Qazafi Qayyum is Chief Executive Officer of TenX. With more than 25 years of technology experience, Qazafi is a seasoned professional with a proven history of success in devising reliable strategies around data analytics to drive sustainable business growth for telecommunication, financial services, government, and manufacturing industries.

Prior to joining TenX, Qazafi served as the Country Managing Director of Teradata for Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka, and has consulted for global high-profile organizations on business analytics, AI, and data-driven growth strategies.

Qazafi holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from FAST- NUCE.

Following are the edited excerpts of a recent conversation BR Research had with Qazafi Qayyum:

BR Research: Tell us about yourself and your journey with TenX

Qazafi Qayyum: I have been in the industry for about 25 years now, focusing mainly on AI and Data Analytics throughout my entire career. I worked with Teradata for 15 years in various management roles before joining TenX around six years ago.

TenX is an award-winning global artificial intelligence, data analytics, and software development consultancy. Headquartered in the US, our company has a presence in 5 countries with two offshore centers including Pakistan, where we have over 200 professionals. Our largest office is in Lahore, with 120 employees, and we also have offices in Karachi and Islamabad.

Our customers are currently based out of 11 countries covering four continents. So, it’s a wide spectrum in terms of regions we are operating in. We have a branch office in Australia, which was opened last year, and we also opened a branch in UK with the plan to be serving EU. In the Middle East, we are currently operating through partners, but we are in the process of setting up both in the UAE and the Saudi Arabia.

Our clientele spans worldwide across conventional industries such as telecom, finance, manufacturing etc. as well as emerging industries like sports tech, Agri tech, health tech, ed tech.

BRR: What’s the hype about Artificial Intelligence?

QQ: AI is the buzzword these days. There is a component of AI in every industry and every touch point in our daily lives, which is complementing, supporting, and assisting us. So much so that the companies and startups that are leveraging AI see their valuations go up drastically in the market these days. We recently signed a MoU with Jazz to streamline their Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) processes. We are confident that this collaboration will empower Jazz to accelerate its AI program, leading to improved operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, paving the way for a smart, connected future.

Furthermore, operating in this domain also gives us an opportunity to incubate new ideas. In addition to the services we are offering to our customers, we are also incubating ideas at TenX. Once these ideas mature and see fulfillment, they are spun off into separate, independent organizations. As part of TenX, we incubated Pakistan’s first SBP licensed credit bureau by the name of Tasdeeq. It’s a separate organization, but we remain its technical partner.

Our second such project is with Shaukat Khanum where we are currently working with them actively, and collaborating with their doctors to come up with AI model where we can use mammograms and use them to predict breast cancer. This acts as a second point to augment the decisions of the doctors. Studies have shown that two data point decision making where a human doctor is being complemented with an AI model, the accuracy of the decision goes up by 10 percent, which is huge in terms of potential impact and outcome for the patient. And the second is the long-term impact where the global population growth is expanding the doctor to patient ratio to abnormal levels, which is making the access to initial prognosis become very difficult. So, technologies like these that we are working with make us able to serve a larger mass of the population, especially those who face a challenge in access to qualified doctors. It shows the sort of impact AI has in our daily lives.

BRR: How would you explain the progress of AI in Pakistan?

QQ: The pace of adoption of AI is naturally slower in Pakistan than the developed countries, which is nothing to be alarmed about. The second aspect is how many organizations are talking about AI; what they intend to do about it; and how it will help their businesses. Very few organizations – globally and in Pakistan – are walking the talk. This includes making investments by not only spending time engaging the partners but also spending time on the business side. When we talk about AI, nothing can be achieved from the technical or vendor focus only; a lot of involvement is required from the data, which is also a prerequisite, and in terms of business knowledge that needs to come from the customers.

The nature of AI in today’s businesses is that it is still at a stage where some of the used cases are going to be more of R&D. There is a lot of experimentation involved. The actual success that you can get in AI in large enterprises is still unproven. The banking sector globally is one area that has many proven used cases where AI has been able to solve problems and add value. And now these used cases are being adopted in Pakistan. A lot of the organizations that are not mature in terms of their vision stay away from being the early adopters of new used cases. This is true for Pakistan. Banks, telecoms and even government organizations are not taking lead in being the first to prove or disprove a particular used case and how AI is benefiting them or not.

I would say there is adoption, but it’s slower, which is natural as compared to more developed countries. More and more organizations have started to talk about it, and the good thing is a lot of the new businesses in the startup landscape have their value proposition entirely based on the adoption of AI in one way or the other. And this is why you will see the adoption of AI much faster among the startups than the large organizations. This is how I see AI evolving in Pakistan over the next couple of years.

BRR: How do you see the human capital in Pakistan in tech space and how do you see the institutes and universities producing the right kind of talent. Do we have sufficient talent in AI, or is there a need to pivot the academics and course work somehow towards AI?

QQ: While it might be still a lot of talk, we are seeing some improvement in terms of the actual impact of these discussions. It’s true that there is a huge gap between the expertise we have and the requirements of the industry. And it is widening in terms of the pent-up demand from the industry side versus the output from the universities. Assuming there is a pool of 5K-6K hirable students, not all are focusing or equipped for AI space. But there are more and more individuals who would want to align their careers in data analytics and AI space. And there are reasons for that. Firstly, independent analysts are predicting that the adoption of AI across businesses over the next 5-7 years is going to be huge. This effectively means that not only will there be more jobs in the sector, but these jobs will also be among the highest paying jobs as well.

Pakistan is well positioned in terms of the quality of the resources we have. We have top talent that is being positioned by the industry at a price point that is competitive. We are doing a lot of business in the US where we are working with different startups and organizations not only because they are getting resources at a cheaper price point but more importantly, they get similar value as they would hire a person in the US. It is important for the industry and the academia to understand that they need to continuously refine their programs and align them with the global requirements. It’s a work in progress and the government needs to play its role. They recently announced the draft National AI Policy, which may be a starting point, but they must continuously upgrade it, keep it relevant and align it with the AI evolution.

BRR: You are also the Co-Founder & Strategic Advisor of Agrilift. Tell us a bit about this startup and how you are making use of AI to solve problems.

QQ: The bigger idea behind Agrilift was the challenge of global hunger and the dangers of population explosion of food security. If you look at Pakistan, our population growth has been massive; our food imports have reached unsustainable levels; and our yield per acre of all our cash crops has remained stagnant over the last decade. All this paints a very scary picture for the country in terms of food security. The concept behind Agrilift is very simple. Agrilift is a Next-Gen precision farming solution that improves yields and empowers farmers to produce more food in a sustainable and eco-friendly way. We are at an advanced stage of our product development, and we are trying to do some model farming as well to show the impact it could potentially have on crop yields, etc.

BRR: What are your plans at TenX over the next couple of years?

QQ: At TenX, we want to continue to grow and take initiatives for helping customers solve real world business problems, because we feel proud to be associated with their success. We want to be able to provide an environment to our employees where they can be associated with such innovative work which helps them in their professional career and at the same time provide our employees a career path where they can grow not only internally but also externally as we expand globally.