Iqtidar Zaidi is currently President and CEO of Techaccess Pakistan. His array of experiences is vast and badges years of successful decision making internationally as well in Pakistan.
Mr. Zaidi is a graduate from the University of Karachi in Mathematics. He then graduated from University of San Francisco in Human Relations and Organizational Behavior while also attending UC Berkeley for courses in Computer Sciences.
His professional career ranges a full spectrum of technical and management positions in the IT sector which eventually helped him in forming his own Software Consulting startup in 1978. He successfully run this company for ten years in Silicon Valley, California, having worked with leading IT professionals of the time.
During the 1990s, Syed Iqtidar Zaidi chose to move back to Pakistan despite an earlier experience in the year 1981 when computers were feared and banned in the country as job killers. In 1992, he started consulting for Oracle on request in Pakistan and also had the honor to lay the building bricks of Oracle Pakistan. Mr. Zaidi considers his most valued accomplishment the conception and raising of FAST University, Islamabad, which remains one of the most prestigious institutes of Pakistan to date.
The second matter of pride for him was founding Techaccess Pakistan in the year 2000, where the youth could be connected with professional sector and opportunities could be provided that would help them become competitive, technically advanced and successful.
Q: How can we increase the software exports from Pakistan?
A: Pakistan software industry is more services intensive as compared to the products focused. If you look at worldwide freelance market statistics, Pakistani developers are among top four in the world. What I think is lacking is to have our software developing workforce more channelized towards product development.
This will help us increase the software development business locally as well as internationally.
Furthermore, we need to strictly follow best practices and standards e.g. CMMI and project management to have quality products and improve time to market.
We also need to have e-commerce as in todays world with cloud and software as a service models it is convenient to procure services and products from anywhere and anytime with a few clicks. Thus, we cannot afford to ignore this trend.