Ajaz Khowaj Quoram Ahmed

Ajaz Khowaj Quoram Ahmed[1] MBE
Ahmed in 2015
Born	1973 (age 50–51) Taplow, Buckinghamshire, UK[2]
Nationality	British[2]
Occupation	CEO
Years active	1994–present
Board member of	AKQA (1994–2024)[3] Elton John AIDS Foundation[4] Virgin Unite[5] Mental Health Innovations[6] Prism The Gift Fund[7]
Parents	Khowaj Ahmed[8] (father) Sughran Ahmed[8] (mother)
Website	www.ajaz.org

Ajaz Khowaj Quoram Ahmed, MBE (born 1973) is a British entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder and CEO of London-based new media company AKQA.

Ahmed was born in Taplow, Buckinghamshire^[2] in 1973^[9] to parents from Punjab, India.^[9] He grew up in Maidenhead, where his father, Khowaj Ahmed, worked at a Beechams factory, and his mother, Sughran Ahmed, worked at a hospital launderette.^[8][9]

While in school, Ahmed was a paperboy and delivered newspapers to the UK headquarters of what was then the world's third-largest software company, Ashton-Tate. He wrote to the company requesting a job, and at 15, received an offer to work there during school holidays.^[9] From 1989 to 1991, Ahmed served in the marketing department and eventually as a programmer.^[10] He used the company's dBASE software to author an improved financial system for purchase orders.^[9]

In addition to working for Ashton-Tate as a teen, Ahmed worked for video game developer Ocean Software.^[9] He left school in 1992, and for the next year, he was a marketing and public relations employee for Apple UK.^[11][10] He turned down a copywriting position at BBDO and a brand management position at Unilever^[10] to begin a business studies degree at the University of Bath.^[9]

In 1994, Ahmed decided to leave university and launch a multimedia agency.^[10] There was a high level of interest in the World Wide Web at the time, and he felt that it was crucial to start a company right away.^[10] He first undertook a "fact-finding" trip to the U.S. to find out how companies were using the Internet.^[10] Following this, at the age of 21, he founded AKQA, named after his initials.^[9][12]

Ahmed led the company as its CEO and public face,^[9] and by 1999, it was ranked as the largest independent new media agency in the UK.^[13] The company received an investment of $71 million from Accenture in 2001, and merged with three agencies in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Singapore, establishing itself as an international agency.^[14][15] WPP acquired a majority stake in the agency in 2012, with the deal valuing AKQA at $540 million.^[9] AKQA became an autonomous subsidiary of WPP.^[15] In November 2020, WPP announced that Grey Group would merge with AKQA to form AKQA Group.^[16]

Ahmed was appointed Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to Media.^[17][18] Later that same year, he was awarded an honorary degree as Doctor of Business Administration from the University of Bath.^[19]

Ahmed has authored three books, as of 2021: Velocity (2012),^[20] Limitless (2015),^[8] and Defeat (2019).^[21] Velocity was co-authored by Nike's former vice president of digital sport Stefan Olander, and discusses how companies should embrace the digital world.^[20] The book was a UK bestseller in non-fiction.^[22] Ahmed has stepped down as CEO at AKQA Ahmed serves on the board of trustees for non-profit organizations including the Elton John AIDS Foundation,^[4] Virgin Unite,^[5] and The Royal Foundation's Mental Health Innovations.^[6]

• Ahmed, Ajaz (5 May 2012). Velocity : The Seven New Laws for a World Gone Digital. London: Random House UK. ISBN 9781448116898.
• Ahmed, Ajaz (1 October 2015). Limitless: Leadership that Endures. London: Random House UK. ISBN 978-0091947569.
• Ahmed, Ajaz; Watson, Christian (1 January 2019). Defeat. Ajaz Ahmed & Christian Watson.

• AKQA

• Ajaz.org
• AKQA's official website
• Think With Google: Executive Insight