Farid Ismayilzada was born on January 1st, 1984 in Sheki,
Azerbaijan. After graduating from English Language Gymnasium in
1999, he moved to Turkey to study at Bilkent University. There
he received a BA in International Relations. At the age of 19,
after graduation from Bilkent University as an honor student,
Farid decided to change gears and move to Silicon Valley in the
United States to study at San Jose State University. His
specialization was “Business Administration with a concentration
in high tech companies.” During his stay in San Jose, Farid was
president of AIESEC San Jose--a local branch of the largest
student-run organization in the world. Upon graduation in 2005,
Farid moved to New York to be a Business Development Manager of
AIESEC USA. In 2006, he decided to move back to his home country
to set up the Azerbaijani branch of the American company,
Silverkey Technologies.
In 2007, Farid launched Azerbaijan’s first online
payment service provider company: GoldenPay. Today, GoldenPay is
the country’s largest online payment service provider. He also
founded “
hesab.az,” which is the largest online services platform in Azerbaijan.
In 2011, he worked as a Chief Strategy Officer at Komtec which
is in business of electronic payments. In 2013, Farid founded
eMobile which built the most used loyalty program in Azerbaijan
called “Ulduzum” for Bakcell. From July 2018 and to July 2019,
Farid worked at Azerconnect as Chief Innovation Officer.
Farid is involved in many social activities as well.
He is the chairman of the Board of Advisros of AIESEC Azerbaijan
and an active member of the US-Educated Azerbaijani Alumni
Association (AAA). Farid was also Vice-Chairperson and
Chairperson of AmCham Azerbaijan’s ICT Committee and served as a
member of AMCHAM Board of Directors between 2013 and 2017. Since
November 2017, he also serves as Supervisory Board member for
AZINNEX - Consortium of largest 10 IT companies of Azerbaijan.
Currently, he fully dedicated himself to Technovate
Incubation Center and sometimes does small consulting projects.