Azhar Rizvi is a multifaceted seasoned professional who is an entrepreneur evangelist, business advisor, career mentor, social missionary, and an author & Amazing Entrepreneur. He has devoted his life to helping people and organizations innovate smartly and achieve high growth targets. After working for years in the industry, Azhar Rizvi holds a goldmine of knowledge to offer expert-level advice as a business management consultant and a career advisor. The expert career mentor has been involved in developing individuals since he started off his career. Until now, he has mentored close to 15,000 students, researchers, and faculty from 65 Universities and 450+ companies from various industries. Like many great motivational speakers, Azhar Rizvi has also been serving as the North Star to assist people in finding the right track of their lives; he has restructured many careers and helped people find their undiscovered talents
An Entrepreneurship Evangelist
In 2007, Azhar embarked on a journey to promote entrepreneurship in Pakistan. He helped the MIT Alumni of Pakistan set up the MIT Enterprise Forum Chapter in Pakistan. Together the team designed a 6-month extensive Business Acceleration program and launched the Business Challenge Cup open to all comers. Since its launch, the initiative has put on the map more than 450 enterprises. These enterprises collectively employ 4000+people and have estimated revenues of USD 500M.
In 2010, he joined hands with IBA Karachi and NUST Islamabad to launch a similar 5-months intensive program. The programs, branded IBA- Invent Annual Business Plan Competition and NUST Discover -Annual, Prime Minister Entrepreneurial Challenge Program, have led to separate student-competitions. These two platforms have become an ecosystem enabler. They have also allowed Azhar to help 10,000+ student teams, faculty, start-ups, and mid-size organizations in developing their business plans, growth strategies and launching successful ventures.
Azhar has also served Higher Education Commission of Pakistan HEC as a consultant to establish Offices of Research Innovation and Commercialization (ORICs) and Business Incubation Centers (BICs) and assisted in developing their operational framework, policies, and manuals. He has also trained their program directors and managers, all PhDs in various disciplines from technology, agriculture sector, and pure sciences, in developing a research program in areas of local needs and national importance and on building an entrepreneurial ecosystem in their respective cities.
An Entrepreneur
In 1999, Azhar set up the first venture which grew from 2 to 42 persons in a short span of 18 months. The venture failed during the 2001 dotcom crash. Using lessons learned, he set up another company,which by 2002 had become the biggest Pakistan’s BPO in the tech sector of the country. The 1,500+ person company served 200 cities to large banking networks in 800 cities, town, and villages, and also provided specialized applications development and deployment services for major organizations like HBL, UBL, Emirates Bank, and Several other leading Organizations etc.
A Strategy Consultant
Azhar started his career as a Sales Executive marketing IT services from leading firms NCR, AT&T and Unisys. He rose to Director Sales & Products within a short span of 10 years. During these years, he built relationships leading to a portfolio with major multimillion dollar accounts like PTCL, GHQ, Habib Bank, UBL, ABL, Federal Ministry of Finance, ABN Amro, Standard Chartered Bank, MSD, and BASF among others.
Azhar has brought that same zeal, excel, and ability to identify opportunities to other companies, too. He has helped more than 450+ firms redefine business strategy to scale up operations, from a few hundred thousand to multi-million dollars’ global operations.
A Missionary
Azhar has recently embarked on the mission to promote entrepreneurship in the agriculture sector, especially in rural areas. Azhar firmly believes that this sector, with properly trained human resources coupled with appropriate funding, can double the GDP in a few years. As a first step, he, in February 2018, joined hands with Sindh Board of Investment (SBI) and its subsidiary SEDF to launch an Agri-Entrepreneurship program at Sindh Agriculture University (SAU), Tandojam. The intense four-month program has so far trained 250 youth, and as a result, 5 teams have been shortlisted for full-time incubation for 12 months at the SAU’s newly established incubation center.
A Historian
Azhar has authored the book, “Entrepreneuring Pakistan- 27 stories of struggle, failure, and success”. The book celebrates the triumphs and highlights the challenges of 27 mentee organizations, who have achieved success. These companies in the technology, social, research and education sectors have broken the barriers and achieved exponential 10X+ growth per annum.
He is currently working on his next book focused on the struggle and successes of women entrepreneurs of Pakistan.
A Philanthropist:
Azhar also pays an active part in philanthropic and social circles. He is very active in Rotary Pakistan for the past 22 years. As part of Rotary, he has implemented several key initiatives in the healthcare which included the end-to-end automation of largest 2500-beds hospital with latest open source software, cutting-edge hardware, and HIPA HL7 Compliant,Civil Hospital Karachi in 2009.
He also led the tech team which established 14 Telemedicine Centers during 2005 massive earthquake in KPK and Azad Kashmir in collaboration with Pakistan Army, P@SHA, Intel Pakistan, InMar Sat, MOIT Pakistan and Rawalpindi Hospital.
The 2nd project during another critical juncture was to bring organizations specializing in software for disaster relief management. Sahana Foundation is one such organization which was brought in to interact with PITB of Punjab Government and Sindh Government Disaster Relief Management during the floods of 2010.
Education for disadvantaged and special kids is an area of special interest to Azhar. He was instrumental in setting up five cutting-edge technology setup using DAISY Labs at PAFF Institute, Al-Mukhtoom Centers for vision-impaired people, Islamabad, Aziz Jan Trust Center for the disabled at Lahore, Al Faisal Center for the blind, Faisalabad and Ida Rieu Center at Karachi. All of the centers are now producing digital taking books which enable the kids to interact with these books with the help of computers and special daisy leaders. The project was launched from Rotary Pakistan and P@SHA platforms. Nippon Foundation was the main donor and NAB, Delhi, India was the lead technical partners for this project.
A project which Azhar says that has given him great satisfaction was developing and implementing an Inmate Management System at the Karachi Central Jail in 2007. The project was developed on the request of Legal Aid Office (LAO), an NGO headed by Honorable Former Chief Justice of Pakistan CJP (R) Nasir Aslam Zahid. Prior to the IMS system, there were close to 1500 women and kids at the facility of 150 only. A major reason was an obsolete manual system which was hampering record management and the follow up of their cases. Once the system was implemented in 2 months record time, Honorable Justice Zahid and his team of 40 strong female advocates managed to get over 1340 inmates justice and send back to their home in a short span of one year.
Watch Azhar Rizvi Interview:
Kanwal Masroor, Chairman, TECH taking interview of Mr. Azhar Rizvi, Co-Founder MITEF Pakistan
Azhar Rizvi Portal :
https://www.azharrizvi.com/
