OPEN Joins Force With MIT To Encourage Entrepreneurship in Pakistan

[Riaz Haq]

By Adil Najm
www.pakistaniat.com

Sofizar, which works on “click fraud” and “web analytics Solutions” (maybe we at ATP should be talking to them!) describes itself as “a Carlsbad, CA based internet marketing company with development and operations based out of Lahore” won the 2007 MITCEF-OPEN Business Acceleration Plan (BAP).

Zafar Khan, the CEO of Sofizar, along with others from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs of North America (OPEN) will speak at an event on “Pakistan: The Untold Story of Entrepreneurship and Technology” on February 2 at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the event is co-sponsored by the New England Chapter of OPEN.

The contest, which its organizers hope will become a yearly event, focuses on existing Pakistani technology companies (instead of start-ups) who are asked to prepare plans for how they intend for their business to “accelerate” towards future growth and expansion. The idea for the contest came from OPEN and the MIT Club of Pakistan Enterprise Forum (MITCEF) and was co-sponsored by P@SHA (PASHA: The Pakistan Software Houses Association) and the Pakistan Software Export Board (PESB). The MIT Entrepreneurship Development Progra was actively involved in the contest including in the judging.