Amir Sultan Malik Awan, M.Sc., was born on May 10, 1992 in Port Washington (USA). After graduating from high school, he began studying International Business Administration at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) and Singapore Management University (SMU) and completed his master’s degree at Münster University – WWU and California State University – Craig School of Business, Fresno State, while focusing on Economy, B2B-Marketing and Digitalization, with special respect to Industry 4.0 in the Automotive Industry. During the cause of pursuing an acedmic career, Amir Awan worked side by side with his father Munir Awan and successfully conducted a market entry and placement into the Germany Automotive Industry in a joint venture with IPH GmbH & Co. KG focussing on product business (PPE), project business (Curing Technologies in Spot Repair) and system business (Innovation Projects in Curing Systems integerated into the serial production). In addition to the family business, he collected amongst other practical experience at BASF SE, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Roedl & Partner and Mister Spex, as the assistant to the CMO of Europes largest online-optician. (jiriecaribbean.com) He also worked during his bachelors as a tutor for International Taxation and during his masters as a student assistant at the Institut for Production and System Technologies of the University of Münster, WWU. Having the blessing of working and being allowed to learn from Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Klaus Backhaus and his team, he was offered a Phd position, which he commenced in March 2018. Based on the Master Thesis of Product-Service-Systems and Industry 4.0 in the German Automotive Industry, he explored Blockchain Technology as a highly interesting novel technology to enable secure and democrotized digitalization, while providing a platform for the connection of machines, objects and humans without forcing actors to be dependant on intermediary platforms, which take the data souvereignity of the data providers, guard and exploit the customer contact and create strong Lock-In Effects for the participants. Next to his academiy research on Blockchain Technology, Amir worked on Strategic Management Consulting projects with external partners in an national and international enviorment as a Business Consultant under Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Klaus Backhaus, while being the Managing Director of the Research Center for Freight Transport Marketing (FGVM) and conducting an expert report for B2B Marketing in System Business. After spending more than one year under Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Klaus Backhaus, Amir found himself with interested industrial partners in the realm of his Phd research on Blockchain based data marketplaces for the Automotive Aftermarket, targeting the empowerment of SMsE in the setting of the platform economy. This is when Amir Awan founded AWAN GmbH leading into the two business units a) IT&BC – under the project name Rocket Blockchain – Münster Tech Accelerator – and the business unit b) Trade&Finance – under the project names Misses Lack and PolyProtect, latter born to support the finance and sales of Covid-related products. None of this would have been possible without a strong team and dedicated partners working on the projects as co-founders, consultants, and allowing to offer a Full-Service-Approach to its clients. For the last 12 months of the business unit of IT&BC, Amir Awan has had the blessing of working not only very closely with Hans-Christian Boos, Founder and CEO of arago / CTO of WISeKey on digital risk model solutions to hold the pandemic at bay, but also working with the business unit Trade&Finance very closely with Pino Sergio, Managing Director of Cesar Capital (Swiss Investment Fund of 2,2 Billion EUR), to finance and manage goverment and enterprise procurements in the realm of Covid-related products on an international level. Currently, Amir Awan is working on his passion of Blockchain Technology together with WISeKey on the new product development, rampup and roll-out of a highly innovative NFT Blockchain Platform, leveraging on WISeKey core technology to set a novel standard and a trade platform for luxury goods, art and collectables, both, on the physical and digital sphere.
