BCBUSINESS.CA OCTOBER 2015 BCBusiness 45
H
amed Shahbazi was
following in his father's
footsteps when he
realized that his love for his
dad, a civil engineer, did
not extend to his father's
profession. Shahbazi was, at
his core, an entrepreneur—so
days after graduating from
UBC in 1997 with a degree in
civil engineering, he decided
to change tack and pursue a
fascination instead with the
emerging Internet.
Shahbazi's early idea
was to create self-service
kiosks so people could
access Internet-based
applications in public loca-
tions like bookstores and
banks. But as Internet access
became more widespread
around 2002, he decided
his company needed to
focus on a better use for its
technology. One thought was
to make Internet-connected
machines that people could
use to pay their bills from
gas stations, drugstores and
other public locations. "That
was one of the applications
that we were told surely
wouldn't work," Shahbazi
recalls.
Today, the company that
would become known as
TIO
Networks Corp. has 70,000
kiosks in retail locations for
giants such as the Walgreen
Company, BP plc and Exxon
Mobil Corp. Those kiosks are
part of a bill-payment system
that serves some of the
largest telecom and utility
bill issuers in North America
including AT&T Inc. and
the Pacific Gas and Electric
Company, and also includes
other platforms such as web
and mobile apps. With its
recently completed acquisi-
tion of Globex Financial
Services,
TIO processes $9
billion in payments annually
and has revenues exceeding
$100 million. –D.H.
r u n n e r - u p
h a m e d s h a h b a z i
[ c h a i r a n d c e o , t i o n e t w o r k s c o r p. ]
r u n n e r - u p
m i c h e l G i a s s o n
[ c e o , n u d ata s e c u r i t y ]
OCTOBER 2015 BCBusiness 45
M
ost young companies
would proudly boast
about their big new
clients, but NuData Secu-
rity co-founder and
CEO Michel
Giasson knows that approach
invites trouble when you work in
Internet security. Not wanting to
invite a target on his back, he'll
only concede that his custom-
ers include three of the top five
e-commerce sites in the world.
Using behavioural analytics
to stop fraud and other malicious
online activity, NuData analyzes
how people browse websites
and steers suspiciously behaving
users toward more restrictive
roadblocks. The company is six
years old and only introduced
its keystone technology plat-
form in 2013—yet despite that
youth, influential cybersecurity
research firm Cybersecurity
Ventures ranked NuData 14th
on its 2015 list of the 500 hottest
companies in the industry. —D.H.
