Assignment # 01: University of Sargodha Department of Computer Science

Assignment # 01
Submitted by:
Laraib Idrees
Roll no:
BITF18M022
Submitted to:
Sir Saqib Nawaz
Subject:
Entrepreneurship
Class:
BS (IT) (Reg) 6th
Session: 2018-22
University of Sargodha
Department of Computer Science
Introduction
Monis Rahman is a Pakistani internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist and
businessman. Rahman is the co-founder and executive chairman of Naseeb Networks, a
business-oriented social network used primarily for online job recruiting. Rahman has been
listed among the top entrepreneurs of 21st century several times.
Early Years
Monis comes from a very educational oriented family. His dad held a PhD, so did a few other
members in the family. His siblings are all highly qualified doctors. As was the norm back in
the day, the career choices were fairly limited: a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. In that
order. Monis picked the latter, and went on to become an accomplished Computer
Engineer. He did his BS from University of Wisconsin and MS from Stanford University.
After completing his studies at Wisconsin, Rahman went to work at Intel. With the Intel
team, working with the brightest minds, and the most cutting-edge technology available
really polished his understanding of the field, and he went on to set up his own chip-
manufacturing company in California. In 1997, Rahman and a partner started a company
that installed cameras in daycare centers, allowing parents to watch the video streams
online in real time. Edaycare.com attracted $2.5 million from investors, including Ron
Conway, an early stage investor of Google and PayPal. A year later Rahman and his partner
ran out of money, forcing them to sell the company for stock that was beneficially
worthless.
Naseeb Networks, Inc.

After a break of four years and working as a consultant, Rahman decided to start a social
networking site for Muslims in the United States and United Kingdom, after looking at the
success of similar website Friendster.com. He named it "Naseeb.com". Built as a social site,
it was considered more of match-making portal, but Rahman said, "I decided not to go
head-on as a matchmaking site... 'Dating' has a negative stigma from a Muslim viewpoint.
Naseeb.com was then invested in by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman with $25,000, while
some other investors also stepped in as angel investors.
Describing the inspiration behind Naseeb, Rahman said, “I was exploring the Pakistani
market since my family had moved here. I realized that the biggest cost in running a web
company was of human capital. And the running cost in Pakistan would have been 1/18th of
what it would have been in the US. So that's when I decided to come back and start
Naseeb.com, which exploded very quickly. We were the first one to be doing any kind of
serious business on the internet back then. And we had little to no competition in the
market.”
In 2002, Rahman returned to Pakistan and registered his company as Naseeb Networks, Inc.,
both in Lahore, Pakistan, and in San Jose, California, US, to make it easier to raise money
and investors. He spent $60,000 as a start-up cost for Naseeb and initially handled the
company on his own. To prime the market, he used equity in the company to buy the
electronic greeting card site eidmubarak.com, which allow Muslims to send cards for Eid.
Three thousand people from the site's 1-million-strong mailing list signed up immediately.
Annual memberships cost $40, and by 2005 the website was generating $300,000 in
revenue.
With the expansion of company Rahman needed programmers and developers, and buying
ads in local newspapers was expensive. He recalls, "I started Naseeb.com from my house,
but later moved out as we grew. Now when hiring, I ran into a lot of problems finding the
right talent. At that time, one job ad in the classified section in Dawn News, roughly cost PKR
850,000 which was ridiculous! So, I decided to put my ads online."
Rozee.pk
In 2005, Rahman built a "quick and dirty" job site to post job openings for his parent
company Naseeb Networks. Many other companies contacted Rahman to post their
companies' and products' ads on his website. Rahman agreed to post their ads free of cost
to help boost Naseeb's traffic. After receiving such a reception, the website became the
primary business of Naseeb Networks.
Rahman then offered the largest companies the ability to search for résumés, as well as
software to power their own companys' job boards and the right to post their logos on the
front page of his new site.
In 2007 Rozee.pk went into a completely functioning state, generating more traffic than
Naseeb. More than 63,000 companies actively post openings on Rozee.pk, paying between
$29 for a single ad and up to $20,000 for a suite of services.
Rozee.pk has been listed as the number one employment website in Pakistan, with more
than 65 thousand companies posting jobs, 32.53 million applications processed and 6
million unique visitors every day.
In an interview Rahman stated, "As talent continues to move online at a rapid pace in
emerging markets, businesses need increasingly sophisticated recruiting technology
customized to nuanced local market dynamics."
Chalo.pk
In 2011, Rahman launched a location-based online shopping portal that features "local daily
deals and listings for the most affordable things to do, place to eat, and brands to buy" in
cities throughout Pakistan. Rahman said, "Chalo is my experiment. We have hundreds of
SMEs in Pakistan who can't afford to promote themselves on large platforms like
newspapers, billboards, TV etc. We're helping them expand & grow through Chalo.pk. We're
also experimenting with Maps. We spent 2 years building our own maps database, and now
we have mapped every single house address in any planned society in Lahore. We’ve also
mapped all the restaurants, their menus and other details in the app. So, people can
navigate to them really easily. If you want to watch a movie, we're listing all the movies
being shown in all the cities, and soon we'll be adding a Buy button."
Digital Publishers Association of Pakistan
In 2012, Rahman co-founded the Digital Publishers Association of Pakistan (DPAP), with
several publications and portal owners including Masood Hamid (President), Monis Rahman
(Vice President), Sarmad A. Ali (Member Executive Committee), Lucas Peter (Secretary
General), Imran Ansari (Joint Secretary), Qudratullah Shahab (Member Executive
Committee), and Sarah Sohail (Finance Secretary). The association aims to "safeguard
interests of all stakeholders in the burgeoning digital market and create a regulated playing
field."
Mihnati.com acquisition
In 2013, Rozee.pk bought Saudi employment website Mihnati.com for an undisclosed
amount. Discussing the acquisition, Rahman said, "We have merged both Rozee.pk and
Mihnati by migrating all Mihnati employers and jobseekers on to the Rozee.pk technology
platform. By doing this, we gave our Saudi sales team a far more powerful product to sell
with more features."
Other works and future ventures

After establishing himself, Rahman served as a head or partner of several technology firms
in Pakistan including as a member of the Board of Directors at Kashf Microfinance Bank
Limited (2010-2012), and of the Pakistan Advisory Board at Acumen Fund (2010-2013).
Currently he is a member of the Young Presidents' Organization (2010) Governing Board
(CEC) at Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT and ITES (P@SHA) (2013), Secretary
General and founding member at Digital Publishers Association of Pakistan (DPAP), and a
member of the Global Board of Trustees (BoT) at The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE, Lahore)
(2012).
Rahman is a TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) speaker and is frequently invited
to talk on entrepreneurship and Internet marketing at the world's top business schools and
conferences.
In 2016, Rahman together with Qasif Shahid developed a digital mobile wallet to increase
digital payments' scale rapidly. The mobile wallet is telco, bank and handset agnostic with
the philosophy of inter-operating collaboratively with existing payment plumbing.
Awards and honors

 2008: International Data Group CIO Pakistan Pioneer in Innovation Award
 2011: Forbes "Ten Big Hitting Asian Businessmen under 50"
 2012: Pakistan Power 100 Excellence Award
 2016: Rahman was listed among the top CEOs of Pakistan

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Naseeb Networks, Inc.

Other works and future ventures

Awards and honors

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