TechSimulater

A Message from Lord Pickles and Lord Blunkett, followed by TechSimulater's best practice article

The ability to listen and learn from one another has always been vital in parliament, in business and in most aspects of daily life. But at this particular moment in time, as national and global events continue to reiterate, it is uncommonly crucial that we forge new channels of communication and reinforce existing ones. The following article from TechSimulater is an attempt to do just that. We would welcome your thoughts on this or any other Parliamentary Review article.

Blunkett signature Rt Hon The Lord David Blunkett
Pickles signature Rt Hon The Lord Eric Pickles

www.techsimulater.com

THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW
Highlighting best practice
THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW
Highlighting best practice
12 | TECHSIMULATER
CEO Khurram Asif
TechSimulater are currently working on
Gelt, a new challenger banking app
Khurram Asif developed his first app at the age of 13 and
has continued to work in digital development ever since.
After a successful bid to transform Qatar Airways’ digital
presence, he was awarded a $30 million contract with the
aviation giant. Today, Khurram is working on a banking app,
Gelt, and PaperIt, a fully digitised note-taking service. He talks
with
The Parliamentary Review
about his astonishing journey
and international expansion.
My journey in the field of building and creating apps started when I was just 13.
At that time,
Angry Birds
, which had been developed by Rovio, was the number
one game across all platforms; inspired by this, I developed my own concept,
tweaking the format to create a new game. I sent my proposal to Rovio, assisted by
my English teacher at the time, and was accepted onto the project as an external
project manager, with a £2.5 million contract.
Building experience and expertise
This initial interaction with the sector was invaluable. At such a young age, I was
learning how the tech industry functioned and was gaining crucial experience,
which led me to write my second proposal.
After going on a family holiday to Doha, flying with Qatar Airways, I noticed
the disparity between the success of the airline, which was statistically speaking
the number one airline in the world at that time, and the poor quality of their
technological presence. While they may have ranked top overall, their website
didn’t make it into the top ten.
FACTS ABOUT
TECHSIMULATER
»CEO: Khurram Asif
»Established in 2011
»Based in Hoxton, Toronto and
New York
»Services: App, web and
software development
»www.techsimulater.com
TechSimulater
13TECHSIMULATER |
BUSINESS SERVICES
I saw an opportunity and drew up
a proposal, detailing my plans to
revolutionise and modernise Qatar
Airways’ use of technology. Key to
this would be the ability to book
flights through an app and use
paperless boarding systems instead
of physical boarding passes. Based
on my experience with Rovio, and
the strength of my proposal, my
application was successful and I was
awarded a $30 million contract,
something which truly changed
my life. Rather than acting as
external project managers, we were
intimately involved in the creation
of the system itself, hiring an
outside team and undertaking the
developmentourselves.
Striving forward
Since that time, we have been on an
amazing journey, much of which is
covered in our previous contribution to
the
Review
.
We have expanded internationally,
and l have moved to Canada for
a couple of years to expand our
presence in North America. To support
these efforts, we have opened new
offices in New York and Toronto
and I travel freely between the two,
getting directly involved with our
expansionefforts.
We have also begun work on two
new projects, supplementing our
existing Heelo and DrugFreeTaste
products. The first of these is Gelt, a
new banking app. With the recent
explosion in smaller, smartphone-
centred banking apps, like Monzo and
Starling, we have identified a gap in
the market. The development of this
app was prompted by our issues with
Barclays, specifically an instance last
year in which they froze our assets
due to their misunderstanding of
the international transfers we were
undertaking. This highlighted to me
that there was a gap in the market for
certain types of customers, especially
those in the tech industry.
Drawing on the Hebrew word for
money for the name, our aim is to
provide the market with easy access
to banking, cheaper rates and a
novel twist on Know Your Customer
regulations to make our customers
feel more at ease. This project is still in
development and we are continually
adding innovative elements, including
building new futures and developing a
credit card to accompany the app, the
first time any online banking company
will offer such a product. We predict
it will be around two and a half years
until this product is launched.
Our second new project is PaperIt.
As climate issues, and especially
deforestation, are coming ever more to
the forefront of global discussion, we
set out to create a product that would
fully digitise the note-making process,
removing the need for any physical
paper documents.
Utilising AI and machine learning,
the program underlying PaperIt will
automatically create a summary of any
new file, allowing the user to find past
notes or documents with ease. There
are many note-taking apps currently
available, but they contain significant
flaws, including making individual
TechSimulater’s UK
office is based in London
My journey in
app
development
started when
Iwas just 13
“
“
BEST PRACTICE SPONSOR 2020
13TECHSIMULATER |
BUSINESS SERVICES
I saw an opportunity and drew up
a proposal, detailing my plans to
revolutionise and modernise Qatar
Airways’ use of technology. Key to
this would be the ability to book
flights through an app and use
paperless boarding systems instead
of physical boarding passes. Based
on my experience with Rovio, and
the strength of my proposal, my
application was successful and I was
awarded a $30 million contract,
something which truly changed
my life. Rather than acting as
external project managers, we were
intimately involved in the creation
of the system itself, hiring an
outside team and undertaking the
developmentourselves.
Striving forward
Since that time, we have been on an
amazing journey, much of which is
covered in our previous contribution to
the
Review
.
We have expanded internationally,
and l have moved to Canada for
a couple of years to expand our
presence in North America. To support
these efforts, we have opened new
offices in New York and Toronto
and I travel freely between the two,
getting directly involved with our
expansionefforts.
We have also begun work on two
new projects, supplementing our
existing Heelo and DrugFreeTaste
products. The first of these is Gelt, a
new banking app. With the recent
explosion in smaller, smartphone-
centred banking apps, like Monzo and
Starling, we have identified a gap in
the market. The development of this
app was prompted by our issues with
Barclays, specifically an instance last
year in which they froze our assets
due to their misunderstanding of
the international transfers we were
undertaking. This highlighted to me
that there was a gap in the market for
certain types of customers, especially
those in the tech industry.
Drawing on the Hebrew word for
money for the name, our aim is to
provide the market with easy access
to banking, cheaper rates and a
novel twist on Know Your Customer
regulations to make our customers
feel more at ease. This project is still in
development and we are continually
adding innovative elements, including
building new futures and developing a
credit card to accompany the app, the
first time any online banking company
will offer such a product. We predict
it will be around two and a half years
until this product is launched.
Our second new project is PaperIt.
As climate issues, and especially
deforestation, are coming ever more to
the forefront of global discussion, we
set out to create a product that would
fully digitise the note-making process,
removing the need for any physical
paper documents.
Utilising AI and machine learning,
the program underlying PaperIt will
automatically create a summary of any
new file, allowing the user to find past
notes or documents with ease. There
are many note-taking apps currently
available, but they contain significant
flaws, including making individual
TechSimulater’s UK
office is based in London
My journey in
app
development
started when
Iwas just 13
“
“
THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW
Highlighting best practice
THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW
Highlighting best practice
14 | TECHSIMULATER
files very hard to find. This can lead to
documents being lost and deleted, and
we set out to fix all of these issues.
Our product will be compatible
across a wide range of devices, from
smartphones to tablets, and is specifically
designed to support devices with a smart
pen capability. Both Apple and Microsoft
have focused on developing this
new technology, and by creating an
indexing system that can help support
the making of digital notes, we can
support and tap into these efforts.
Alongside the environmental benefit
that will come with replacing paper
with an easy to use digital note-taking
system, our product will also help those
with visual impairments or dyslexia.
Through a voice-activated system,
which we are creating alongside
Grammarly application programming
interfaces, users will be able to pull up
documents using only their voice, with
the system locating these documents
through the information it has
garnered from eachfile.
Refining our portfolio
Alongside these new developments,
we have also continued to refine our
existing products. We have adapted
and developed Heelo, increasingly
focusing on the data aspect of the
system and switching our focus from
targeting consumers to business-
to-business interactions. Because
the system is able to host 24 people
simultaneously in HD, with the contents
of the discussion being encrypted,
this product ideally fits the needs of
businesses looking to work remotely.
The system has also seen significant
interest from around the world and we
are the first platform of our type to be
allowed to operate in the Middle East,
having received approval to operate in
both Doha andDubai.
As we look to the future, we are
committed to pursuing further
innovation. As the sector becomes
increasingly data driven and focused
on machine learning, we are targeting
new opportunities to harness these
developing technologies for use in
our products and systems. With the
development of our two new systems,
supplemented by various external
projects and existing products, I am
confident we can continue to be at the
forefront of change and innovation in
our sector.
Heelo is the
first platform
of its type to
be allowed to
operate in the
Middle East
“
“
Khurram and his team
continue to innovate

www.techsimulater.com

This article was sponsored by TechSimulater. The Parliamentary Review is wholly funded by the representatives who write for it. The publication in which this article originally appeared contained the following foreword from Rt Hon Kwasi Kwarteng.

Rt Hon Kwasi Kwarteng's Foreword For The Parliamentary Review

By Rt Hon Kwasi Kwarteng

This year’s Parliamentary Review reflects on a tumultuous and extraordinary year, globally and nationally. As well as being an MP, I am a keen student of history, and I am conscious that 2020 would mark the end of an era. It will be remembered as the year in which we concluded Brexit negotiations and finally left the European Union. Above all, it will be remembered as the year of Covid-19.

In our fight against the pandemic, I am delighted that our vaccination programme is beginning to turn the tide – and I pay tribute to the British businesses, scientists and all those who have helped us to achieve this. But the virus has dealt enormous damage, and we now have a duty to rebuild our economy.

We must ensure that businesses are protected. We have made more than £350 billion available to that end, with grants, business rates relief and our furlough scheme supporting more than 11 million people and jobs in every corner of the country, maintaining livelihoods while easing the pressure on employers. The next step is to work with business to build back better and greener, putting the net zero carbon challenge at the heart of our recovery. This is a complex undertaking, but one which I hope will be recognised as a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Through the prime minister’s ten point plan for a green industrial revolution, we can level up every region of the UK, supporting 250,000 green jobs while we accelerate our progress towards net zero carbon emissions.

With our commitment to raise R&D spending to 2.4% of GDP and the creation of the Advanced Research & Invention Agency, we are empowering our fantastic researchers to take on groundbreaking research, delivering funding with flexibility and speed. With this approach, innovators will be able to work with our traditional industrial heartlands to explore new technologies, and design and manufacture the products on which the future will be built – ready for export around the globe.

And I believe trade will flourish. We are a leading nation in the fight against climate change. As the host of COP26 this year, we have an incredible opportunity to market our low-carbon products and expertise. Our departure from the EU gives us the chance to be a champion of truly global free trade; we have already signed trade deals with more than 60 countries around the world.

As we turn the page and leave 2020 behind, I am excited about the new chapter which Britain is now writing for itself, and for the opportunities which lie ahead of us.
Rt Hon Kwasi Kwarteng
Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy