Recently, I got a scope to communicate with Mr. Harun ur Rashid, a CEO and Founder of Quantum.ai which is the first AI Education platform in Bangladesh. I got to know about his work ventures and his strategies of dealing with them and I must say, he is a man who is really praiseworthy, respectable and bestowed with qualities which should be acknowledged by every individual willing to develop a start-up of their own. Thus, here I am sharing some highlights of our conversation.
Hello, hope you are doing well. Give us an overview of your organization.
Yes, I’m doing great, I hope you are too. Thank you!
“Quantum.ai” is Bangladesh’s first AI Education platform for AI/ML enthusiasts to educate & develop their inquisitive fascination towards Artificial Intelligence. The main mission of “Quantum.ai” is to teach and guide every curious student about Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning in BANGLA and support them all the way around
Tell us something about yourself? Your academics, interests.
Hello! I’m Md.Harun-Ur-Rashid. I’m Bangladeshi; this is my pride, currently living in Narayanganj and I’m the founder and CEO of “Quantum.ai”
I have always been a Machine Learning Enthusiast and also a Govt. certified Machine Learning Engineer. I was very active, talented and decent in my childhood days and very friendly in school. I used to participate in sports and computer gaming. I used to spend more time on technology such as computer game, mobile software than in studies. I was awarded for many sports events.
I enjoyed my school life a lot. I also enjoyed my college life very simply. I passed my college from Narayanganj University College. I completed my B.Sc in CSE at Daffodil International University.
I was awarded for the International Business Competition and the NASA Space App Challenge 2019.
I worked for most startups regarding machine learning, worked in Kaggle, worked with some countries’ data scientists and professors for research work, worked as a programmer in DataSoft Manufacturing & Assembly Inc. Ltd., done mentoring for national, international students and Kaggle competition etc.
My interests are coding, listening to songs, writing articles and traveling.
What made you launch quantum.ai?
When I started my study in the AI/ML field, I faced a hell lot of difficulties because of the very limited resources. I have no one to ask for help around me to get my problems solved. I took help from online, from my professors, from my senior brothers to gradually continue study in this field.
Then I thought why not make an AI/ML community in Bangla where beginner students like me can share their problems, share their ideas and get help from other experts who are already quite successful in this field.
From this idea, I created a page and a group on facebook named “Quantum.ai”. That was the beginning and now “Quantum.ai” is leading in the AI/ML community in Bangladesh.
Tell me something about your team members
We have a small team of 6 members including me. My team members are:
● Mohammad Masudur Rahman, Founding Advisor
● Abir Hossain, Chief Marketing Officer
● Rifa Tusnia Mona, Chief Operating Officer
● Mahmud Alam Zidan, Content Designer
● Sanjida Afrin, Graphics Designer
Whom do you think was the most supportive person till today?
Undoubtedly, the most supportive person behind my every achievement is Masudur Rahman Sir. He is the founding advisor of ‘Quantum.ai”. He has always been helpful till today. Without his mentorship, maybe we couldn’t move forward so much with “Quantum.ai”. A Special thanks to him.
How do you plan your life? How do you maintain the work-life balance?
I am planning to build a platform where newcomers or youth learners can move forward in a much better way without any problems and don’t face unemployment problems in AI fields. In Sha Allah I will move abroad for my higher studies and will try to launch “Quantum.ai” internationally.
I maintained my work life balance with a daily routine where I have the time for my family and friends and also having time for entertainment and the work goes on.
Who are your targeted audience and why?
Our targeted audience are college and university going students, AI enthusiasts, professionals in related fields. As we believe that we are at the crossroads of Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and AI is gradually occupying the centre of
this outstanding transformation, that’s why we are targeting our youth generation to make them capable of going through this change.
How are your courses planned? What do they serve to the learners?
Basically, we divided our courses into two sections – long courses and short courses.
Long courses are actually designed for such students who at least have basic knowledge about our course outline and are familiar with programming languages, esspecially PYTHON. In these long courses, we cover each and every topic from very basics to quite advanced. And after every class, we take short quizzes and give assignments to our students in order to keep them engaged with the learning. Long course usually continued for 2 months (16/17 classes)
And short courses are designed for fully newbies who have interest in that particular course but not having any kinds of prerequisite knowledge. So, we start from scratch to teach them the fundamentals of that subject and encourage them to move forward with our long courses to get the full essence and deep knowledge about that subject. Short courses usually continued for 1 month (5/6 classes)
At present, what is quantum.ai doing?
At present, we are arranging several seminars, career conferences, bootcamps, quiz competitions and so on. We are trying to enhance public engagement, impact and collaborate with leading universities and software companies as well.
We also organize free workshops, live sessions and masterclasses almost every week alongside our main courses.
How is this pandemic affecting your work?
Whoa! Unfortunately, the pandemic has been really a tough time for all of us.
Me and my team planned a lot of things to do in 2020 but all of a sudden, we had to call off all the actions.
For example – we had planned to launch a week-long bootcamp, collaborated with East West University, but now we’ve shifted the whole program online rather than doing it in the auditorium.
Then, we also decided to start an offline training programme for the industrial people and advocate them with a full-facilitated lab setup. This program didn’t go on the floor as well.
There’s a rise in the rate of unemployed people in this country. Does quantum.ai help them anyway? Do you offer any job or internships?
Unemployment has always been a threatening problem in our country. We “Quantum.ai” team always try to take insightful steps that can help our youth generation with employment.
That’s why “Quantum.ai” is offering direct internships to our students. Students who have outstanding performance in our course, are placed into an internship programme. After completing an internship, the students are actually prepared for the job field in the AI/ML industry. Till now, we have placed 5 students in the internship programme.
What was the biggest obstacle that you had to face in this entire journey and what was your strategy of tackling that?
There are a lot of obstacles actually. But the crucial obstacles were:
Managing an experienced instructor for every course, explaining to people about Quantum.ai and its mission-vision, scaling this startup into the next level while people are unaware of this fact that “AI is the future”. So, these are some of the biggest obstacles for me and we are continuously working on those factors to improve it.
First, I explained the problem in our country for AI fields education and jobs, then explained how “Quantum.ai” solves this problem and give them the opportunity in our community to make them convinced that “Quantum.ai” is the platform you’re looking for to boost your skills in the AI field. This is my strategy of tracking that.
What is that one quality that everyone should have before taking the initiative of becoming an entrepreneur?
From my experience, I would say the one quality that everyone must have before planning to become an entrepreneur is “PATIENCE”.
This is the must-have quality to be a successful entrepreneur, because without having solid patience you can’t take the stress and pressure that will come to your journey while pursuing your dream initiative. Patience is the thing that will keep you always motivated to continue your work and it will help you to make decisions perfectly in a cool -minded way even if you’re distracted by your obstacles.
Do you think that Bangladesh has got enough resources and skills to develop its technical work fields?
Although we have a lot of difficulties coming our way, I firmly believe that in the end we will overcome all of this and I also believe if we can gather our
resources while acknowledging our skills, Bangladesh can be a leading one in the future AI/ML revolution.
In future where do you see quantum.ai? What do you actually expect from it?
There is honestly no limit to dreaming. The main vision is to develop an AI Academy in Bangladesh and transform a large section of our population interested about AI/ Ml to create the biggest community of Artificial Intelligence nationally and also, I want Quantum.ai to establish and expand in a large scale to foreign grounds like India and Canada.
In Sha Allah Quantum.ai will be the first Bangladeshi AI Education platform to put its mark around the world.
Lastly, please share with us that one advice or idea that has completely changed your life.
Apart from my academic learnings, I learned some new skills, self-motivation, networking, working on different projects and working with people from different countries. Another important thing was “EGO FREE MIND”. It is very necessary to make yourself prepared for gaining knowledge from any corner.
And finally, my entrepreneurship motivation came from the Hult Prize Competition Mumbai regional round 2019, where me and my team were in 5th position. That helped me to enrich my knowledge and showed me the right path for my career.
