Faisal Talpur, CEO Cinch

Technology is changing everything from how we speak to fellow humans to how we communicate with an artificially intelligent personal assistant.

There is a lot to be done, and one of the major challenges that this industry faces is the fear of acceptance among the new adopters.

Mir Faisal Talpur follows his dreams with a businessman’s mind set. As a successful serial entrepreneur, he likes to put ideas into action to help his clients turn their dreams into reality. He wears various hats as a skilled consultant, business turnaround specialist, technology enthusiast, marketing expert and property investments advisor. Mr Talpur is currently serving as CEO of Cinch Group of Companies, a London-based group, with interests and experiences in technology, investment and financial advisory, brand media & marketing, high-end consulting, call centre development & management, business automation, and e-commerce.

Entrepreneur at heart, Mir Faisal Talpur has been involved with helping and setting up businesses for almost a decade. While running a successful property investment company, he also ventured into creative technology.

During his ventures he realised the inadequate use of technology among organisations. He decided to do something about it and founded Cinch Technologies, along with his wife, Shakera Alam, who comes from a corporate City background.

In 2019, Faisal is excited to launch his new venture ‘Business Pronto’, which can be classified as world’s first of its kind “Entrepreneurship Platform”. The platform aims to enhance the true spirit of entrepreneurship and help businesses achieve success.

Mir Faisal Talpur exhibits the entrepreneurial spirit of London. Professor Humayon Dar interviewed him for the benefit of many established and potential entrepreneurs in Islamic banking and finance.

Our readers would like to know about your family background education and professional interests. Would you care sharing these briefly?

You’re starting with a wrong question [smiling]. Asking an ex-royal about his family background is at times painful. Having said that I take pleasure in sharing with you and your readers that I belong to the Royal Talpur family of Sindh in the Indian Sub-continent. Talpurs ruled Sindh, now a province of Pakistan, just before the advent of the British. I am the 5th

direct descendent of the last ruler, His Highness Mir Sher Muhammad Talpur, also known as the Lion of Sindh. Talpurs were considered to be the most benevolent leaders in the history of Sindh, a tradition still continued by many Talpurs, including my father, Mir Khalid Hussain Talpur, who is responsible for the upkeep of over 10,000 people in Mirpur Khas, Sindh.

Like many of my cousins and other members of the extended family, I received my early education from BVS Parsi High School in Karachi. My fascination with technology started when I was 8. My mother, Tasleem Talpur, played a very pivotal role in my personal and creative development and encouraged me to seek further education in the UK. At the age of 19, I came to London to seek further education and completed my BSc. in Computer Science from Queen Mary University of London. My entrepreneurial and innovative nature led me to choose a path away from family business.

I experimented with various innovative products, before inventing E-Thermal shoes at the age of 17 for which I also hold a patent. My accolades also include running Pakistan’s first English language scientific magazine called ‘Knowledge Spectra’. I was the founder and editor of this magazine.

Technology is determining the way we live in the post-modern world. Please tell us about your technology business.

Financial institutions like banks are embarking on plans to encourage significant investment in the FinTech sector. Technology is changing everything from how we speak to fellow humans to how we communicate with an artificially intelligent personal assistant like Amazon Alexa.

Cinch Technologies prides in providing solutions that have real use in the market. In our business approach, every innovation or revolutionary idea must go through a process to lead to a product that must eventually be accepted in the market for ultimate consumption and use.

There is a stepped process for a new concept or technology to be accepted in the social system. We divide this process into layers. We focus on the layer that no one is focusing on.

This layer is where the concept meets human understanding. It is where idea starts to now find a real use in people’s lives, a harmonic convergence of radical thoughts with conventional logic. This is the layer which has the potential to disrupt the market and we call it as trans-integrational layer. A lot of activity takes place here. It is where human actions and underlying business methods can be converted into their technical equivalent, where different systems can coherently work to solve complex problems. By focusing on this layer we can dissect complex functions into single tasks.

Trans-integrational layer deals with the transformation of people’s mind set, their adaptability to new technology, their acceptability of change and their conscious competence of making the right decisions. It also deals with the acceptance of technology in the industry and internal integration of systems to provide a sustainable and homogenous environment. It is this layer which we feel is the most used by humans but overlooked by majority of technology companies.

It is becoming a bit too philosophical and too technological for me. Can you please tell how your technological innovations can help Islamic banking and finance?

I’m sorry for getting carried away. This should show my passion for technology. [After a pause] We are working on concepts that will change the way Shari’a-compliant businesses trade, how they get funded, how they market themselves, and how individuals conduct their personal finances. Modern Islamic banking is just 40 years old with last 10 years being the most creative decade.

There is a lot to be done, and one of the major challenges that this industry faces is the fear of acceptance among the new adopters. In an effort to boost the transition from conventional system to Islamic finance we will be streamlining communication channels, easing the resistance through literacy and education and make the interactions more social and friendly.

Our Islamic finance projects include financial literacy, crowdfunding, peer to peer lending, online Shari’a banking, investments, e-payment, m-payment and s-payment systems. One of the problems we are trying to address is to provide a lucrative finance alternative to the UK companies by providing a peer to peer Shari’a compliant crowdfunding platform.

Any specific products in the pipeline?

We expect to do this by introducing concepts like Shari’a-compliant loan management systems ; self-learning, intelligent and interactive portals; practical education and e-learning portals; smart payment systems ; and community currencies.

ISFIRE FINANCE REVIEW ~ www.isfire.net