Where Financial Inclusion Meets Agriculture When policymakers discuss financial inclusion, the conversation almost always revolves around banking access, digital payments, and microfinance. Billions of dollars have been invested globally to connect underserved populations to the formal financial system. Yet for Mujtaba Khalid, Co-Founder and CEO of Bagh-e, those efforts have often overlooked a more fundamental question: What happens after someone gains access to finance? After spending more than fourteen years working in Islamic finance across multiple jurisdictions, Mujtaba began to notice a recurring pattern. Governments, regulators, financial institutions, NGOs, and development agencies were making remarkable progress in expanding access to financial services. Digital wallets were opening, payment systems were improving, and financial technology was reaching previously underserved communities. However, many of the people these initiatives sought to empower—particularly smallholder farmers—continued to struggle economically. His work took him across Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, where agriculture remains the backbone of many economies. Throughout these regions, he found that smallholder farmers consistently represented one of the most financially excluded…

After helping educate thousands of software developers through MohirDev, Mukhammad Khalil realized that talent alone wasn’t enough. Today, through Startup Garage, he is building the entrepreneurial infrastructure that could transform Uzbekistan into one of the world’s next great startup ecosystems. For decades, countries have been known for the natural resources they export. Saudi Arabia exports oil. Australia exports minerals. Brazil exports agricultural products. But what if a country could become known for exporting something far more valuable—entrepreneurs? That is the vision driving Mukhammad Khalil, Founder of Startup Garage, a venture studio that is quietly reshaping the entrepreneurial landscape of Central Asia. While many organizations focus on helping individual startups succeed, Khalil is thinking on an entirely different scale. His ambition is to build an ecosystem where creating successful technology companies becomes a repeatable capability rather than an occasional success story. It is an ambitious mission. Yet it is rooted in a simple observation. Great founders rarely emerge because of talent alone. They emerge when talented people are surrounded by mentors,…

The former Amazon engineer isn’t building another Islamic app. He’s building a trusted companion designed to help millions of Muslims reconnect with their faith through authentic knowledge, thoughtful technology, and privacy-first design. When Life Gives You a Second Chance Every entrepreneur can point to a defining moment that changed the trajectory of their life. Sometimes it is spotting an untapped market opportunity. Sometimes it is frustration with an existing product. And occasionally, it is a deeply personal experience that forces someone to completely rethink what success means. For Kamran Mohammed, Founder of My Amaal, that defining moment came after surviving a devastating accident with his wife—an experience that transformed not only his relationship with faith but also his understanding of purpose. Until then, Kamran had been building exactly the kind of career many software engineers dream about. Born in Hyderabad, India, he moved to the United States in 2018 to pursue a Master’s degree in Computer Science at SUNY Buffalo before going on to work for some of the technology…

Technology has transformed almost every aspect of modern life. We work online, shop online, consume news online, and spend countless hours every day navigating websites and social media platforms. Yet for many consumers, particularly those seeking to make ethical purchasing decisions, one challenge remains remarkably difficult: knowing who is behind the companies they interact with. For Ahmed Hassanein, a software developer with more than fourteen years of experience, this problem became deeply personal. While searching for job opportunities, he found himself spending hours researching companies, checking their headquarters, ownership structures, and investment backgrounds to ensure they aligned with his personal values. The process was repetitive, frustrating, and almost impossible to scale. “I kept thinking,” Ahmed recalls, “instead of doing this manually for every company, why isn’t there a tool that simply tells me the moment I open a website?” That simple question eventually evolved into The Wall, a free platform that today identifies and blocks more than 20,000 Israeli-linked websites and social media accounts, helping users make informed decisions before…

Artificial intelligence has rapidly become one of the biggest priorities for enterprises across the world. Organizations are investing billions of dollars into generative AI, autonomous agents, and intelligent automation, hoping to transform everything from customer service to healthcare and financial decision-making. Yet despite the excitement, many AI initiatives never make it beyond the pilot stage. While headlines often celebrate breakthroughs in large language models and AI capabilities, a quieter problem continues to hold enterprises back—how do you prove that an AI system is actually ready for production? For Asad Mansoor, Co-Founder and CEO of Accelerate AI, that question has defined his entrepreneurial journey. Rather than building another AI application, Asad is focused on building something far more fundamental: trust. His startup is developing the governance and risk infrastructure that enables organizations to measure AI risk, generate evidence for decision-makers, and confidently deploy artificial intelligence in highly regulated industries. “The technology usually isn’t the problem,” he says. “The real challenge is proving that it’s safe enough to deploy.” A Career Built…

For many entrepreneurs, the inspiration for a startup comes from identifying a market gap. For Heera Rehman, Founder and CEO of WorldTone AI, the inspiration came from something far more personal: years of feeling unseen in the workplace. After spending more than a decade working in internal communications across global organizations, Rehman experienced firsthand the challenges many employees from underrepresented backgrounds face. Despite consistently delivering results, taking on global responsibilities, and operating at a senior level, she often found herself overlooked for promotions and opportunities. As a Muslim woman working in multinational environments, she became increasingly aware of how workplace cultures often failed to recognize or accommodate the diverse identities of their employees. The turning point came when she was made redundant during pregnancy. Rather than viewing the setback as the end of a chapter, Rehman saw it as an opportunity to build something she wished had existed throughout her corporate career. That decision ultimately led to the creation of WorldTone AI, a platform designed to help organizations communicate more…

For more than a decade, Joud Khattab has worked at the intersection of data, innovation, and human development. But despite witnessing extraordinary talent across the region, he repeatedly encountered the same challenge: brilliant ideas existed everywhere, yet the systems needed to support them often did not. That realization ultimately led him to launch Bidayah, a Syria-based venture builder designed to help founders transform ideas into scalable businesses while supporting the country’s emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem. At a time when Syria is entering a new phase of recovery and economic reopening, Bidayah represents more than another startup support organization. It reflects a growing belief that entrepreneurship can become a powerful engine for rebuilding economies, creating jobs, and restoring hope. From Data Scientist to Ecosystem Builder Khattab describes himself as a data scientist, entrepreneur, and ecosystem builder from Syria. Over the years, he built a career within the humanitarian and development sector, working across multiple United Nations agencies where he led initiatives focused on information management, digital transformation, analytics, and data-driven decision-making supporting…

For Usama Nini, the problem with hiring has never been a shortage of talent. Throughout his career, he repeatedly encountered a striking paradox: companies struggled to find qualified candidates, while talented individuals struggled to access meaningful opportunities. The disconnect was particularly visible across emerging markets, where outdated recruitment systems often determined careers more than merit. It became increasingly clear to him that the issue was not the absence of capable people, but the inability of existing systems to efficiently connect talent with opportunity. That realization led him to co-found Qureos, an AI-powered hiring platform designed to bridge this gap. Today, the company serves more than 1,000 organizations, has raised over $8 million in funding, and is helping reshape the future of recruitment across the Middle East and beyond. Yet behind the technology and growth metrics lies a deeper mission: ensuring that deserving individuals are not denied opportunities simply because the system failed to recognize their potential. From Karachi to Canada’s Investment World Born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, Usama pursued…