Fahim Saleh was a role model and a man with an 'indomitable will," his friend and business partner Ahmed Fahad wrote.
Fahad expressed his disbelief at the loss of his mentor in a letter posted to the website Medium.com and provided to the Journal on Wednesday.
Saleh, a John Jay High School graduate who became an internet mogul from his parents' Hopewell Junction home was found dismembered in his luxury Manhattan condo, police said Wednesday.
Fahim Saleh, 33, was found at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday inside his apartment on East Houston Street on the Lower East Side. An electric saw was left behind, police said Wednesday.
A relative called police after going to check on Saleh and making the gruesome discovery. Responding officers discovered a clothed torso, bags containing a head and arms and the electric saw in the living room, police said.
Investigators also recovered security video showing Saleh exiting an elevator that leads directly into the full-floor, two-bedroom apartment earlier Tuesday afternoon closely followed by someone dressed entirely in black, including a mask, according to a law enforcement official who was briefed on the case. It also shows a struggle between the two ensuing at the entrance to the apartment, said the official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Police believe that the relative may have interrupted the intruder before that person fled out a back exit.
Saleh was the chief executive officer of a ride-hailing motorcycle startup called Gokada that began operating in Nigeria in 2018. The company confirmed his death on Twitter Wednesday and said, “Fahim was a great leader, inspiration and positive light for all of us."
The company later posted: "As painful as these last days have been for us, we at Gokada owe it to ourselves and to Fahim’s memory to act and fulfill his visions for the company and for Nigerian youth. ... Fahim’s passion for Nigeria and it’s youth was immeasurable. He believed young Nigerians are extremely bright and talented individuals who would flourish if given the opportunity.”
Saleh listed Poughkeepsie as his hometown on his Facebook page, but according to Journal archives he lived in Hopewell Junction and graduated from John Jay in 2005.
In this 2007 file photo, 20-year-old Fahim Saleh is pictured in his home office in Hopewell Junction.
He was born in Saudi Arabia and "moved quite a bit before settling in Rochester," according to his bio on the Gokada site. His "interest in computers developed" as an eighth-grader in Poughkeepsie, the site said.
Making thousands from Hopewell home, with friends
In 2003, while still living with his parents, he created WizTeen, a network of around a dozen websites targeted at teens and tweens that allowed for customizing social media and instant messenger services. It was, by the time he was 20, a six-figure business, according to archives.
In a blog post on Medium.com dated Oct. 2, 2018, he described the experience:
"At first, the sites only netted a few bucks a month in revenue – which was still pretty cool to my 16-year-old mind – but after I teamed up with another young developer, Kyle Kapper, I began bringing in real income,” Saleh wrote.
The two created a network of websites that generated more than $200,000 annually, but he said the network dwindled by the time he graduated from Bentley University.
Fahad said he met Saleh in 2015, when he was 17-years old. He said Saleh took a chance on him as a high school student and became a mentor.
The two worked together on various projects, the most recent a tech startup called Pathao. According to its site, the company provides ride sharing, food delivery and e-commerce logistics services in Bangladesh. Fahad said Saleh left the company in 2017 in the hopes of "unlocking new opportunities.
"When I met Fahim in 2015, he was already an impressive guy, a role model even," Fahad wrote. "Over the years, I came to know his many... human flaws, but when I think of Fahim Saleh tonight, I remember his indomitable will, his complete and utter disregard for status quo, and his lopsided extreme focus to make things happen. I remember a man who changes things and people."
Investigators were exploring whether the killing could have been related to Saleh’s business dealings. They also were checking security camera video from around the neighborhood to try to learn where the assailant fled.
Apartments in the 10-story building where Saleh’s remains were discovered sell for more than $2 million. The building was completed in 2017 as part of a wave of gentrification in the once gritty neighborhood.
Saleh’s LinkedIn biography described him as a self-taught businessman who founded Gokada building on his experience of first “seeing an opportunity in his parent’s native country of Bangladesh” and starting that country’s largest ride-sharing company. It said he also was invested in a similar venture in Colombia.
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Originally Posted by Nic B
