEN Silicon Valley as a fellow and stays very involved with charitable work through Hidaya Foundation’s operations in both US and Pakistan. He holds a bachelors degree in Computer Science from GIK Institute, and MBA from San Jose State University, California.
    
    
13. Dr. Umar Saif (Lahore)
    
    Dr. Umar Saif is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Sciences and Engineering at LUMS. Dr. Saif completed his PhD from Cambridge University and post-doctorate from MIT. Dr. Saif worked and taught at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) for four years, where he was part of the core team which developed system technologies for project Oxygen -- a US$40 million project sponsored by the US Department of Defense and an industrial Alliance of world-class companies such as Nokia, HP, Phillips, Acer, NTT DoComo and Delta. While at MIT, Dr. Saif also managed the multi-million dollar collaboration on future computing technologies between University of Cambridge and MIT sponsored by the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) and a consortium of high tech companies. As an entrepreneur, Dr. Saif has founded three companies. He was a co-founder and CTO of an Internet e-health startup in 1999. In 2004, he became the CEO of Adeptechs, a high-tech consultancy company. Most recently, Dr. Saif founded BumpIn.com, a Web 2.0 social networking service. Dr. Saif serves on the technical advisory board of several technology companies and is a regular speaker at technology forums.

Foreign Mentors and Judges

1. Aaref Hilaly
   
   Aaref is the President and CEO of Clearwell Systems, a pioneer in Email Intelligence, which is funded by Sequoia Capital and Redpoint Ventures. Prior to Clearwell, he was Co-Founder, President and CEO of CenterRun, which he led from inception in 2000 to its acquisition by Sun Microsystems in August 2003. CenterRun was a leading provider of application provisioning software and today forms the basis of Sun's data center automation product suite. Prior to co-founding CenterRun, he worked in corporate and business development at Excite@Home Networks, which at that time was one of the largest internet companies. He joined Excite@Home from The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a global management consulting company. At BCG, Aaref led projects advising Fortune 500 companies on a variety of sales, marketing and product development issues, with particular focus in the software and telecommunications industries. Aaref earned an MBA from Harvard Business School with high distinction as a Baker Scholar. He holds a BA Honor's degree from Oxford University, and a Master's degree from McGill University, where he was awarded the Arthur Tagge Fellowship.
   
   
2. Ammar Hanafi
   
   Ammar H. Hanafi joined Alloy Ventures as a General Partner in 2005 from Cisco Systems, Inc. Ammar received a B.S. in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University (1988) and an MBA from Stanford University (1995). His last role at Cisco was Vice President of New Business Ventures where he led new product efforts in the enterprise datacenter market. From 2000 to 2002, he was Vice President of Corporate Business Development and in that capacity, he was responsible for Cisco’s acquisitions, acquisition integration, investment, and joint venture activity on a global basis. He joined Cisco in 1997 as a member of the Corporate Business Development Group. During Ammar’s tenure, Cisco’s Business Development Group completed over 50 acquisitions, leading Cisco into a number of major new businesses, including optical networking and integrated voice and data infrastructure and applications. In addition, the Business Development Group made over $750 million in venture capital investments during the same timeframe. Prior to Cisco, Ammar held positions at PanAmSat Corporation, a global satellite services provider, and the investment banking firms of Morgan Stanley and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. Ammar is a director of 3Leaf Networks.
   
   
3. Ayaz ul Haque
   
   Ayaz is a Managing Director in the Silicon Valley and New Delhi offices of ePlanet . Mr. Haque focuses principally on the Fund's expansion and later-stage investments in India and the United States and has represented ePlanet's investment interests in Clickmarks, Cyanea, Ember, IXI, Karodpati and Techpacific. Prior to joining ePlanet, Mr. Haque was the Director of Mergers & Acquisitions at Crosby Financial Holdings in London, where he managed the cross-border corporate finance advisory and investment initiatives of one of the leading Asia-focused specialist investment banks. While at Crosby, Mr. Haque focused on both mergers and acquisitions and private equity investments and worked in London, Singapore and Seoul. Prior to his involvement with Crosby Financial Holdings, Mr. Haque was the Associate Director of Corporate Finance at Peregrine Investments, a pan-Asian investment bank, where he was responsible for developing Peregrine's corporate finance and private equity businesses in the Middle East, and for identifying and evaluating Middle East to Asia investment opportunities. Mr. Haque was also an associate in the Corporate Finance Group of Bear, Stearns & Co. in New York, where he was responsible for North American and Asian transaction execution. Mr. Haque is a summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Middlebury College, holding a B.A. in Economics.
   
   
4. Bill Aulet
   
   Bill Aulet is a Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to joining MIT he worked at Viisage as Chief Financial Officer. Before Viisage he had 20 years of operating experience. He most recently served as President of SensAble Technologies, a 3D Force Feedback Systems Company, where he was responsible for all aspects of business including the role of the CFO. Before joining SensAble, Aulet also founded Cambridge Decision Dynamics where he served as President for two years. Prior to this, he worked at IBM for over ten years in various management and executive positions including Manager of Finance and Planning for IBM's $900 million New England region. His career at IBM included various positions in the systems engineering, marketing and sales functions as well. A Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, Aulet holds a Bachelors in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University and a Masters in Management Sciences through the prestigious Sloan Fellow program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
   
   
5. Hasan Rizvi
   
   Hasan is currently Vice President, Server Technologies, Oracle Corporation. Previously, Co-founder and CEO of Karient Inc. Formerly, co-founder and Vice President at Corio.
   
   
6. Imran Qidwai
   
   Imran is a Director and founding Charter Member of OPEN. He has over 20 years of computer industry experience, including more than 15 years managing software projects at both private and public companies. Imran’s expertise lies in the areas of wireless messaging, wireless entertainment, instant messaging, unified messaging, Internet-based fax messaging, PDA applications, hosted and rentable applications and platforms, and mission critical data networking systems.
   
   Former employers include NMS Communications, Lotus/IBM, Digital Equipment (HP/Compaq), SoftLinx, International Computers, and Philips. In 1999, Imran co-founded and was Vice President of Engineering at MessageMachines, Inc, a Boston-based startup, which was acquired by NMS in April 2002.
   
   Imran holds a Master's degree in Computer, Information and Control Engineering from the University of Michigan, a post-graduate diploma in digital electronics from Philips International Institute of Technological Studies, Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Peshawar.
   
   
7. Imran Saeed
   
   Imran Sayeed leads the Financial Services & Insurance (FSI) practice for Keane, a global BPO and IT Services company with ~10,000 professionals worldwide. (NYSE: KEA). FSI is the largest vertical at Keane, with a majority of the top 100 global banks and insurance carriers as clients, and billable professionals across the US, Canada, UK & India. Sayeed came to Keane through its acquisition of netNumina, a boutique technology strategy and consulting form that he founded and grew from a 15 person startup to one of Computerwold's Top 100 emerging companies. netNumina won more than 30 of the leading financial services & pharmaceutical institutions in the world as clients, raised more than $25MM from venture capitalists and strategic investors and received more than 20 industry awards for its work.
   
   Sayeed has over fifteen years of experience in software and services. Previously, as a founder of Open Environment, Sayeed helped pioneer multi-tier client server technology, and grew the company from a 10-person startup to an IPO and leadership in the middleware market.
   
   Sayeed has written and spoken extensively in leading industry conferences and trade journals over the last 13 years on entrepreneurship, e-business, financial services, insurance and technology. Sayeed serves on the Advisory Board of several software and private equity companies. Sayeed also holds a patent on technology for providing secure financials transactions over the Internet that he jointly developed with Citigroup. He is currently a visiting professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management where he teaches in the MBA program on technology business strategy.
   
   Sayeed attended Brown University where he majored in Engineering, and Harvard University, where he did post-graduate work in business, marketing and product development.
   
   
8. Dr. Imran Shah
   
   Imran, a co-founder of IBB Consulting Group, is responsible for IBB’s strategy and vision, major client relationships and leading key engagements. Previously, Imran has held senior consulting and industry positions in leading companies including Xavor, PA Consulting Group and Philips Electronics. As the President of Xavor, Imran led the company to record growth and profitability, significantly expanding the company’s client base. As a Partner in the Telecommunications practice of PA Consulting Group, a management and technology consultancy, Imran launched the Interactive Media Group and led it to become the most profitable and largest revenue-producing group in the practice.
   
   An acclaimed specialist and thought leader in convergence strategies and technology, Imran has been involved in many of the most significant projects in the industry. He has worked with senior management teams in a variety of leading broadband and media companies, including: AT&T, Comcast, Cox, Microsoft, Telenor, TeleDenmark, UPC and Cable & Wireless.
   
   Imran, who has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University, has led various industry bodies in the standardization of digital media compression, distribution and storage. He personally holds 13 patents and has been published numerous times.
   
   
9. Jauher Zaidi
   
   Jauher Zaidi is Founder, Chairman, President & CEO of Palmchip Corporation, a hardware and software design company. He is a pioneer in Channel based SoC interconnect architecture, bringing mainframe approach onto a single chip Processors. He also pioneered the SoC Platform and IP licensing business model. Jauher has over 26-year experience in executive management, mainframe processor, co-processor, fiber-optic networking design, and system integration at Unisys. He also led the single-chip I/O processor for mainframe computer at Amdahl, and mass storage group at Samsung. Before founding Palmchip in 1996, he led the flash and hard disk controller system-on-chip (SoC) integration at Quantum Corporation. Jauher is also a Chairman and CEO of Palmchip Pakistan Private Limited, software and IT outsourcing company focused on Mobile Security, Telecomm and VoIP. He is a board of Advisor for Savant Company, a leader in International System-on-Chip conferences. He is a Chater member of AAMA. He has also founded Silicon Pakistan organization to bring SoC technologies to Pakistan. Jauher received his BSEE and MSEE degrees from Pacific States University in Los Angeles, California, USA. He has written and presented a number of articles and papers on the IP business model, future business and technology trends. He has also participated in many system-on-chip panels, and is a recognized expert in the area of SoC and Embedded System development. He invented the CoreFrame (tm) SoC Integration Architecture. He holds six patents on SoC technology and infrastructure.
   
   
10. Ken Morse
    
    Ken is the Managing Director of MIT Entrepreneurship Center. As Managing Director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, Ken Morse leads the MIT effort to develop leaders to bring innovative concepts and technologies to market and build successful new high tech start-up businesses. He co-teaches a Special Seminar in Entrepreneurship: Technology Sales and Sales Management and the Entrepreneurship Laboratory course, in which teams of engineering, science, and MBA students work on important problems in startup ventures that are "keeping the CEO awake at night." He studies the use of corporate venture investing to achieve strategic advantage, and the international sales and marketing challenges faced by fast-growing high tech firms.
    
    Ken currently serves on the Board of Associates of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.
    
    In addition to China Capital Ventures, he is also on the Advisory Boards of PolyTechnos Venture-Partners (Munich), Darby Technology Ventures Group LLC, SINTEF A/S (Trondheim, Norway), Lagan Technologies Ltd. ( Belfast, Ireland) and Meridio Ltd. (Belfast, Ireland). Ken is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
    
    
11. Naeem Zafar
    
    Naeem is the founding partner of Concordia Ventures, a company dedicated to educate and help entrepreneurs with all aspects of starting and running a company. Naeem has been with six startups and has extensive experience in mentoring and coaching CEOs.
    
    His last assignment was the president and CEO of Pyxis Technology Inc., a company specializing in advanced chip design software for nanometer technology. Naeem has been president and CEO of two other high tech startups (Silicon Design Systems and Veridicom, a Bell Labs spin-off that invented the silicon fingerprint sensors today found on most laptops). Naeem has held senior marketing and engineering positions at several companies including Quickturn Design Systems that had an IPO in 1993 and grew to $125M in revenues.
    
    Naeem holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Brown University (magna cum laude), Rhode Island, and a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota.
    
    Naeem is currently on the faculty of Haas Business school at the University of California Berkeley where he teaches Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the MBA program. He has lectured or co-taught at UCLA, Brown University and at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan where he serves as an advisor to Entrepreneurship & Small & Medium Enterprise Center (ESMEC).
    
    
12. Omar Hussain
    
    Omar joined OPEN in 2000 and is a Director. Omar has over 16 years of experience in software start-ups and a proven track record in growing and managing global software companies. Prior to joining Imprivata, Omar was the founder and CEO of Anchorsilk, Inc. an innovative sell-side e-commerce software company. Before that, Omar was general manager of Compuware Corporations NuMega Labs, where he was responsible for the integration of NuMega Windows business into Compuware while successfully growing revenues and managing operations for a $30+ million, 170 person unit. Before NuMega, he was part of the management team at Open Environment Corporation, where as VP marketing and head of business development, he played a key role in the company's growth from a startup to a public company. He was also responsible for the sale of the company to Inprise Corporation (Borland).
    
    
13. Rehan Jalil
    
    Rehan Jalil is the President and CEO of Wichorus, a pioneer in WiMAX-Mobile and LTE / 4G infrastructure equipment. Wichorus develops hi-performance platforms that enable personal mobile broadband and wire-speed mobile multimedia applications. Wichorus is funded by Redpoint Ventures and Accel Partners. Prior to Wichorus, he was the Chief Architect for WiMAX for Aperto Networks. Previously, he has held technical and management positions at Sun and Siemens. He has been on the executive team of OPEN, was the founder of MentorPlatform and is on board of Koshish. He has over 15 patents pending for advanced techniques for wireless optimizations and holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University.
    
    
14. Safwan Shah
    
    Safwan Shah is a graduate of NED University in Karachi and has been a part of several non-profit and other social programs in the US. His professional career includes positions as a researcher in the US Space Program, positions in various Silicon Valley companies, founder of Chowk – a non-profit media and peace initiative, and Infonox a SW and Systems company in the IT marketplace.
    
    
15. Umair Khan
    
    Umair co-founded Clickmarks Inc., a Silicon Valley based enterprise software company. As CEO , Umair grew the company through $27 million in venture funding from among others, DFJ-Eplanet, Mitsubishi, and Vodafone Ventures, and oversaw its acquisition in July 2005 by Semotus Inc., a publicly traded US company. Umair served as COO of Semotus through May 2006 before leaving to join The Entrepreneurs’ Fund III, a Silicon Valley based venture capital fund, as Venture Partner. Umair is also founder and chairman of Verisium (www.verisium.com), a Silicon Valley based software testing tools company founded in 2004. Umair is also the founder of Folio3, a Pakistan-based services company that provides offshore operations incubation to startups and other small companies. Prior to this, Umair was founder and chairman of Wordwalla Inc., a venture backed company providing multilingual software solutions. Wordwalla was acquired in 2001 by Morisawa Corporation, a public company in Japan. He is also co-founder of Chowk, a niche portal focusing on South Asia. Umair started his career as part of the Itanium microprocessor group at Intel Corporation. Umair founded OPEN (Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs) Silicon Valley, an organization that promotes and fosters Entrepreneurship. He has spoken on entrepreneurship at some of the country's top business schools, including MIT, Harvard, and UC Berkeley. He has been profiled in publications such as USA Today, New York Times, and The Entrepreneur. Umair received a BS in Mathematics (1992) and an MS in Computer Engineering (1995), both from MIT, where in 1991 he was elected by the Department of Mathematics as an institutional nominee to the Mathematical Association of America.