Imran Aftab is co-founder and chief executive of 10Pearls, an AI development, implementation and consulting firm in Vienna, Virginia, that he started with his brother Zeeshan Aftab in 2004. Born in Pakistan and schooled in Karachi, he bootstrapped 10Pearls from his mother’s kitchen into a company of more than 1,300 people and is known for running it as a “double bottom line” business that creates jobs in emerging countries.
A Rude Question on an AOL Business Trip
He dropped out of an elite Jesuit high school in Karachi when his family could not afford the fees, until the principal asked his father to write down what they could pay. He went on to a chemistry degree at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and a master’s in chemical physics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He started as an investment banking analyst at JPMorgan Chase, led product management for industry applications at MicroStrategy and became director of global outsourcing at AOL Time Warner, managing more than $150 million a year in spending across 10 countries (10Pearls). On a 2004 trip, a colleague told him he seemed “normal” for someone from Pakistan. “People see all bad news. I thought, ‘How can I change things even at a small scale through business?’” he told The Washington Post.
Empower Foundation and a Business Built for Two Bottom Lines
He used what he had learned about outsourcing to build 10Pearls in the US and Pakistan, with his brother supervising its software team in Karachi. He founded the Empower Foundation, which funds youth, child and women’s programs where 10Pearls operates. He won the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2022 Mid-Atlantic award, belongs to the Young Presidents’ Organization and invests in socially minded tech startups.