Small Town Girl From Pakistan Launches Tech Startup in San Francisco

[RiazHaq]

Haq's Musings: Pakistani Village Girl Launches VC-Funded Tech Startup in America

Vida, a San Francisco technology startup co-founded by Umaimah Mendhro from Akri village in Sindh, Pakistan, has received $1.3 million funding from Google Ventures, Universal Music Group and others, according to Tech Crunch.


The startup bills itself as "socially responsible" with the objective of using technology to provide a way for designers, artists and other creatives anywhere in the world to make a viable living through their work.

Vida CEO Umaima Mendhro joins a growing list of successful Pakistani-American women that includes Shama Zehra in finance, Shaan Kandawalla in technology, Shazia Sikandar in the Arts and Fatima Ali in fine cuisine.

“I am from a very small town in Pakistan and was home-schooled much of my life because we didn’t have proper schools around. I taught myself how to cut, sketch, sew, stitch, block print, screen print, oil paint, and more,” she told Tech Crunch. “Yet I couldn’t get myself to pursue art as a profession because I feared I wouldn’t be able to make a living with it,” Mendhro said. “With a love for fashion and design, I was also acutely aware of the hundreds of millions of people employed in textile and garment production, who could never get out of a cycle of poverty.”


Vida brings together painters, photographers, graphic designers, sculptors, 3D artists, architects, and textile and print designers from around the world who participate in the platform at no cost, then receive a 10% revenue share on products sold. Additionally, VIDA often works with its textile mills, printers, and cut and sew factories, removing the middleman costs from the equation. Vida uses "Direct to Fabric Digital Printing Technology" for its offerings.

Currently, VIDA designers include: Elle Magazine's 'Up and Coming Fashion Designer from Sweden, Emma Lundgren,' Vogue.com's top 10 fashion graduates to watch, Cigdem Keskin from Turkey, and Tokyo based 'Top Hat Designer of the Year,' Honoyo Imai. Manufacturing partners include: Karachi based fashion label and manufacturing houses, Sania Maskatiya and FNKAsia.

Umaimah has a bachelor's degree from Cornell University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Here's what she says about herself in her intro on HBS website: "I want to live a life that compels people who do not seem to share a common thread to see if, at a raw human level, we really are that different. A life that gives people reason to reason for themselves... to pause and question the comfortable assumptions. To form and inform beliefs. And never give up common sense for common opinion."

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Land For Landless Women

Are Women Better Off in Pakistan Today?


Haq's Musings: Pakistani Village Girl Launches VC-Funded Tech Startup in America

 

[fallstuff]

Small-town girl has cornell and Harvard degrees in her bag, hence the money from Google.

 

[VCheng]

Small-town girl has cornell and Harvard degrees in her bag, hence the money from Google.

Exactly, it is this value that her education brings that is important, not where she came from.

 

[Pak_Sher]

Great story. The women are 50% of the population and should be productive as well.

 

[RiazHaq]

Exactly, it is this value that her education brings that is important, not where she came from.

She earned these degrees in spite of where she is from. Give her credit. She has accomplished what many Cornell and Harvard grads could not.

 

[VCheng]

She earned these degrees in spite her where she is from. Give her credit. She has accomplished what many Cornell and Harvard grads could not.

The fact that she accomplished what other grads could not is a measure of how fair the system is in rewarding hard work regardless of where one comes from. At least give the US system credit.

 

[fallstuff]

A business plan backed by an Harvard MBA is completely different then one without an Ivy League degree. Anyone with an average degree will get laughed at if they approach anyone for funds unless they have years of strong experience in the respected field.

I do give her credit for obtaining these degrees, this in itself is a great achievement.

 

[RiazHaq]

The fact that she accomplished what other grads could not is a measure of how fair the system is in rewarding hard work regardless of where one comes from. At least give the US system credit.

Highly motivated an determined individuals can and do succeed regardless of location. There are many such examples in Pakistan highlighted by Geo TV in its "Zara Sochieye" spots. Only those who make excuses rather than make the effort guarantee their failure.

Haq's Musings: Upwardly Mobile Pakistan on 66th Independence Day

 

[vsdave2302]

Good luck to this girl. She can be a role model for Pakistani and other girl. Leading by an example is the most important thing in today's world.

 

[forcetrip]

Small town girls are doing the same where they do not have millions to back them or even prestigious degrees in their own country.

Resolving carpooling woes: The hitchhikers’ app

“I come from Sadiqabad, that’s half an hour from Rahim Yar Khan. It’s the last city in Punjab before you enter Sindh and the first one when entering Punjab from Sindh,” Madeeha Hassan says as she explains the location of her hometown. Locations, and how to get to them, are very important to Madeeha who has gone ahead and created Savaree, Pakistan’s first carpooling mobile application. And as with most invention, it was born out of necessity. “I have been out of my hometown and living in Lahore since 2007 when I joined Government College University to study biotechnology,” she says with a grin. “Bio and molecular technology is however completely opposite to what I ended up doing!”
Madeeha admits that coming from a small town she was at first really scared to find herself in a big city like Lahore. “I would hide myself from the world. You could always find me in the library with my laptop. Everyone around me seemed so knowledgeable about things; the girls seemed so sharp and sure of themselves that they would give me such a complex. I felt I was no competition for the local Lahore girls. There were times when I wanted to run back home but then I thought I was in Lahore because my father had sent me there to study and he had done so because he had 100 per cent confidence in me. I couldn’t let my father down,” she smiles.
Madeeha then also found employment in Lahore. “From 2011 to 2014, I worked as a user interface designer. That’s also how the idea first came to me. I lived in Gulberg and my office was at quite a distance from there in Thokar. Most of the time I overslept, which resulted in my missing my van and then I had to go to work in a rickshaw,” she says.
The app was first introduced at the Lahore Civic Hackathon competition back in January this year. “We were a team of four people, myself and Qasim Zafar, who are co-founders and Ahmed Shoaib and Farhan Ahmed who are developers,” she states.
No car? No problem! A simple app designed by a small town girl may soon solve your carpooling woes

“At the hackathon we got two days to develop and pitch an idea. I came up with Savaree, which was always there at the back of my head, and it won. My boss Yasser Bashir at Arbisoft, a rapid web applications company I used to work for then, pushed me to take my idea further, so here I am,” she adds.
That’s how Savaree was launched in April. “Well, at least the web app and mobile app were ready then. They are in use by some already,” she shares.
Right now Madeeha is busy in an accelerator programme for Savaree at the Lahore School of Management Sciences (LUMS). “We are growing the idea at i2i or invest 2 innovate, as it is also called, at LUMS Centre for Entrepreneurship. Basically it is a startup incubator. We are in the process of short listing startups to ready it for pitching to investors,” she says.
“From Lahore, we intend taking Savaree to Islamabad, then Karachi and then the entire country. We want it as a lift app for the Third World.”
She explains further about the app, “Please do not compare it to Uber, which is more of a taxi service. Savaree is more community-focused, connecting people while changing the entire idea of getting a ride.
“The app links or connects you to people you may or may not know within an organisation or university. You need to sign up with your enterprise or organisation email id. That’s what we work with. So the people you are going to carpool with either belong to your organisation or university.
“Of course, when you need a ride, you won’t sit in just any car that stops for you. So Savaree puts you in touch with people who work in the same office, building, premises or organisation as you, generally employees of any sizeable organisation or students. It works through app currency or virtual currency. For instance, you can buy a bucket of Savaree miles. Like if you travelled 10 miles a day, those miles can be transferred to the driver. And then if those drivers want to they can cash the miles with us. People can also transfer amounts through credit card but when I first thought of coming up with such an app I was thinking of students and students are usually pretty much broke. No credit cards there,” she points out.
About privacy concerns when sharing information with them, Madeeha assures us “The information or data gathered by us about you is secure. We have a disclaimer which says that, too. There are features that you can open yourself if you want open carpooling that would allow you to catch a ride with someone from outside your organisation, too. But there, too, we are giving you this option of travelling with someone who belongs to some other organisation or university just so you know where they are from.
“To prevent further misuse we have a gender filter as well, where girls can ride with girls. Being a girl myself, I’m very careful about such things. I even checked your Twitter profile before agreeing to meet you. What struck a chord was you calling yourself a ‘tomboy’,” she laughs. “I have myself always been a tomboy, playing cricket and all.”
And then she starts grinning again at something she just remembered. “When I first thought about the need for something like this, my elder brother thought it was a hookup application!”

 

[VCheng]

Highly motivated an determined individuals can and do succeed regardless of location. There are many such examples in Pakistan highlighted by Geo TV in its "Zara Sochieye" spots. Only those who make excuses rather than make the effort guarantee their failure.

Haq's Musings: Upwardly Mobile Pakistan on 66th Independence Day

Sure, if you tell us about successes of such individual from within Pakistan, that'd be great.

 

[Donatello]

Exactly, it is this value that her education brings that is important, not where she came from.

The usual, VCheng at his best.

Do you know that some of the most successful people rose to high positions of excellence because of the adversity they had to face?

In this case, this girl grew up in hardship, home schooled, yet it is that ambition and the challenge to overcome the shortcomings that led her to Cornell and Harvard. Her youth DEFINED her adulthood.

You should read Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers' (if you haven't already) in which he explains how the past is very much responsible for one's future. In the case of this girl, Pakistan and it's hard environment provided that vital character building cues, which would otherwise be missing if she was born in a typical western household. Imagine she was raised in a typical American household, she would be like the hundreds of thousands of zombies working 9-5. But no, she went a step ahead. How many from Cornell or Harvard take up jobs and how many go ahead into an unknown private venture? You would be surprised at the figures.

If education was all that mattered, then All Americans must be successful entrepreneurs, since they have the top notch education. But we know that no two graduates are the same.

 

[VCheng]

If education was all that mattered, then All Americans must be successful entrepreneurs, since they have the top notch education. But we know that no two graduates are the same.

Do you have an idea of how many entrepreneurs there are in Silicon Valley alone? She is just one of thousands upon thousands. BFD.

 

[xyxmt]

Small-town girl has cornell and Harvard degrees in her bag, hence the money from Google.

Small town girl gets in Harvard and Cornell is another news in itself.

 

[Donatello]

Do you have an idea of how many entrepreneurs there are in Silicon Valley alone? She is just one of thousands upon thousands. BFD.

and most of those entrepreneurs share a common trait: The ability to overcome adversity and hard ship. In this girl's case, her youth was the vital experience.

It is not just for entrepreneurs, but scientists/engineers/thinkers as well.