Popular tech entrepreneur and founder of Gokada, Fahim Saleh was brutally killed in his New York apartment on Tuesday, July 14, 2020.
NYPD told Neusroom via email that his remains were found after police responded to a 911 call.
They said, ‘On July 14, 2020, at approximately 15:35 hours, police responded to a 911 call of a past assault inside 265 East Houston Street, in the confines of the 7th Precinct. Upon arrival, officers discovered an unconscious and unresponsive male inside of an apartment. They continued, ‘The Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death and the investigation is ongoing. No arrests at this time. Incident remains under investigation.’
Although Fahim Saleh led a fairly private life, here are 20 things we know about him:
1. Falim Saleh was born in Saudi Arabia to Bangladeshi parents before they immigrated to Rochester, New York.
2. He grew up with two sisters.
3. Fahim credits his knack for technology to the hours he spent playing video games.
4. He is a self-taught programmer.
5. In 2003, he founded his first company, WizTeen, at the age 16 while he was still in High School. The business was a network of websites targeted towards teenagers. It generated over $1 million in revenue.
6. He graduated from Bentley University with a degree in Computer Information System in 2009.
7. After he graduated from the university, he established Tap Fury, where he created ‘PrankDial’, a prank calling app. The app has been downloaded over 20 million times and over 230 million calls have been made.
8. He went on to create Pathao in 2015 from a tech incubator company, HackHouse which he had founded in 2014.
9. Fahim Saleh’s Pathao is a ride-sharing, food delivery, courier and E-commerce service popular in Bangladesh and Nepal.
10. Fahim was a ride-sharing app guru. Before he came to Nigeria, he founded another ride-sharing app, Picap, in Colombia in 2016. The company was recently valued at $15 million.
11. In August 2015, he also founded Kickback Apps, focused on creating entertainment apps like prank apps and fun apps like Madlipz where you can create parodies out of videos by changing their sounds.
12. His journey to becoming one of Nigeria’s most loved tech start-up owner started when he co-founded ‘Gokada’ with Nigerian entrepreneur, Deji Oduntan in 2017.
13. He took over the company as the CEO of Gokada on the 5th of March, 2019 after his co-founder, Deji Oduntan resigned.
14. He subsequently moved to Nigeria afterwards to focus on operations here. He told Techpoint, ‘Even through last year (2018), I spent about 50% of my time in Nigeria’.
15. After becoming CEO, Falim paused operations for two weeks on Gokada to retrain the riders and make certain changes to their bikes and helmets to help make the rides safer. Before his death, he talked about the items that made Gokada better. He said, ‘We did things that nobody else in the market at the time. We provided helmets that were US Department of Transportation certified, which means that if you get in a motorcycle accident with that helmet, that you are protected.’
16. When Lagos state banned motorcycles in February, Fahim found another way to use the bikes and saved thousands of jobs by changing the company into a logistics business. In a video released after the ban, he spoke about the need to save jobs and help his riders become better.
He said, ‘The drivers were there because they have families, they have children, they have dreams, they wanted to start businesses, they wanted to go to school. Gokada wasn’t the final place for their lives, it was the stepping stone of getting to the next level. Gokada is not just a business, it’s a mission and every part of that mission has been – be safe and provide jobs.’
17. In 2018, he founded Adventure Capital, a venture capital, venture factory and incubator company to provide the developing world with a jump-start in the fields of renewable energy, transportation, and payments.
18. In 2019, he bought the New York condo where he was brutally murdered for $2.25 million.
19. His body was found by his sister who went to check on him at his apartment after she didn’t hear from him for a day at about 3:30 pm. She called the police afterwards.
20. He was only 33 years old when he was killed.
