This guy hated his job so much that he automated it. Now he’s taking the idea global

Photo credit: Pixabay .

Saad Ehsan was extremely excited at the prospect of entering the workforce and finding a stable job soon after graduating from college. When he was offered a position at Nishat, one of Pakistan’s largest textile conglomerates, he accepted it without a second thought.

But the mundane reality of the workplace soon set in. Saad, an idealistic and energetic graduate, thought he’d be given challenging, mentally-stimulating tasks. Much to his horror, most of his work consisted of scraping data from various sources and plugging it into an Excel sheet.

“I would be mindlessly staring into a computer screen till late at night,” says Saad. “I knew there had to be a better, more efficient way of doing these tasks.”

What Saad had in mind was to code a program that would do these tasks for him. He approached his brother, an engineer by training, for help. Then the duo got to work. What they came up with was AItomation, a startup that intelligently automates redundant and repetitive tasks.

Saad ended up quitting the textile company just four months into his role, but by that time he had already impressed his former employers. They offered him a new position with increased responsibilities. But the huge firm ended up becoming his startup’s first client.

His brother was also encouraged by AItomation’s initial traction – he dropped out of college to work on it full-time.

Software is eating the world

Essentially what the startup does is scrape data from different web sources, including public information from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, analyzes it, checks for duplication, and then inputs it according to specific parameters. Saad claims apps like Pakistan Movie & Cinema Guide as well as sites like 10 Best Quotes are completely run and moderated by his software.

The tools can do fun stuff too, like automating a list of really popular, funny Youtube videos.

“We can automate any process, no matter how complicated it is,” he boasts.

The startup, which launched in September 2014, is self-sustaining and has so far snared eight enterprise clients – including companies from Israel, the US, and Australia. Others have worked with it on a per-project basis.

AItomation’s Saad Ehsan