MGS Student Wins Pitch Competition in Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations (HPAIR) Conference’ 2018

Monday, October 8, 2018

Ameer Ali is currently a Sophomore at LUMS pursuing Management Sciences at SDSB. In August 2018, he represented SDBS LUMS at the “Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations (HPAIR) Conference’ 2018” in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Ameer won the “Pitch Competition” arranged by 500 Startups and Kejora. Different multinational teams contested for a total of six competitions; where they were given a SaaS company which the teams needed to assess and present the outcomes to the Venture Capitalists. After extensive research and pitching, Ameer’s team was able to win the Pitch Competition and was awarded certificate.

The conference hosted some of the most accomplished professionals from various fields of science, business and some represented public offices. The diverse group of renowned speakers included Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mohammed Yunus; Madam Kamala Lakhdhir, US Ambassador to Malaysia; Dr. Jeffrey Cheah, Founder & Chairman of Sunway Group; Tianyi Joe Zhu, International Entrepreneur and Investor; Dr. Leslie Liu, Corporate Vice President of JD cloud and many more. They also held panel discussions and keynote speeches, which were very insightful and revolved around the topics of building policy framework and startup culture in Asia, and specifically a business case for sustainability in Asia and the role of ASEAN.

The HPAIR Asia Conference is a 5-day academic programme that integrates the academic and business world creating a hybrid web and brings together 600 international students from around 60 countries with the goal of enabling them to participate in an open forum on Asian and International Issues including foreign policy, economic, entrepreneurship, art, environment, technology and media. Asia’s astounding growth over the past decades has not been without challenges. Solutions to wide-ranging crises remain elusive; alarming human rights abuses against women, refugees, and minorities remain unanswered; rising wealth inequality, catalysed by globalisation and corruption, is still unaddressed. The 2018 HPAIR Asia Conference focused on the theme of Sustainable Disruption, as we search for ways to continue rapid innovation and progress while ensuring that we consider higher order consequences of these changes and their impact on the Asia-Pacific region well into the future.


Reminiscing about his extraordinary experience, Ameer shared:

“It was, indeed, one of the best experiences for me and I would like to thank my institution, LUMS, for honoring me and placing its trust in me to represent it and my country at an international level and also to all my advisors and mentor who helped me throughout the process.”

Watch the highlights here: HPAIR Asia Conference 2018