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 The Rt Hon Theresa May MP.

The Rt Hon Theresa May MP's Foreword For The Parliamentary Review

By The Rt Hon Theresa May MP

This foreword from the then Prime Minister appeared in the 2018/19 Parliamentary Review.

British politics provides ample material for analysis in the pages of The Parliamentary Review. For Her Majesty’s Government, our task in the year ahead is clear: to achieve the best Brexit deal for Britain and to carry on our work to build a more prosperous and united country – one that truly works for everyone. 

The right Brexit deal will not be sufficient on its own to secure a more prosperous future for Britain. We also need to ensure that our economy is ready for what tomorrow will bring. Our Modern Industrial Strategy is our plan to do that. It means Government stepping up to secure the foundations of our productivity: providing an education system that delivers the skills our economy needs, improving school standards and transforming technical education; delivering infrastructure for growth; ensuring people have the homes they need in the places they want to live. It is all about taking action for the long-term that will pay dividends in the future.

But it also goes beyond that. Government, the private sector and academia working together as strategic partners achieve far more than we could separately. That is why we have set an ambitious goal of lifting UK public and private research and development investment to 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2027. It is why we are developing four Grand Challenges, the big drivers of social and economic change in the world today: harnessing artificial intelligence and the data revolution; leading in changes to the future of mobility; meeting the challenges of our ageing society; and driving ahead the revolution in clean growth. By focusing our efforts on making the most of these areas of enormous potential, we can develop new exports, grow new industries and create more good jobs in every part of our country.

Years of hard work and sacrifice from the British people have got our deficit down by over three quarters. We are building on this success by taking a balanced approach to public spending. We are continuing to deal with our debts, so that our economy can remain strong and we can protect people’s jobs, and at the same time we are investing in vital public services, like our NHS. We have set out plans to increase NHS funding annually by an average by 3.4 percent in real terms: that is £394 million a week more. In return, the NHS will produce a ten-year plan, led by doctors and nurses, to eliminate waste and improve patient care.

I believe that Britain can look to the future with confidence. We are leaving the EU and setting a new course for prosperity as a global trading nation. We have a Modern Industrial Strategy that is strengthening the foundations of our economy and helping us to seize the opportunities of the future. We are investing in the public services we all rely on and helping them to grow and improve. Building on our country’s great strengths – our world-class universities and researchers, our excellent services sector, our cutting edge manufacturers, our vibrant creative industries, our dedicated public servants – we can look towards a new decade that is ripe with possibility. The government I lead is doing all it can to make that brighter future a reality for everyone in our country. 

British politics provides ample material for analysis in the pages of The Parliamentary Review 
The Rt Hon Theresa May MP
Prime Minister