Good morning - Sindhi Association of North America

ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT, INNOVATION AND LEADERSHIP:
Introduction: Information Secretary, Asim Kaghzi.
Chair: Mr. Fazalullah Qureshi.
Panelists: Mr. Jahangir Siddique.
Mr. Masaood Baloch.
Mr. Asim Kaghzi: We are going to start our next session so the session idea is to talk about
innovation leadership and entrepreneur spirit in Sindh and the people who have done some
ground breaking work. I would request Mr. Fazalullah Qureshi. He has spent about four
decades in public and social sector and has done some marvelous work in both areas. I would
like to request his company on the stage here. I would also like to request Mr. Jahangir Siddiqui
to come on stage. I would request Mr. Masood Baloch to come on stage as well, he is the young
entrepreneur and we want to have him share his story with us as well. First of all, I would like to
spend few couple of minutes about Mr. Jahangir Siddiqui. One thing that he told me in few
minutes that I had pleasure of his company on one-on-one that the entrepreneur spirit needs
creative thinking not to look at the problems, but look at the solution in an unorthodox way. So
I think you need to use that creativity and come up with the solution and make something
worthwhile for you, your family, your friends for the region and I think what Mr. Siddique has
done is all of it and finally what we are all proud of is the Mahwish Jahangir Foundation that has
done really marvelous job and I would request him to share some of his experiences on that
philanthropic front as well. We will start our session with introduction and some of the
thoughts that he had gathered for our session, Mr. Fazalullah Qureshi. I am sorry again we have
interruption for just one quick minute, we are giving away a lifetime achievement award. Our
next lifetime achievement award goes to Sain Ata Muhammad Bhambro. Sain obviously does
not need a lot of introduction for those of us who do not know a whole lot about him, a very
brief introduction and then I would request former SANA president who put lot of effort and
energy into this organization, Ada Sani Panhwar to come to stage and give this award. Mr. Ata
Muhammad Bhambro is a dedicated writer and a translator who has translated more than 60
books mainly on the history of Sindh. He belongs to district Khairpur Mirs and currently lives in
Hyderabad. Mr. Bhambro is one of those few people who has dedicated his life to promote
Sindhi language, literature through translating original works of art on modern history of Sindh.
He has mainly worked on British period of Sindh’s modern history and translated more than 30
books on this subject. Mr. Ata Muhammad Bhambro has deep interest in Sindhi language,
literature and history and it is my privilege to ask Sain to come to the stage.
Sorry for the interruption let’s go on.
Mr. Fazalullah Qureshi: I am grateful to SANA friends and you all who have come here to listen
about the Sindh and stories of Sindh. I will call it Sham-e-Ghariban because every time we meet
and every time we talk and then go home. The Sindh which we are talking today is consisting of
fifty million people which is I think if you go to United Nation list you can stand in the top 20 or
30 countries of the world with fifty million people. What Sindh was at independence time, it
was 4.6 million, we are ten times more than what we were, but where we are, I mean
indigenous Sindhis where we are. Out of this 50 million, 25 million at least are in urban based
district headquarters, are big cities and they are well off. I will not say rich but they are well off
and about more than million may be the millionaires. The rest five million are in the small towns

living miserably and more miserable are the 20 million who are living in the villages, who are
providing you food. Their destination not changed. They are as bad as they were.
Independence or no independence does not mean for them. I used to visit upper Sindh mostly
because in some NGOs, which are working upper Sindh, I used to visit the lower Sindh as well,
but the conditions of people overall there, because we have recently started poverty score card
system introduced by the world bank and where we are now counting the poverty where I
found that almost 50% of those 20 million are around poverty line, poverty line means less than
dollar a day and another 10 million are in the poverty score card which is from 1-18 that is they
are below poverty line. What the government, the civil society we people here sitting here in
Karachi, what we have thought about those people, what is wrong, system is wrong, politicians,
civil society. I take all of those societies, the segment of the society responsible for those people
because they are doing their best. Still Pakistan is the country, the backbone is agriculture and
in our Sindh our backbone is agriculture. This is I think only country of the world which exports
rice as well as wheat, last two years we are exporting wheat, but the people who are growing
this crops what they are that we must think when we talk about the entrepreneurship, we have
to talk about these people. We have to fix the responsibilities. We have to see the governance,
we have to see the environment. I think Jahangir will be more talking about this subject and
also I will talk more after we have heard the panelist. I am thankful to Jahangir and Masood and
other friends, let them talk it and then I will try to cover it up rest, thank you very much.
Mr. Jahangir Siddiqui
[Urdu version]
Mr. Asim Kaghzi: Thank you very much, I would request Mr. Masood to come over and share
his experience. He is a young fellow, he does not have a background in computing or any of the
services, but he truly has made it his business obviously and let’s hear him out.
Mr. Masaood Baloch: Assalam-O-Alaikum, Thank you Dr. Valeed Sahab, thank you Ada Asim. I
think we have already taken lunch so we can talk of business. I believe business opportunities
are like buses because there is always an other one coming; that is why I believe and that is the
reason I started business; maybe I am kidding. My brief background, introduction, I did my
intermediate from Cadet College Petaro, did my MBA from Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad,
PACS and COPC certified, prestigious healthcare and call center related American certifications.
Fifteen years of experience in business process out-sourcing, did couple of jobs in private sector
at senior positions the last being Vice President, AMZ Technologies then finally I decided to start
my own business. Luckily, I got in touch with an American who I partnered with to start
outsourcing business in Pakistan that is how I started. Started in April 2006, hired one room
apartment in Gulistan-e-Jauher, bought couple of computers and started running operations
with three people without ACS in the scorching heat of May, June, July and August. I had a
limited budget so did not even keep the office boy. The team did the cleaning and tea-stuff
themselves. They did a wonderful job in satisfying the clients. We added some clients, grew
and shifted to a bigger place. We kept on Alhamdulillah adding up the clients, we grew more
and we shifted to Shahra-e-Faisal a business hub. Incorporated company as ACS (Arizona
Computer Services Private Limited) in September 2007, became CEO and am still. Our parent
company Arizona Computer Services Inc. is based out of Phoenix, AZ, established in 1970 being
run by a team with 300 years of cumulative experience and being looked after by my partner
Bruce Westenberg. Primarily we started as medical billing and transcription company, but now

Alhamdulillah we have the diversified portfolio with eLearning, eHealth services and solutions
along with document management system, web design and development and training services.
We did some project in Egypt also sponsored by government of Egypt, started participating in
international exhibitions, has been a regular participant as an exhibitor in Gitex Saudi Arabia and
Gitex Dubai and soon InshaAllah we will be there in CeBIT Germany and Arab Health as a regular
exhibitors.
Along with US, now we have a presence in Italy, Spain, Egypt and we are also trying to establish
our presence in different parts of the world like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Australia and some other
countries of Europe. The whole idea is to get the outsourcing business in Pakistan.
Now what is outsourcing What is BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) And how it can help us,
how it can help Sindhi people particularly people living in the rural areas. I would say
outsourcing basically is getting the non-core business process activities of any organization done
from another entity, be it an individual or an organization, it is called the outsourcing. If there is
an airline, the core job would be to sell tickets to the passengers and not to develop the MIS
system. Physicians sitting in America, their core job would be to examine patients not worry
about as how the claims would be submitted with the insurance company and how to make the
followup or to worry about their electronic medical records. Radiologist sitting in Saudi Arabia
or maybe in any part of the world, their core job is to interpret the reports and not to develop
any PACS system. The job of a court is to hear the cases, not to build document management
system to archive their documents.
Bill Gates says: “Personal computers will be window to everything that we are interested into
and everything that we would need to know.” So here comes in the opportunity because with
the advent of internet and information technology, the organizations are trying to get their back
office work outsourced to the areas where it could be done at cheaper rates. It runs around 300
billion dollar industry that is addressable.
One in nine out of US IT jobs were to be outsourced by 2010; people estimate that by
outsourcing there could be cut of cost by 40%. So that is the reason that our main focus and our
future vision revolves around outsourcing. We just want to establish a sustainable outsourcing
business model and expanded it into the rural part of the country at the district, subdivision and
village level.
We will start with one province, Sindh Province and one village. Why because you know the
rural areas are going to be the attractive out-sourcing destinations. By integrating the
technology and the trained source in the rural areas, we would like to capitalize on this
opportunity. And there could be another important leverage out of this that is you know
developing the local entrepreneurship in the rural areas, that is very important. Now how can
we do that We have about close to 23 districts in Sindh and 97 subdivisions excluding the
thickly populated districts, five in Karachi and one in Hyderabad, we will be left with 16-18
districts and 75 subdivisions. If we establish the outsourcing units by giving the connectivity to
16 districts, 75 subdivisions and 10,000 villages, we can calculate the figure. Consider that 50%
of them employ 20 people each and they give salary to tune of $300 per person per month. We
will have you know employment opportunity to 100,000 people and that is very good number.
The employment and the outsourcing in the rural areas will have a significant impact on the

social economic dynamics because the IT sector is one of the largest employment creators in the
world in the emerging economies and this also gives benefits to the downstream sectors as well.
The Indians believe that there are 80-90 million people required to take care of the entire
world’s back office operations needs. Along with this, we can bring in sustainability and
economic prosperity. Sustainability will be there in the flow of the people living in the rural
areas, there would be an economic prosperity as the spending would be there. They will have
the money, they will spend and the economic activity will have a positive impact on the overall
development of the rural areas. The IT training to the youth in the rural areas will give them
exposure to the skills which are highly valued in today’s world; that is very important and then
we can also have lot of money in the rural areas they will begin to thrive. They will think
positively and they will be able to build careers and they will have lot of jobs. Along with this,
there will be a less burden on the urban areas because if we start providing jobs to the people in
the rural areas they will stay back. They will prefer to work close to their areas and then we will
have lesser basic amenities problem and environmental problems and the broader impact
would be to you know bridge the digital gap in the rural areas and urban areas, stem the brain
drain, we will reverse the migration and there will be reduced infrastructure pressure.
In the end I would say that definitely there would be challenges but we will start with one pilot
project from one village may be. If proven successful, then we will identify people and train
them in different verticals. The challenges and obstacles would be there definitely, but it is up
to us to turn them into the opportunity and if we overcome them we will be winners. If we
allow them to overcome us we will be the losers. So it is our choice and it is only our choice. It
is better to be exhausted from the success then to be you know rested from the failure and I
think that is my message and that is the bottom line of today’s theme which is 21 st century Sindh
choice & challenges.
Mr. Fazalullah Qurashi: Real problem to me was the subject today was challenges and choices
and perhaps we are failed to discuss the challenges and choices how we see the Sindh future. I
told you about the economic poverty, but the question is we have talked about the
entrepreneur spirit innovation and leaderships but what about the environment, what is
environment that we had in Sindh today. We say fact of production, land, labour,
entrepreneurship. We have land but without the infrastructure. We do not have power. We
have got 20-hour load-shading in rural Sindh and about 8-hour load shading in urban cities. We
do not have gas, we do not have portable water. About more than three million people are with
hepatitis B, HIV AIDS occurrence in Sindh is the largest and in these environment what is the
state role, where is the state, what about the law and order situation. If you start business you
have to give seed money, when you earn the business you have to give (bhatta) and we are
talking about the environment, we are talking about the entrepreneurship. What
entrepreneurship you are expecting in this environment. Again going back to the conditions, to
me one of the most disturbing element is not slow economic growth in Pakistan but it is unequal
distribution of benefits of whatever growth that take place yet. The Pakistan is elite capture.
There are monopolies and they are protector of monopolies sitting in the assemblies. They have
got their businesses and there are laws to protect them, it may be sugar mafia, it may be
fertilizer whatever it may be and you get the policy decisions for your mills. You are compelling
the government agencies to buy the surplus when it is cheap in the market and then you
insisting on importing the things when you want, it is a cheap in the country you want to import.
I have seen in the forums these types of policy making. One of the manifestation of extreme

poverty and marginalization can be witnessed in interior Sindh, rural Sindh and interior Sindhis
which have provided hospitality to all the newcomers for centuries are suffering from social
marginalization by those who are warmly welcomed by us. These are the ground realities in the
province of Sindh. So whosoever is there in the power have to rethink. Therefore, now we are
people talking for the change and the change is eminent because you cannot keep all people all
the time as your servant so who is savior in the power must create environment for the
entrepreneurship otherwise everything will be lost, thank you very much.
Mr. Asim Kaghzi/Dr. Valeed Shaikh: Time again for lifetime achievement awards of course if I
did this convention and just gave lifetime achievement award I would still be doing it that are
great great great people in this land. Our next lifetime achievement award recipient is Nur-Ul-
Huda Shah and I would request my dear friend and the spirit behind this convention. So I will
request Yasir to come up. Nur-Ul-Huda Shah is a gifted and famous writer and poet. She has
also written number of creative plays for TV in Sindhi and English languages since last three
decades. She is famous for her rebellion themes, creative diction and social courage. She was
born in Hyderabad to a highly educated family of Hyderabad Sindh and got her early education
from Lahore. Nur-Ul-Huda shah introduced a range of themes in her short stories and poetry
with highly creative and original diction, feudal custom, obsolete cultural traditions, gender
equality, freedom, emancipation of Sindhi and Sindhi women. Due to her famous play, she is
equally famous in Pakistan and India. She currently resides in Karachi, Sindh. Please give a long
hand. In the same theme we the members of SANA are so delighted and pleased and happy and
I do not know what the words are that Sain those who have noticed Sain Ibrahim Joyo has
joined us today, please give him, please stand up. I was telling this friend of mine. Does not
need the introduction, I will do anyway. Mr. Mohammad Ibrahim Joyo is a legendary scholar
and a dedicated teacher. He was born in a small village near Sunn District Jamshoro in 1915. He
is the author of more than 30 books in pure literature, history, language, politics, philosophy and
range of subjects. He is a teacher to many eminent scholars, writers and poets of Sindh like
Rasool Baksh Palejo, Sheikh Ayaz, Siraj-ul-Haq Memon. He has served in many prestigious and
educational literary institutions, Sindh Madarsatul Islam and Sindhi Adabi Board. He is one of
the greatest intellectual icons of modern Sindh who has influenced generation of Sindhi society
for the last six decades. Sain Ibrahim Joyo is present Vice President of Sindh Progressive Writers
Association. So anyway, I think I have done introducing Sain, thank you very much for coming
Sain, thank you very much.