Ejad Labs organized the first annual Pakistan Tech Summit in Silicon Valley on February 15th at Draper University, to showcase the best of Pakistani startups, innovators and inventors. The house-full event attended by 300 tech leaders including top entrepreneurs, techies and VCs from Silicon Valley and a 50-people delegation from Pakistan.
The summit was sponsored by VisionX, NetSol Technologies, JS Bank and supported by the Government of Pakistan through the Ministry of IT & Telecom, Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) and National IT Board (NITB). This summit was organized by Ejad Labs & PAK-US Tech Exchange in collaboration with Pakistani Women in Computing (PWiC), Momentum Tech and NUSTIAN. Ejad Labs previously hosted the summit in Oslo, Norway with support from the City of Oslo.
The summit featured Pakistan’s largest IT delegation to Silicon Valley including entrepreneurs, government and private sector leaders including Noman Azhar and Hasan Saeed from JS Bank Limited. Key participants were Shabahat Ali Shah – CEO National IT Board Pakistan, Abdul Jabbar Memon – Consul General of Pakistan in LA, Najeeb Ghauri – Chairman NetSol Technologies, Farrukh Mahboob – Chairman VisionX, Noman Azhar – Executive Vice President JS Bank, Dr. Telle Whitney – Former CEO Anita Borg Institute and Huma Hamid – Founder Pakistani Women in Computing (PWiC),
According to Bloomberg, Pakistan is the world’s fastest growing retail market in fact Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said “Pakistan is one of Uber’s fastest growing markets” after Uber’s $3.1 billion acquisition of Careem, a ride hailing unicorn founded by a Pakistani entrepreneur.
Careem is not the only one, Pakistan has produced the minds behind some of the world’s leading tech companies including Afiniti ($1.6 billion AI startup), KeepTruckin ($1.25 billion startup), FireEye (world’s leading cybersecurity company), Cavium (sold for $6 billion) and many others.
Closing Dinner for the summit was sponsored by NetSol Technologies and hosted at the famous ‘Star Trek’ themed residence of Junaid Quraishi and Malika Junaid. The dinner was attended by leading members of the Pakistani diaspora including Raghib Hussain – Founder of Cavium, Idris Kothari – Founder of Vasona Systems and Sabina Zafar – Vice Mayor of City of San Ramon.
Arzish Azam, CEO of Ejad Labs and Founder of the Pakistan Tech Summit stated that “Pakistanis have achieved tremendous success in the global tech industry whether they’re based inside or outside Pakistan. The tech summit is a movement of events to be held around the world in order to showcase these achievements and bring the community together for the common goal of building the future of Pakistan by supporting our startups, techies and digital economy.”
