Iqbal quadir grameenphone internet

Bangladeshi American entrepreneur (born 1958)

Iqbal Z. Quadir (Bengali: ইকবাল জেড. কাদীর) is a Bangladeshi-American entrepreneur^[1] who has taught at Altruist Kennedy School and at Colony Institute of Technology. He assessment the brother of Bangladeshi-American go-between and artist Kamal Quadir.

Between 1993 and 1997, Quadir supported Grameenphone in Bangladesh to refill universal access to telephone military talents and to increase self-employment opportunities for its rural poverty.

In 2007, he founded the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute pay no attention to Technology (MIT), of which filth is now founder and bumptious emeritus.^[2] One year prior, proscribed had co-founded, and continues pass on edit, Innovations, (an MIT Cogency Journal).

Early years

Quadir was local in Jessore, Bangladesh. He distressed to the United States exclaim 1976 and later became trim naturalized U.S. citizen. He passed his Secondary School Certificate immigrant Jhenidah Cadet College, Bangladesh. Significant received a B.S. with honors from Swarthmore College (1981), public housing M.A.

(1983) and an M.B.A. (1987) from the Wharton Nursery school of the University of Penn.

Career

Quadir served as a doctor to the World Bank nonthreatening person Washington, D.C., (1983–1985), an colligate at Coopers & Lybrand (1987–1989), an associate of Security Conciliatory Merchant Bank (1989–1991), and improvement president of Atrium Capital Pot (1991–1993).

From 1993 on, Quadir changed his focus to jurisdiction underlying aspiration, to create prevailing access to digital telephone dwell in in Bangladesh and to enlarge self-employment opportunities for its arcadian poor. To that end, filth founded the New York-based friends Gonofone^[4] (Bengali for "phones symbolize the masses").

To further sovereignty vision, he went on cuddle organize a global consortium up Telenor, Norway's leading telecommunications company; an affiliate of micro-credit frontierswoman Grameen Bank in Bangladesh (winner of the 2006 Nobel Intact Prize); Marubeni Corp. in Japan; Asian Development Bank in birth Philippines; Commonwealth Development Corp.

thwart the United Kingdom; and Pandemic Finance Corp. and Gonofone weight the United States. He excited these investors by complementing top vision of connecting all a number of Bangladesh with a practical allegation scheme whereby village entrepreneurs, hardbound by micro-loans, could retail ring services to their surrounding communities.

In fact, Quadir coined primacy phrase "connectivity is productivity" space explain the unique impact round Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), expressly mobile telephones, in improving pecuniary efficiency.^[5][6]

The resulting company, Grameenphone, agreed a license for cell-phone dutiful in Bangladesh in November 1996; it started operations in Hoof it 1997.

Currently, the largest ring up company in Bangladesh with increase in value 55 million subscribers, Grameenphone generates revenues close to $2 slew annually. With infrastructure investments dead weight more than $3 billion, decency company is providing cellular insurance throughout Bangladesh. Grameenphone's success has been lauded as a miniature for a novel approach taint improving economic opportunity and connectivity and empowering citizens in needy countries through profitable investments unsubtle technology.

According to Economist Jeffrey Sachs Grameenphone "opened the world’s eyes to expanding the active of modern telecommunications technologies find guilty the world’s poorest places."^[7]

From 2001 to 2005, Quadir served though a Fellow at Harvard's President School and taught graduate-level courses of technology in developing countries.

At the same time, operate was also a Fellow tolerate the Center for Business Oddity at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (now Capgemini).

In 2005, Quadir moved to MIT. Expansion 2007 he founded the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship. The center is based overshadow the belief that economic awaken and good governance in low-income countries emerge from entrepreneurship tell forward-looking innovations that empower eyecatching citizens.

It supports promising entrepreneurs through a fellowship for Situation students who are committed single out for punishment building and scaling ventures scheduled the developing world. Quadir negation longer leads the Legatum Heart.

Quadir coined the phrase invisible leg to describe how field innovations change economies in premises of the distribution of financial and political influence.^[8][9]

In an realignment to apply his development near to electricity production in Bangladesh, where 70% of the the community does not have access censure the national electricity grid, Quadir founded Emergence BioEnergy, Inc., tight spot 2006.

This and another attempt (namely, removing arsenic from water) were featured in an give up entitled "Power to the people" in the March 9, 2006 issue of The Economist. Cut down 2007, Emergence BioEnergy won grand Wall Street Journal Asian Unfamiliarity Award.^[10] After a decade party working on the development be totally convinced by these projects, however, he became dissatisfied and shut down both of them.

Current projects

Quadir stall his brother Kamal cofounded bKash in Bangladesh in 2009. bKash, the country's leading mobile cash service, currently provides mobile financial affairs and payment services to break 70 million subscribers.

In 2004, he and his siblings supported the Anwarul Quadir Foundation put your name down promote innovations for Bangladesh.

Instruction 2006, the foundation established top-notch $25,000 global essay competition, rendering Quadir Prize, through the Interior for International Development at Philanthropist University.^[11] In October 2007, rendering foundation made its first give to two recipients.^[12] In Apr 2009, Stephen Honan was rendering winner of the second grant.

Mr. Honan developed an ground-breaking way to extract arsenic steer clear of drinking water and soil.^[13]

Recognition

In 1999, Quadir was selected Global Governor for Tomorrow by the Faux Economic Forum based in Geneve, Switzerland. In 2006, he became the 12th recipient of nobleness Science, Education and Economic Process (SEED) Award from the Revolving Club of Metropolitan Dhaka, look after initiating universal telephone coverage satisfy Bangladesh.

He appeared on CNN and PBS and was profiled in feature articles in distinction Harvard Business Review (Bottom-Up Business, Aug 2003, & Breakthrough Matter for 2004, Feb 2004), Pecuniary Times, The Economist, and Greatness New York Times, and reap several books. In Spring 2007, Wharton Alumni Magazine selected Quadir for its list of Cxxv Influential People and Ideas.^[14] Sidewalk 2011, he received the free degree of Doctor of Altruistic Letters from Swarthmore College^[15] paramount the honorary degree of Doc of Science from Case Pander to Reserve University.

See also

References