Meet Haris Khan, an exceptionally bright young man who is focused on making a big name for himself and his country. He is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and co-founder of Zigron Inc a technology firm. He is working towards providing jobs and education in Pakistan, he writes blogs, volunteers for DIL and is working on many projects focused on improving Pakistan. Read on to learn more about him and his projects.

PIC

Please introduce yourself to our readers:
I am Pakistani living in US since 2004. I recently shifted from San Francisco to D.C area. I am co-founder of Zigron Inc which is a technology firm.

Tell us about where you grew up, your family and education.

My father was from the Army so I had the privilege to live across many cities in Pakistan. I did my undergrad from Fauji Foundation university in Pindi and then worked for a year in Islamabad. In 2004 I came to Carnegie Mellon for my masters.

Tell us about Zigron, how did you get involved with this project?

Zigron Inc (www.zigron.com) is a technology company which I co-founded along with Qasim Mueen and Kashif Mueen in Pittsburgh. In 2005 I meet Qasim while studying in CMU and during that time we both had the urge to start something of our own. So Qasim and Kashif took the lead and then I joined in and 2007 was the year when we all went fulltime.

What services does Zigron provide and how many people are working on this project?

Basically Zigron is a technology firm with focus in User Experience and Product Development. We have our back office in Islamabad and our total strength is around 50. Our goal has always been to develop highly creative products. We are making few of our products like Wherever.Tv which is an IPTV device and some we are doing in partnerships with other companies.


Your company hires young inexperienced individuals, has that strategy helped the company?
As a firm we want be recognized by our innovation and creativity. To achieve this energy and motivation are one of the main drivers. These are the two traits you can easily find in young individuals. We started our team with a very small and very young group with almost no experience but due to their hard work and energy we have come a long way. Our strategy is to hire young resources so they are not accustomed to traditional working style of Pakistan and are open to new ways of working in a flat organization with no hierarchies. We have introduced alot of Silicon Valley culture in our company and youngsters seem to like it.

You are also involved with helping out DIL; tell us why you got involved and what projects have you set up for them?

While I was in San Francisco I got involved with YOURDIL SF and from there I got in touch with DIL CEO Fiza Shah. I wanted to use my and Zigron’s expertise in technology to help the education sector in Pakistan. I am a very impatient man so I didn’t really wanted to wait too long to do something good in this regard. Now I am working in Advisor capacity with DIL and Zigron is working in pure not-for-profit basis to help DIL in following three areas. One is to introduce new technologies in DIL schools. Second is to devise a global online strategy for DIL and finally it is to adopt new technologies to bring better efficiency in DIL’s operations. I have to give a lot of credit to Fiza Shah for her openness and vision to adopt new technologies in DIL. She is a strong believer that our education sector needs a huge boast and with technology we can achieve some of it.

Zigron partners Haris and Qasim Mueen

Tell our readers about the “one laptop per child” project, how does that work and what have the students learned so far?


One Laptop Per Child is a specially designed laptop for children to harness their learning capabilities. It’s a non-profit based out of MIT. With the help of OLPC Pakistan a trial project was started in one of DIL’s school and the details about it are in my recent post on OLPC in your magazine. The idea is to give kids these laptops so they can also learn on their own. For the trial purposes it was given to a class and as per my own experience these kids seemed sharper and confident when it came to learning new things. Based on this experience we at DIL are now trying to adopt these laptops more aggressively across our schools. We plan to make custom applications for these laptops and as an example we are thinking of scheduling pure chat based classes where children will only use custom chat application to communicate with others during their class. This chat application will highlight their spelling and grammar mistakes just like Word does and we are confident that such sessions will expedite the learning experience.

Since you are developing the DIL website, there is a big question of transparency of funds, how does DIL make that available for its donors? Is it available on their website?


Yes, we recently launched DIL’s new website and it is part of our overall mission to adopt new social media to have a greater outreach. In coming months you will see many new features on DIL site. For transparency DIL has detailed information about all its schools and it also publishes its annual financials reports with great in-depth details on DIL’s website. It is available for public consumption.

What are your future plans? Are there any other IT projects in the pipe line?

For Zigron, yes we have couple of products in line and I am myself heavily involved in our health care initiatives as health is one of the most promising opportunities in coming years.

What hobbies do you have and what do you like to do in your spare time?

I am a big sports junkie. I have played almost every possible sport but at the end I am truly in love with tennis. For a while I haven’t been regular but now that I am in D.C so I hope to get more regular. Apart from that I have my pet project/blog ImprovingPakistan.org. Right now its just a blog but it’s portal/social version is in the works. The idea is to collect all the positive things about Pakistan.

Lastly, your message to the readers of The Saturday Post:

Just by reading TheSaturdayPost we can all realize that Pakistan is a vibrant and diverse nation with a great potential but it needs our support and encouragement with a sense of optimism. So I will encourage you all to find that inner passion of yours for Pakistan and then please foster it either individually or by helping others in that space. I wish you all the best.