Saleem: from below zero to six zeros

Kashif Saleem arrived in Perth without a dollar to his name; now his technology is in demand from the world’s most valuable companies.

Kashif Saleem’s story could be taken straight from the pages of a ‘local boy makes good’ page turner, so compelling is its narrative.

In 1998, aged 24, Mr Saleem left his family and friends in Pakistan to move to Perth – an isolated city in a country he had never visited. He knew no-one, spoke little English and had no financial support.

What he did have was ambition, initiative and determination; attributes that led him to invent technology which is now capturing global attention.

Tough start

Mr Saleem first considered immigrating to Perth through an opportunity to study at Edith Cowan University.

His grades while studying for a bachelor of commerce degree at the University of Karachi were such that he qualified for the bachelor of business information systems program at ECU.

That was the easy part, Mr Saleem told Business News, the hard part was getting a visa.

“It’s like winning the lottery,” Mr Saleem said.

The visa was just the first in a string of challenges Mr Saleem faced in his pursuit of Australian education – his language skills needed work and he had no financial support aside from his father covering course fees for the first semester.

“When I landed here I was technically already broke,” Mr Saleem said.

“People say they start from level zero, but I started from below zero and had to work my way up.”

Mr Saleem worked a variety of jobs to make ends meet, such as filling in for the regular newspaper boy.

“People were lining up just to get that job … from my point of view the person with that job was like the president of the United States,” Mr Saleem said.

During his first few years in Perth Mr Saleem would wake up at three in the morning, spend two hours cleaning a West Perth office and a further hour or two cleaning a car park before heading to university.

After a full day spent at ECU, he would then go to another cleaning job for two hours before heading to his job as a kitchen-hand at about 6pm.

Once he had finished washing dishes, sometimes not until 10pm, he would go home and cram in a few hours of study before bed.

He repeated that cycle for three years and increased his work up to 100 hours per week during university breaks.

“It taught me that when you have focus and when you have a goal, you go through those hardships, but you can achieve it,” Mr Saleem said.

All the while his grades never dipped below 80 per cent.

Finding a niche

Following university, Mr Saleem secured a job as an information technology consultant to a company contracted to Fortescue Metals Group, and it was there that his business Saleem Technologies began.

Frustrated with the inadequate process used to track materials ordered and received, the project manager asked Mr Saleem to investigate alternatives.

While he did that, Mr Saleem began building his own database and technology and eventually offered it to the company free of charge, with its creator retaining intellectual property and copyright ownership.

Those using it on the FMG job were so impressed they recommended it to John Holland, which ended up using the system on a project for Apache Energy.

Since then demand has snowballed, with John Holland using it on other projects and resources companies such as Chevron calling Mr Saleem out of the blue requesting the system.

Chevron has implemented the system on the Gorgon project with more than three million items tracked so far.

Mr Saleem told Business News the competitive advantage his technology – called Track ’Em – had over other systems on the market was its ability to track materials through the use of GPS, but also its 3D modelling functionality.

Essentially the system works like this; items arriving on site are scanned by their unique barcode. A GPS coordinate is then lodged into the system showing where the item was received, by whom, and at what time.

Adding on to that is Mr Saleem’s patented technology, which allows the tracking information to integrate with 3D models so project managers can see what materials are arriving in correspondence with their intended use.

It could also be argued that Mr Saleem was in the right place at the right time as resources companies undertake significant capital projects whilst focusing on efficiency and productivity.

“Some materials (being received) can cost just $20, but on some projects the cost of delays in locating those materials can cost as much as $100,000 a day,” Mr Saleem said.

Global attention

As Mr Saleem’s relationship with US- based companies Chevron and Apache Energy strengthened, international markets began to take notice.

That has resulted in offices being set up in the US and in South Africa, with three projects under way there.

Mr Saleem said he had also received a personal phone call from a representative of Saudi Arabia’s oil and gas company, Saudi Aramco, which has been valued at $US10 trillion.

For the current financial year Mr Saleem expects his company to bring in around $2 million, with that figure projected to double for the 2014-15 financial year.

Mr Saleem said the near-term focus was to consolidate the company and refine the technology, rather than seek meteoric growth.

“Now our focus is on how to be more efficient at what we do so sometimes we have to hold back and prepare for the next growth session, otherwise it will become unmanageable,” he said

Mr Saleem said that conservative approach also pertained to the company’s governance – Mr Saleem remains the sole stakeholder in the company he founded with money solely from his own pocket.

“If a good strategic partner comes in then I would consider it, but I am not actively looking at this stage because the company is going really well and there are so many things we can do to improve without getting additional funding,” Mr Saleem said.

In saying that, Mr Saleem is considering taking the company public in a few years given the relevance the Track ’Em system holds for sectors other than resources.

“The potential of this technology is huge because everyone wants to have absolute control of their materials, and that’s what we provide,” Mr Saleem said.