I am often guilty of being a perfectionist when comes to designing systems. For me, the system has to be able to scale to millions of users, survive machine failures and network outages even before a single user has started using it. Therefore, all of our systems are based on Open Source Linux-based software, often running on clusters of machines with fairly sophisticated distributed algorithms.

This is the first time someone has been given an MIT Technovator Award for work done at the grassroots level in Pakistan. I am fortunate to have received this award, but this award truly belongs to the wonderful teams we have at Dritte.org, See`n`report and chOpaal.pk. I hope this is the first of many International awards for ICT4D researchers and social entrepreneurs in Pakistan.

I think they need to look at local problems and find out of the box solutions. We are the sixth most populous country in the world and the 4th largest user of SMS on the global map! There is a lot of opportunity at the bottom of the pyramid, both for impacting lives and building profitable ventures.

ChOpaal.pk and See`n`Report are finally becoming profitable. Our work at Dritte.org will soon be deployed for networking rural areas in Pakistan.