Ali Sohani
Digital Transformation and Innovation Leader | Startup Advisory | Author and Speaker on Radical Leadership and Emerging Tech
25.2
Years of Experience
Education
Companies
the paytech book, kifayat, cubixcommerce, happyforce.co, cubix inc, multiple startups, national technology group, systems ltd visionet systems inc, nanosoft systems and ainanosoft, various institutions
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Experience
2019 - Present
the paytech book
Co Author
Wrote about the implications of emerging technologies in the payment industry, specifically the way Distributed Ledger Technology with the combination of AI, RPA, and Advanced Analytics will change the way payment use-cases are catered and way the applications are built and used. --- The PayTech Book: The Payment Technology Handbook for Investors, Entrepreneurs, and FinTech Visionaries Editor(s): Susanne Chishti, Tony Craddock, and Robert Courtneidge First published: 4 November 2019 Online ISBN: 9781119551973 | DOI: 10.1002/9781119551973 © 2020 FINTECH Circle Ltd
2018 - 2018
kifayat
Co-Founder
Kifayat is a FinTech Platform, that with its AI, NLP, Analytics, and Machine-Learning algorithms i.e. chatbots in local languages, e-learning & recommendation systems - uplifts unbanked and underbanked masses from a level of financial unawareness to the level of “financial wellness”, and it does so by leading them to the best financial product at a given time. Kifayat being a FinTech platform has worked with several of financial products to bring them on board for customers and their financial journey towards "financial wellness", some of the key products are: + Kifayat Ballot Committees* - This one digitizes the process of managing as well as participating in BCs. Targets to access the household women and rural male population majorly due to whom the BCs are 3rd most used method in the country to "save money". + Kifayat Wallet API - A generic Wallet API that can enables Kifayat line of products as well as is open to empower other FinTech companies who want to have a wallet facility in their product, and wish that wallets internal integration with several of Payment Gateways, Open Bank APIs, P2P Payment Channels and other FinTechs could've been taken care of already, so that company focuses on innovation rather than development of something from scratch. -- Extension Prototype/ Whitepaper: 'Kifayat OffPay Application' - Cashless/ Digital Payment facility that can work offline taken care of via Bluetooth Technology. + Kifayat DOST Bank - Built atop of Cubix APIs framework... A natural language interface (Chatterbot) technology that converts the Bank into a friendly "Account Manager, Financial Advisor as well as Investment Counsellor" into a single app, accessible by consumer with a single tap, one consumer can carry out a conversation with. * Kifayat is a FinTech startup, a subsidiary of Cubix.co. In February 2018, it won the 1st Prize in FinTech Hackathon held at Momentum Tech Conference 2018. http://techmag.pk/cubix-bags-first-prize-fintech-hackathon-2018/
2017 - 2019
cubixcommerce
Co-Founder
* Market Need . There isn't a one platform in the world as of now that allows people to setup their business for online presence in end to end terms. . We're talking here about hassles of back-office: from (stock keeping, lead-time management) of "Inventory management" to (assembling, packaging) of "Warehouse management"... from products/ services listing to their arrangement in categories for a showcase as in "Store management" and ultimately distributing or making sure about the delivery of service or product from scheduled perspective. Solution: Cubix-Commerce . Starting from year 2017 to this year, we have been working on this, shaping our idea more and more, with each customer we're getting on board. . We don't just have backend, but mobile apps for consumers as well as of drivers, that too on both platforms, that too developed in native. . Also we have already developed nifty extensions for the project... that include but doesn't limit to Chatter-Bot, citing the trend that world is shifting towards Conversational apps. This one is set to allow users to buy product, hire an item or book a service right away from the conversation window. We have bulk import and export. We have business intelligence, to detect the supply and demand curve, to make things more predictable. For Vendors it's: One shop from where they can pick any module that can empower or automate their business of selling/ buying or offering on hire/ for service... For Consumers... it's access to their vendor and whatever they offer either as product or service via conversations and social network built around it. With discounts that people can avail by inviting other people on board. For platform... it's ability to sell individual modules per subscription - pay as you go basis, whole solution on license basis, and customization in form of pay for the bells and whistles... It's not a win-win, but win-win-win.
2016 - 2018
happyforce.co
Co-Founder
Happyforce helps companies to turn an unengaged employee into a high-performance change-leader. A one-window mobile-app solution to convert the business workforce (mostly unengaged ones) into the happy-force (fully engaged ones). A full employee life-cycle workplace solution packaged with recruitment drive, applicant tracking, employee onboarding, e-learning (via chatbots), employee interaction, in-company social-network, team collaboration features, task management, and fully integrated HRMS solution. - ChatBots helping Employees with Company, Policies, Products, Processes and Dept level FAQs and leads them towards content that can help them to grow in knowledge as well as skills that are needed for their next goal/ target in terms of career advancement. - With the gamification enabled micro-LMS (learning management system) and PACE (person-specific auto-adjusted course-meal education) technology behind it... It starts to train-test and re-train employees in what's most necessary for them to reduce the gap in terms of their knowledge and skills.
2015 - 2019
cubix inc
Chief Technology Officer
Spearheaded the Pre-Sales and Production-House at Cubix. This covers all the software products that get built in App Factory, Game-Studio, Enterprise Den, FinTech Works and the Data-Science Department. The first two I grew by ten-folds, the rest of the three I built from scratch. Responsibly fulfilled: 1. Led strategic planning for overall Technology development and Software production efforts for major clients all over the world, most prominently in the US, Middle-East, and Africa. 2. Recruitment, training, leadership, and team-building of personnel (80+) working in the Production Department. 3. Headed Project and Portfolio Management, training and guiding Project managers and Business Analysts for on-time, in-cost, per-scope, and with-quality deliveries. 4. Developed and incrementally improved Standard Processes for best practices in software development, quality assurance, client engagement, and project management. 5. Headed in-house technology product development and data-science initiatives to build the company’s pipeline to offer flag-ship solutions (as mentioned in the list of projects) in the market. Developed an array of products in the web (smart portals), apps (intelligent thin-clients) and games (e-learning to RPG game-engines) that are enabled and empowered by Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Statistical Analysis, and Machine Learning. In #Cubix, I led and created solutions/ products in the following key domains/ technologies with my hand-picked and nurtured teams: Food-Intelligence, Ed-Tech, SocialTech, Smart-Mobility, Smart-Health, Smart-City, IOT, Distributed Ledger, Blockchain, CryptoCurrency, FinTech, Real-Estate/ PropTech, eCommerce, mCommerce, Digital Payments, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Predictive Analytics, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Simulation, Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) and Realtime Strategy (RTS) Games.
2009 - Present
multiple startups
Strategic Advisor
Engaged in advising multiple companies (check out the list of projects) in developing the minimal viable products, transitioning product ideas into reality, with proper planning and phase-wise execution with measurable indicators of success, along with adaptability strategies to achieve a fit between product and market. Advised/ supervised development of products/ solutions centered around: * Artificial Intelligence and RPA (Robotic Process Automation) * Big-Data driven Matchmaking, Hyper-Personalization driven Recommendation systems * Dynamic Pricing Models - Inventory/ Yield management or Revenue Optimization * Crowd-Intelligence - Crowd-data driven machine learning systems * Conversational Apps with Chatter-Bot and Natural Language Processing based technology. Use-cases in conversational commerce and conversational banking. * Interactive Experiences for Hyper-Engagement (as Mobile and Web - Apps and Games/ Gamification in Edutainment and E-learning) in forms of AR, Simulation, Turn-Based Strategy, RTS, MOBA and MMORPG * Smart (context/ theme based) mapping, tracking, retrieval, and management system * Bionic Organization and OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) Goal-setting system. * Business processes automation via workflow and rules management system. * Project management and Risk management system * KPIs, CSFs, and Balanced Scorecard based BI and Dashboard systems * HRM Job Evaluation System (based on Hay Methodology) * DAPPS (Decentralised Apps) based on distributed ledger technology like BlockChain/ HashGraph. * FinTech (Digital/ Branchless Banking, Mobile Payments, QR Payments, p2p Transfers, eKYC, Digital Transformation, AML) * Building highly-scalable and high-performance cloud solutions with AWS Services (Cloudfront, S3, ELB, EC2, SNS, SQS, Lambda, RDS, EFS, Beanstalk, ElasticCache, Managed Streaming with Kafka - MSK, etc)
2008 - 2009
national technology group
Head of MTR - Mubasher (Project Management Consultant)
* Played role of an Engagement Manager for Company’s flagship products deployed to Major Bank backed and independent Brokerage houses. * Effectively contributed in development of newly founded PMO, establishing up processes, guidelines, best practices, templates, reporting criteria etc. for all essentials required to manage project from foundation to an end. * Successfully collaborated with in-house/ client teams, helping them with knowledge of business domain along technical expertise, to foresee and resolve issues came anywhere from Business Analysis to UAT stage.
2006 - 2008
systems ltd visionet systems inc
Lead Software Architect and Product Manager (Consultant Software Engineer)
* Supervised multiple Projects in Research, Development or Production support mode together. * Conducted Software Architecture and Design Reviews in company level Software Product design, architecture and development. * Key leader in company wide Software Architecture Group responsible in strategy, adoption of standards and industry wide best practices in software analysis, design, management and development to increase overall productivity of teams, leading finally to SDLC Optimization. * Was involved in Proposals, Client Interactions, Requirements Analysis, Estimations, Project Scheduling, Design, Development, Testing, Integration, Deployment and Support. * Managed the team of Business Analysts, Software Engineers, Quality and Testing Engineers which includes setting productivity and accuracy goals, motivating the team to meet and exceed those goals, delegating tasks, managing workflow, writing performance appraisals, and helping each member of team to reach their career goals.
2000 - 2015
nanosoft systems and ainanosoft
Founding Director and Chief Data Scientist (Role: Consultancy-specific)
* Started company to develop and provide consultancy on Artificial Intelligence oriented Systems. * Developed products like - ALI [Artificial Language Intelligence] (NLP Chatter bot Technology) - MIMS [Magic Info Mining System] (Information mining from large corpus) - myPortal (Personalized content dashboard management System) - myADS (Context based Ad retrieval System) - myNews (Automated news extraction from customizable news sources, auto topic detection, ranking and recommendation on relevance) - Net-Work Expert (Expert System to diagnose and resolve Intranet Problems) - Mechas’n’Orgas (Prototype of Real Time Strategy Game) * R&D in areas like NLP, text mining, knowledge extraction, topic classification, statistics and probability distributions, Monte Carlo simulation, AI in Games, reinforcement learning, evolving neural networks, genetic algorithms, machine learning, fuzzy logic and pattern detection in collective intelligence.
1999 - Present
various institutions
Guest/Visiting/Part-time Faculty
* Coached and trained several professionals/ teams and institutions on subjects such as: Decentralized, Distributed and p2p Architecture Use of Distributed Ledgers (like BlockChain, Hashgraph, and Tangle) Monolithic to Microservices based Architecture development Lean Startup - Entrepreneurship Lean Methodology: Minimum Viable Product(MVP) development Agile Manifesto: XP, SCRUM, FDD, DSDM, and Kanban Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems Visualization of Complex Data Sets Collective Intelligence - Crowd Sourcing and Expert Sourcing Reputation/ Trust Networks, Incentive Frameworks and Recommendation Systems Bio-inspired Software Architecture and Algorithms for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Proactive Project Management with Change management and Risk management Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) High-Performance Culture and Leadership Development SaaS - Software as a Service Development Software Architecture and Design Software Architecture Evaluation: ATAM, SAAM, ARID Programming Generic/ Polymorphic Systems Workflow Orchestrator and Business Rules Engine Inheritance based Frameworks vs. Code Generation Configuration vs. Conventions Agent-Based Programming Model and Blackboard Architecture. Entropy Reduction, Refactoring Interpreters and Parsers Design Patterns and Types of Coupling Tracer Bullets (Evolutionary Prototyping) Taught/ Supervised in Mohammad Ali Jinnah University (MAJU), Khadim Ali Shah Bukhari Institute of Technology (KASBIT), Bahria University, PAF KEIT, NED, KU, APTECH, etc. Besides this an Open-Source evangelist, helping people achieve 3 major advantages of open source platform: - The lower total cost of ownership - Reduced dependence on software vendors - Best ones are easier to extend and customize
Experience
22 Skills
Advertising
analytics
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Automation
Data Science
Data Scientist
Design
Education
Electronics
Entrepreneurship
Information Retrieval
Leadership
Machine Learning (ML)
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
P2P
Process Automation
Product Development
R
Research
Research and Development (R&D)
Research Scientist
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Education
