Top 0 Asian Stars in UK Tech - JOOMAG version Top 100 Asian Stars in UK Tech 2015 | Page 11

Top 100 Asian Stars in UK Tech 2015

Ajaz Ahmed
Co-Founder & CEO - AKQA
Ajaz Ahmed is the Co-Founder & CEO of AKQA, a digital agency that specializes in creating
digital services and products. It employs 1,600 staff globally and was founded in 1994 in
London by Ajaz Ahmed and James Hilton. In 2001, the company became AKQA Holdings Inc.
after an investment of $70 million by Francisco Partners and Accenture, with San Francisco
as its new headquarters and four offices in the UK, US and Asia. In the same year, Nike Run
London, a new branded sports format with 10,000 runners taking part was launched by AKQA
for Nike. A year later, in 2002, Run London sold over 20,000 places in a few hours using an
e-commerce platform designed by AKQA.
In 2005, AKQA Interface Design Practice helped Microsoft create the new user experience for
the Xbox 360 gaming console. AKQA Mobile was launched as a specialist division in 2006. In
2010, AKQA created key branded iPhone apps launching that year: Gap Style Mixer, Nike True
City, Nigella Quick Collection, and VW Real Racing GTI. In June 2012, AKQA joined WPP plc as
an independent subsidiary within the world’s largest communications group, with revenues of
$250 million that year. AKQA has garnered more than 100 industry awards, including at least
one agency of the year award every year, and in 2014 it won Queen’s Award for Enterprise:
Innovation.
Ajaz and his co-author Stefan Olander, VP of Digital Sport at Nike crystallized their ideas of
“the seven laws for a world gone digital” in ‘Velocity’, which featured a foreword by Sir Richard
Branson and was published in 2012.

Ajaz Ahmed
Founder - Legal365
Ajaz Ahmed is one of the original tech entrepreneurs who founded Freeserve, which was
once the UK’s largest Internet Company, in 1998. The eureka moment came when he bought
a computer in PC World and nobody there could tell him how to get onto the Internet. After
much persuasion, Dixons launched Freeserve in 1998, it became the UK’s largest ISP in 3 months
floated 9 months later with a market cap of £1.5bn. It entered the FTSE 100 soon after reaching
a peak market cap of £9bn, Freeserve was sold by Dixons to France Telecom for £1.6bn in 2001.
Ajaz left soon after the sale. He is currently the Founder of Legal365, a disruptive business
model for the legal industry and runs his own business consultancy called SoSavvy. Ajaz also
writes a column for Retail Week and sits on the Advisory Board at the University of Huddersfield
Business School.

Ali Ahmed
Founder & CEO - Lutebox
Ali Ahmed is Founder & CEO of Lutebox, an award winning London based startup that
makes patented video communication technology. Winner of the Startup Games, Seedcamp
finalists, and Lisbon Challeng