Azhar Rizvi is an author, consultant, trainer, coach and master strategist who helps people and organizations achieve high growth targets. He has helped more than 450+ firms redefine business strategy to scale up operations, from few hundred thousand to multi-million dollars’ global operations.
He started his career marketing IT services, with leading firms, including NCR, AT&T and Unisys and rising to Director Sales & Marketing from Sales Executive in a short span of 10 years. During his career, he managed and grew the sales portfolio, handling major multimillion dollar relationships with major accounts like PTCL, GHQ, Habib Bank, UBL, ABL, Federal Ministry of Finance, ABN Amro, Standard Chartered Bank, MSD, BASF among others. In 1999, he decided to enter the entrepreneurial world and launched two highly successful IT firms which serviced which grew to over 1500 strong workforce with largest BPO Services serving major banks like HBL, UBL, Emirates Bank with multimillion-dollar operations.
Since 2007, he has been working as an ecosystem enabler and has trained 10,000+ student teams, faculty, start-ups and mid-size organizations to develop their business plans and growth strategies and launching successful ventures. He has been instrumental in cultivating an environment of promoting entrepreneurship at various universities through business plan competitions, hackathons, innovation cups, startup weekends and other forums. He has served as Chairman, Standing Committee on Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FPCCI). He is also co-founder of MIT-Enterprise Forum of Pakistan, Pakathon Global, OPEN Pakistan amongst others. He also advises the government and many universities in their entrepreneurship initiatives. He is currently he is the CEO of Cambridge Advisors Network and on the board of several social initiatives including Women’s Digital League and Pakathon International.
He has authored the book, “Entrepreneuring Pakistan- 27 stories of struggle, failure and success” which details the challenges of 27 mentee organizations – in the technology, social, research and students- which have broken the barriers and achieved exponential 10X+ growth per annum.
Azhar also pays an active part in philanthropic and social circles and has implemented several key initiatives in the healthcare, education for normal and special kids, law and order, Disaster Relief Management System during Earthquake and Flood Relief as part of Rotary Global.