Startup Guide

STARTUP GUIDE
ISSUE 2
SHAHID MIR
The Art of Pitching
FUTURE IS NOW
Digital Media in
Pakistan
ZOUHAIR
KHALIQ
Seasoned Businessman
& Serial Entrepreneur
DANIELLE
SHARAF
Technology
Entrepreneur
AHMED
KHAN
Making it Online

FOLLOW
US

Editor
t
Shehab Farukh Niazi
Finance
Ahad Wazir
Art Directors
Aleeza Javed
Mahnoor Haroon Niazi
Operations & Outreach
Abbas Khan
Video Content Producer
Rayyan Toru

CONTRIBUTORS
ZIA S. HASAN
Zia is the co-founder and director of NShield Solutions (Pakistan
& UAE). She is the first and only woman in Pakistan who is
successfully leading a surface protection company, breaking
barriers and setting an example for other professional women to
lead non-traditional businesses. NShield is a Nanotechnology
based surface protection company, which offers nano-ceramic
glass coating services for automobiles, and liquid steel &
antimicrobial coatings for various industries. NShield has a nation
wide presence in Pakistan with corporate branches in Karachi,
Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar.
Janet Kozak
Janet Kozak is a Content Strategist, Digital Marketer, Copywriter,
Community Manager and the founder of JanetKozak.com. She’s
been interviewed for publications like My Corporation, Huffington
Post, Glassdoor, Unread Magazine, Work at Home Success, and
NBC News. Janet’s articles have touched hundreds of thousands
of readers and can be found in over a hundred print and online
publications. She can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

OUR PARTNERS

EDITOR’S NOTE
Seasoned businessman and serial
entrepreneur, Zouhair Khaliq, in our cover
story, discusses his journey, which comprises
of many failures and successes – “failure
teaches you to learn better and to be humble.
It puts that empathy for other people in you
to be able to recognize that someone is
struggling. That is why I believe that failure is
essential to success.”
In our second issue, we talk to a number of
entrepreneurs who have made it in diverse
industries through the process of learning
from previous experiences – the common
underlying aspect amongst all of them is that
they’re not afraid of making mistakes as long
as they learn from them.
Learning and evolving continuously
lies at the core of the ultimate success
of entrepreneurs. When we talk about
success and failure, an important
question that arises is what is success
and what is failure? Talk to various
entrepreneurs – seasoned and novel and
you would discover that the definition
of success and failure varies widely –
they’re both relative.
As Mark Cuban says, “it doesn’t matter
how many times you have failed, you
only have to be right once”, failure
is a phenomenon all successful
entrepreneurs are closely familiar with.
The founder of Modulus Tech, Nabeel Siddiqui,
talks about his game-changing idea and where
he sees his business in the years to come.
Mohsin Rafiq of Aprus shares his journey as
an entrepreneur and taking his next generation
to market. One of the few female technology
entrepreneurs, Danielle Sharaf chats with us
about what it takes to run a company and her
latest app, Zoya.
For any entrepreneur, selling an idea is a major
part of making the business a success and the
area where most of them lack is pitching. We
converse with seasoned mentor and industry
professional, Shahid Mir, as he shares key
takeaways for entrepreneurs for making a
successful pitch. The digital economy has
taken over – the CEO of Cheetay sheds light on
the e-commerce industry of Pakistan and what
it takes to make it online; the future of digital is
SHEHAB FARRUKH NIAZI

CONTENTS
THE ART OF PITCHING
THE JOURNEY
34 24
NEWS & EVENTS
10-12
17
07
10
12
13
14
18
17
24
EDITOR’S NOTE
021 DISRUPT
TTHE NEST I/O
WHAT INVESTORS SECRETLY WANT
BY JUMPACT
UPCOMING EVENTS
MARK YOUR CALENDERS
STARTUP DIARIES
AZIMA DHANJEE
JANET KOZAK
CONTRIBUTIONS
THE CONVERSATION
AHMED KHAN
28
34
38
42
44
47
50
THE JOURNEY
DANIELLE SHARAF
54
COVER STORY
ZOUHAIR KHALIQ
MENTORSHIP
SHAHID MIR
DIGITAL MARKETING
ALI KHAN SWATI
HOW THEY DID IT
RICHARD BRANSON
BUSINESS UNUSUAL
NABEEL SIDDIQUI OF MODULUS TECH
ZIA S. HASAN
CONTRIBUTIONS
GEN-NEXT
APRUS
MARKETING INTELLIGENCE

FEATURING
“An entrepreneur is someone who
identifies a space where there is a gap
and he or she is willing to fill that gap
through a product or service. This
means taking a risk, so there needs to
be that willingness”
ZOUHAIR KHALIQ
Cover Story
“Respect is how to treat everyone, not just
those you want to impress”
RICHARD BRANSON
How They Did It
“Connect Hear has done some major activities
including the first ever deaf concert
with Strings”
AZIMA DHANJEE
Co-Founder of Connect Hear
I believe that companies and individuals need to
start thinking digital now if theywant to catch a
slice of that huge digital space in the future as
it the future now.
ALI KHAN SWATI
The Future is Now

NEWS AND EVENTS
The international conference on entrepreneurship and
innovation, 021Disrupt, was held on Nov 10 and 11 in
Karachi to connect the world’s leading investors,
innovators, and tech pioneers with the startup community
of Pakistan to exchange insights and explore investment
opportunities. The 2-day conference was organized by
The Nest I/O, P@SHA’s Tech Incubator.

The participation at
021Disrupt was
overwhelming in terms of
quality and mix with over
600 thought leaders,
investors, entrepreneurs,
professionals, influencers,
and students attending
the conference on both
the days. Almost 300
startups from across
Pakistan attended the
The conference has become a catalyst in
bringing investments into Pakistani
companies. This year, GOBI Partners – an
investment fund that focuses on early stage,
IT and digital media companies, announced
investment in ‘Sasta Ticket’, a Pakistani
startup, at the event. Lamsa, a children’s
edutainment app company with over 12
million downloads, announced that it will be
launching an Urdu version of the app for the
Pakistani audience. Another major
announcement was made by Coca-Cola, the
world’s leading beverage company, about
‘The Dasani Discovery Challenge’, which
invites disruptive entrepreneurs to counter
the issues of plastic waste management
using innovative solutions.
conference with over 200 of them securing
office hours slots with investors and mentors
from around the world including Germany,
USA, UK, Japan, Malaysia, UAE, and others.
Some of the leading venture capitals that
participated in the event included Lumia
Capital, Middle East Venture Partners, Alter
Global, Fatima Ventures, Valhalla Capital,
Wamda Capital, GOBI VC, Sarmayacar, Lakson
Investments Venture Capital, and many more.
The investors had a cumulative target fund size
of more than a USD 1 Billion. Another major
announcement at the conference came from
Google, i.e. announcement of opening Google
Accelerator in Pakistan.
Jehan Ara, President P@SHA and Founder of
The Nest I/O commented, “021Disrupt has
become the go-to event for the startup
community of Pakistan while investors from
around the world use it as the hunting
ground for investment opportunities. We are
so proud of the brand and global network
that we have created around 021Disrupt and
hope to continue to raise the bar in the
coming years”.

There tends to be a disconnect between
investors and entrepreneurs. Startups come
with brilliant ideas and products but don’t
have the money to get going. They tend to
email investors, stalk them everywhere, but
they just don’t seem to listen. Raising money
is extremely challenging and this session
aimed to teach startups to offer investors
something they actually want.
Saif Akhtar from 10xC, one of Pakistan’s
biggest accelerators, joined Jumpact to
share the secret to getting investors to say
yes. He is a Pakistani American investor who
manages technology startup investments
through PlanetNGroup.com, 10xC.pk and
StartupSpace.pk.
In this investor session, Saif shared the
best pitching tips for anyone just getting
started with fundraising. The event
provided exclusive insights for both newbie
entrepreneurs as well as experienced ones,
which helped them to think about investors
like their customers. Furthermore, at
the event, Jumpact announced a formal
partnership with 10xC - Technology Startup
Seed Fund’s Startupspace.pk for content and
collaboration. The key workshop takeaways
included learn tips on pitching better and
unlocking investment capital, getting insider
information on 10xC’s investment strategy
and understanding what actually goes on in
the mind of an investor when they hear your
pitch or read your bio.

17th November will be a day filled with enlightening
discussions and workshops around Google technologies
such as Android, Firebase, Google Cloud Platform,
Google Assistant, Flutter, machine learning with
TensorFlow, and Mobile Web.
The theme of this year is "Digital WellBeing" which will
highlight and discuss the tools and features that help
people better understand their tech usage, focus on what
matters most, disconnect when needed, and create
healthy habits so that LIFE, not the technology in it, stays
front and center.
TechJuice Circle is a close-knit exclusive event for
entrepreneurs and startup founders to network with
the leaders in the business, technology and telecom
industry of Pakistan.
Through gamification of this networking experience,
every participant gets time to interact with fellow
founders and the mentors.
Code for Pakistan brings the biggest and most
exciting Hackathon of the year 'Civic Hackathon
2018' happening in Islamabad on the second
weekend of December 2018. This is going to be
a 2.5 days long Hackathon starting on 7th
December and concluding on 9th December,
2018.
During this wee
During this weekend, you will learn design
thinking, open-source hacking for social good,
receive mentoring and input from domain
experts in government and local organizations,
have opportunities to network, and work in
teams to create solutions — all for free.

Connect Hear aims to provide
sign language accessibility to
deaf community in Pakistan.
According to WHO statistics,
5% of world population has
hearing impairment and using
that figure, in Pakistan there
are about 10 million individuals
with hearing impairment.
Connect Hear aims to work for
them through technology to
provide them sign language
interpretation services. We also
want to make spaces inclusive
for the deaf.
I’m one of the co-founders of
Connect Hear and I have served
the deaf community since I was
12. I am a sign language
translator and bring in that
expertise to our startup. We are
a team of three people. Areej,
Arham and I, the co-founders
are high school friends and we
were in our second year of
university when we started
working on Connect Hear. We
have a team of seven people –
three are language interpreters,
one marketing lead, a
managing director and a
videographer.
The best part of the team is
that we all are youngsters and
we’re all are below 21 years of
age. 60% of people in our team
have families who have one or
two hearing impaired persons.
Areej has attended Stanford
and Harvard Summer schools
and she has studied product
design and business
development and that’s what
she brings in to the table.
Arham has self-studied
machine learning and other
technologies and he looks after
the technical aspects.
The idea was initiated last year.
My parents are hearing
impaired, I grew up seeing my
parents struggle to
communicate every day in their
life. If my parents have to call
someone or if they need to go
to a bank or if they need to go
to a hospital, it is difficult to
communicate on their own.
Even during our parent teacher
meetings, it was always a
struggle because they couldn’t
communicate because of the
language barrier. This used to
frustrate me a lot and I used to
think that maybe someday I
would come up with a solution
for it. This kept me motivated
and last year, I discussed this
issue with my high school
friends and we built up an idea.
We had no resources and we
just had an idea; we didn’t
know how to go about it.
We went to Nest I/O, which is a
Google incubator. We met with
them and discussed our idea –
we had our summer vacations
during that time and we wanted
to spend them productively.
Nest I/O immediately asked us
to join. We got a lot of
resources and a lot of
mentorship along the way. We
started teaching sign language
on Facebook and started to
interact with the deaf
community. Now, we have
established interpreter
systems.

We see incredible potential for our idea. There
exists a market among corporates, a lot of retail
stores, public sector banks because they want to
be inclusive. Considering that the community
with people having disabilities is asking for it,
institutions want to have a solution in case a deaf
customer walks in. It’s amazing and the demand
is increasing, the recent government is
advocating for disabled people’s rights. Imran
khan has included in his mandate the need for
interpreters,
he mentioned the need for having service at all
sectors and that’s what we are hoping for. We
started to make personal connections and now
we have a personal connection with the deaf
community. We want to get on the B2B level and
use the businesses to provide the deaf
community with services. We have been in the
market for about a year and two months and we
have recently started our video interpretation
services in Jan 2018.
In terms of resistance to our idea, I think the first
major thing was to make people believe that our
idea will not run on a donor system; we have
revenue streams and we have a self-sustainable
model, which is not as good as corporate sectors
and other e-commerce industries where they
make a lot of money. We want to make enough
money so that we could reinvest that in our
ventures and keep it growing. We have been really
motivated to make real impact since the
beginning and we want to keep the impact
growing. This has been the first hard part. The
second hard part is that we’re all students and
youngsters so people think that it’s a one time,
temporary project. The truth couldn’t be farther
from that; we want to make sign language
interpretation system inclusive, accessible and
available everywhere in Pakistan and then we are
planning on taking our service to India and
Bangladesh. This is our goal and we are focused
on it at the moment.
Another hurdle is that the deaf community is very
isolated and they are in groups. When we work,
we’re trying to bring all these deaf organizations
and schools together. Our mandate is not to work
with only one specific group. We want to provide
a single platform that the community can trust.
We are in this forever and we are going to create
a self-sustainable impact in the community.
We’ve had to face some interesting situations
along the way. Connect Hear has done some
major activities including the first ever deaf
concert with Strings band – we invited 300
individuals who came and became a part of the
concert for the very first time. We had sign
language interpreters and the lights adjusted
according to the beat of the sound so that the
deaf could enjoy music as well.
Then, we did election interpretation and none of
the news channels were ready to have
interpreters so we brought the platform to our
Facebook page, we had live interpretation going
on for the news – we collaborated with Geo News.
And now Geo News keeps on bringing news
interpreters for different news sections.
For the future, we want our video interpretation
service to be out there. We want to have multiple
interpreters who are based in our call centers,
but are also based in local government sectors in
every part of Pakistan.

CONTRIBUTIONS
Keeping a Pulse on Customer Needs With Social
Listening
In my online business networking group, one
big problem small business owners cite most
frequently is marketing. Yet the challenge
of effectively marketing your business and
products can be easily solved with a number
of simple activities.
I regularly help other small business owners
put together marketing plans for their
businesses on a shoestring budget. This
means I get to see their needs and abilities
up close and personal. I budget for what they
have on hand at the moment and also build
growth into their long-term plans.
As an entrepreneur myself offering boutique
As an entrepreneur myself offering boutique
content marketing consultancy services,
I've found that the skills most lacking in
many entrepreneurs are also the digital
marketing skills crucial to ensuring steady
business. Two powerful public relations (PR)
and marketing activities I recommend to
all startups are social listening and social
influencing.
In the Entrepreneur's
Toolbox:
Social Listening
and
Social Networking
By Janet Kozak
Social listening is recommended for all small business
owners. Startups may have a handful of social profiles,
pages, and businesses, they follow, but many rarely do
so strategically. Business owners can cut through the
chatter with social listening tools that zero in on trends
and their competitors. Depending on their budget, I
recommend paid tools like Mention or free Google
Alerts for specific keywords.
Social listening helps entrepreneurs manage their
online reputations. It can also increase customer
retention by allowing small businesses to quickly
respond to issues that come up - often reducing
refunds in the process.
Additionally, social listening enables small businesses
to identify product and content gaps. This helps
businesses create and introduce new products and
content their audience urgently needs.
Building Networks with Influencer Marketing
Social influencing and influencer marketing are two
other tactics that help businesses grow their networks
and boost their brands. Of course, this needs to be
done carefully without stalking or spamming the
influencer you’re targeting.
Social influencing can include blogger marketing
campaigns, earned media mentions, and
development of other strategic partnerships. When
my clients reach out down the line to influencers
they’ve been actively following, the influencers
are often happy to help...if the tone has been
appropriately set. Social influencing is useful for
networking purposes and keeping a pulse on one's
niche. A few tools that I recommend for social
influencing include Social Bluebook, BuzzSumo,
and Klout.
Small businesses have it hard. They have to keep up
with their larger competitors on a fraction of their
competition's budgets. Thankfully, with inexpensive
tools and a solid strategy, it can be done.

Ahmed
CEO
Khan
of Cheetay on Making it Online
“Small businesses
are by their very
nature more mobile;
they’re better suited
to cater to certain
niches”

THE CONVERSATION
When we started like 6 years ago it was
very native, there was nothing going on
and we tried to build something from
the ground up. The tech landscape has
changed considerably. For example
there are fashion brands with a monthly
sale online of 1.5 crores, which means
that even their flagship stores don’t
match that. This proves that
e-commerce has become huge and it’s
going to continue to grow bigger with
time. I feel this is just the tip of the
iceberg because there is such a big
market out there and as more people
become educated, become smartphone
and internet savvy, they will see the true
value of ecommerce. Online retail is
always going to be cheaper than
conventional retail because you don’t
have a retail overhead. Another positive
effect is that the government prefers
this because you know transactions are
accountable and traceable.
The shortcomings are that there is a
lack of regulation and a lack of
government support. The environment
still doesn’t understand what is needed
for technology companies to flourish
and not just in terms of regulation, but
also in terms of manpower or the
training required. I really feel that our
focus as policy makers needs to be on
improving and generating new
technologies. Moreover, the
infrastructure is very limited because
there is a general lack of trust from
consumers, which we need to build on.
Ahmed Khan, the Founder & CEO of
Cheetay Logistics Pvt. Ltd is a
seasoned entrepreneur with a knack
for problem solving, operations and
analytics. With the profound
realization that the future belongs to
technology, he has been working on
building an e-commerce ecosystem,
where you add technology to
conventional retail and figure out the
optimization. His primary objective
behind Cheetay is to create an
e-commerce store with a fulfilment
service along with payment solutions
to make transactions easier,
frictionless and cheaper.

THE CONVERSATION
How can small businesses
have an edge in the
ecommerce market?
Small businesses are by
their very nature more
mobile; they’re better suited
to cater to certain niches. So
if small businesses want an
edge, they have to pick a
niche and they have to
corner that domain and
build their expertise so that
no matter how many
government regulations are
in place, you cannot be
challenged.
Tell us about Cheetay?
How did the idea come to
be?
After Rocket, the challenge
that we faced at Daraz and
Kaymu was fulfilment and
payments. We were able to
generate customers, we were
able to acquire products, but
getting the orders fulfilled was
challenging. We were hovering
around 70% and there were
times with 40-50% fulfilment
rates where one of the key
challenges was payment. The
idea behind Cheetay was to
create an e-commerce store
with a fulfilment service along
with payment solutions so that
transactions becomes easier,
frictionless and cheaper.
What is the distinguishing
factor that sets Cheetay
apart from other players
in the industry?
Firstly, it’s the values; there are
certain things we believe in.
We try to abide by those
values. Furthermore, our
mantra is to look at every
stakeholder as a key customer.
That is why we don’t just look
at a customer as the one who
places an order. We classify
vendors, riders, restaurants
and all parties involved as
customers since adding value
from the start makes it trickle
down to the bottom.
Tell us more about your background and how you
became interested in the Pakistani ecommerce
sector?
I have a family business, which I was initially
helping to manage. I’ve also done management
consulting in the past and have also worked with
an FMCG so my background has always been
around problem solving, analytics and operations.
These are the sort of things that I understand and
get excited about. Technology for me was the
driving factor, so I realized that the future belongs
to technology and the more we can incorporate it
into our solutions, the cheaper and faster our
solutions will become. So that was the idea behind
building an ecommerce ecosystem – you take
conventional retail, add technology and figure out
how to optimize it.

What point does an ecommerce company
need to reach in order to benefit most from
increased margins?
We keep talking about scale and how
important it is; it’s hard to say because it
depends on your cost base and right now our
scale is miniscule in Pakistan. Flipcart was
just sold for 18 billion dollars in India and our
biggest company gets sold for 150 million
dollars, which is a hundred times less, so we
have a long way to go to answer the question
of how big it needs to be. I think a good
ecommerce company should be doing 100
thousand transactions a day before it can
really start thinking about calling itself a
serious business.
“Technology for me
was the driving
factor so I realized
that the future
belongs to
technology”
What are the consumer attributes you find
lacking in the consumer market that
presents a hurdle for an ecommerce
company’s growth?
Our experience with consumers has been that
they treat ecommerce as a discount store so
the only time they’re willing to experiment or
use ecommerce is when they think it’s going
to be cheaper. So, as a business when we look
at it we need to monetize that customer over
a lifetime because unless they are consuming
and transacting, they’re not profitable for us.
Another thing is that we have very impatient
consumers who seem to be highly critical yet
highly sensitive so they get upset even if
something small goes wrong, but you don’t
get appreciation for all the times when you’ve
done something right.
What’s next for Cheetay?
Growth and scale; we want to
continue raising more money,
to expand to other cities, to
add more business verticals
and to expand our team. We
want to work towards
betterment and build our
technology to something that
is world class and
revolutionary. So, that’s the
plan.

In Conversation with
Technology Entrepreneur
Danielle Sharaf

Tell us about your background and your
company.
I am an Electrical Engineer. I started my
career at ROZEE.PK in 2007 in products
and business development. Afterwards, I
started Switch in 2012 as a mobile VAS
company. Our first product was Ufone
Job Alerts – an SMS service connecting
jobseekers to employers through their
mobiles. Switch is now one of the
leading mobile VAS content providers
in the country reaching out to over 15M
users. We’ve recently branched into
digital content creation and acquisition.
You have worked for multiple
organizations before founding your
company. What do you believe were the
key lessons you were able to apply to
your business?
You’re as good as your weakest link –
startup success is very much a team
effort. Choose talent as if your life
depends on it. I have a slightly different
approach when it comes to building
teams. Rather than referring to my work
team as a family, I prefer comparing
them to a sports team. Everybody needs
to step up and do their
bit. Unconditional support no matter
what the performance is just won’t cut it.
Learn financial management – not saying
that you should be an ace accountant
or bury yourself in numbers every day,
but as a business owner, it’s crucial you
understand the financial health of your
venture. One of the most critical hires
for any startup should be that of a good
finance manager. It should be someone
who not only understands the business,
but also the environment and regulations
surrounding it.
No decision is the worst decision –
sometimes businesses plateau and fail
not because of bad decision making but
because of no decision-making.
because of no decision-making.
Understand the importance of timely
decisions. That one follow up email, or
a strategic hire or a product pitch can
mean the difference between a hit and
a miss. Nothing is worse than ‘what if’,
even for your business.
You are one of the few female
technology entrepreneurs in Pakistan.
What do you believe is the greatest
hurdle that keeps females from starting
tech businesses?
Buying into conventional stereotypes that
there are certain kosher professions for
women that we should not stray from.
“You’re as good as
your weakest link –
startup success is
very much a team
effort”
Medicine and teaching is fine, but
engineering and entrepreneurship,
especially tech entrepreneurship is
better left to the boys of the house. So
somewhere between choosing dolls
over mechano sets and making career
decisions we internalize this narrative.
It’s unfortunate because I can tell you
how supportive and inclusive the tech
community in this country is. To date,
I have not felt discriminated against
because of my gender and that’s saying
something in an orthodox society like
ours.
You have recently launched your latest
app, ‘Zoya’. Tell us more about that.

How do you define success?
“Ultimately, sky is the
limit for Zoya; just like it
should be for every girl
in Pakistan”
Zoya started off as part of a bigger SMS
healthcare service, but pretty soon took a life
of its own. At that time, we were running a
women’s service including an SMS advisory in
partnership with a local telecom and most of the
queries were about health and wellness. Zoya,
the app was a direct outcome of that.
It’s a free multilingual health and wellness app
for girls in Pakistan focusing on 2 problem
areas. These are lack of information regarding
female healthcare and lack of connectivity with
healthcare practitioners.
Zoya is tackling it with a suite of features
including a newsfeed that showcases audio
video content in regional languages, an interactive
symptoms checker where you
can touch a body part to find out all possible
diagnosis, a period tracker that helps you track
your cycles, a verified database of over 15,000
doctors, 300 geolocations, diagnostic centres and
gyms, home remedies and above all a chat feature
where you can chat with a live expert through the
privacy of your home.
What was the gap in the market that motivated
you to work on this idea?
Restricted access to information about female
healthcare
Stigmas associated with female healthcare
No comprehensive health app available with
local content
Female smartphone usage is on the rise
I like to think of success as a relative
phenomenon. For me it’s when I know that I’ve
put in my 100 percent and that there was nothing
else I could do, regardless of the outcome. I also
see it as a continuous journey. One where your
goals are ever evolving and so are your efforts.
In your opinion, what are the three greatest
traits of a good entrepreneur?
Self discipline – you know what they say about
discipline. It’s the bridge between goals and
accomplishments. It’s even truer when you’re
the captain of your own ship.
Perseverance – entrepreneurship is not about
winning, but about learning from failure and
rising from the ashes again and again and
again. You will fall hard and fast more often than
you’ll soar. Many a times it’ll be a lonely and
excruciating journey, but giving up should never
be an option.
An eye for the right time – knowing when to
launch, when to grow and when to scale. All
of us make mistakes at these stages, but a
good entrepreneur is one who minimizes these
mistakes, learns from them and is swift to pivot
accordingly. A good entrepreneur is a creature
of opportunity rather than habit, i.e. he/she
understands the importance of the ‘right’ time
and adapts accordingly rather than repeating
the same processes over and over again.
What are the future plans for ‘Zoya’ and any
other ventures?
Zoya is a very small effort in normalizing an
age-old conversation on female healthcare and
our prime focus is on that. In the near future,
we want Zoya to become a trusted, household
companion for every girl in the country. It’s
going to be an interesting learning curve for us
and our users, who are just hopping onto the
smartphone bandwagon. We’re very excited to
see how Zoya evolves. Ultimately, sky is the limit
for Zoya; just like it should be for every girl in
Pakistan.

ZOUHAIRKHALIQ
“An entrepreneur is someone who identifies a space where
there is a gap and he or she is willing to fill that gap through a
product or service. This means taking a risk, so there needs to
be that willingness”

Zouhair Khaliq, a seasoned businessman
and serial entrepreneur, is on the boards of
directors and advisors of numerous diverse
entities from media and food to technology
and telecom. Business development,
strategy, fintech, operations, turnarounds,
mergers and acquisitions and startups are
only some of the areas he specializes in. He
talks to Startup Guide about how it all
began; how his career progressed through
the years; how his mindset has evolved; his
definition of success; traits in successful
entrepreneurs and a lot more!
How did it all begin?
If I look back, I find that I’ve been a nomad all
my life – my father was a civil servant, so we
travelled all over. You learn as you grow – a lot of
different cultures and influences keep growing
inside you and you don’t realize it. When I went
to the UK to study at the age of 15 for ten years,
it had a significant impact on me – the UK was a
very parochial society, this was in 1975. They
would ask questions about whether we had cars
in Pakistan and if we lived in houses. It was a
revelation for me in terms of how people in
another part of the world behaved and how they
perceived the rest of the world. It was very
instructive at the time – it also made me restless
– when I stay in one place for too long, I crave
change. I’ve been working for 40 years, counting
the 4 years I worked as a Chartered Accountant.
I’ve come a long way in this span of time. It
wires you to look ahead – in perspective, I’ve led
a nomadic life, where I’ve constantly looked at
the next goal and the next big thing.
“
Failure is absolutely
essential in life. I know a
lot of people who have
come to a certain point
in their lives without
seeing failure. Therefore,
they’re not able to be
empathetic towards
others. Failure teaches
you to learn better and
to be humble. It puts
that empathy for other
people in you
“

Your career progression has been
very quick throughout the years of
your incredible career. What was
your mindset during the process?
You wear many hats, with
the wide scope of work that
you do. What’s the secret?
It comes from this early impulse of
restlessness. When I was younger, I
used to read a lot. Typically, there
used to be not one, but three or four
books that I was reading at one time
because my mind would not be able
to handle the monotony of doing just
one thing. This was the only way my
mind felt at rest. I learned to adapt
early on. I am on various boards,
which are very diverse.
The secret to wearing different hats is
to have the discipline to
compartmentalise. I use a lot of
technology – I have different parts
dedicated to different businesses in
my iPad. I make sure that I’m able to
walk away from one aspect to another
with a clear mind. It might seem a
little confusing to say that the mind is
restless and at the same time being
disciplined to be able to
compartmentalise, but it comes
naturally to me – I’ve never had to
practice this. You need to be able to
shut down if you can’t do something
about a particular thing instantly
instead of festering. Come back and
tackle it later!
I was born into a family of engineers – my
grandfather was an engineer. My father and five
uncles are also engineers. Since the beginning,
while I was pre-ordained to become an
engineer, at the same time, mathematics and
physics seemed like Greek to me. I realized
that I had to adapt my mindset to something
else.
Ultimately, once I had adapted my mindset, it
set me free. What it meant was that I was free
to do what I wished to do. I went into
accounting – I call myself a ‘reluctant
accountant’. I always wanted to be more. I
would say the mindset should be to always look
ahead, see where the world is going and adapt
yourself. That mindset actually reflects a lot of
career moves that I made over the years – from
being a reluctant accountant to going into
management.
Suddenly, there was this new, very appealing,
growing industry called mobile cellular and I
jumped into it, not knowing what it was really
about, but it was very exciting to me. Frankly,
I’ve never regretted a single day of making that
decision. Mobile has evolved immensely – from
being about a single phone call to data and so
much more. So, in my opinion, the key about
the mindset is how you anticipate the next
move and align yourself in a way that you can
benefit from it. Basically what you need from
such a mindset is that you need to take a lot of
risks. For me, being risk-averse in a way that
you stay in the same kind of job for decades is
like death.
When you take that first leap of faith, you have
no idea where you’re going and then you do it
for the second and third and fourth time. Even
last year, my move back to Pakistan was a leap
of faith and so was creating the National
Incubation Center. When you’re taking a leap of
faith, it should be like a calculated risk where
you weigh the pros and cons. My life has been
about taking so many leaps of faith and it has

“To me, success today is being
where I am without
compromising my core values
of integrity, honesty and doing
the right thing at the right time,
patience and treating the other
person in a certain way”
In your opinion, what are the traits that are
essential for entrepreneurs? During your
numerous interactions with them, have you
found any essential traits lacking?
Essentially, an entrepreneur is someone who
identifies a space where there is a gap and he or
she is willing to fill that gap through a product or
service. This means taking a risk, so there needs
to be that willingness. I have been in start up
situations several times from my involvement as
the founding employee of Mobilink, a company
called wCities, and launching networks in Egypt,
Tunisia, Algeria, Bangladesh and so on. I’ve had
the opportunity to work directly with
entrepreneurs for the last seven years. In
London, I was working with a company, heading
a division called Mobile for Development to
invest in entrepreneurs who were working on
ideas in Asia, Africa and other areas. Since we
built the NIC, I’ve had the opportunity to work
with entrepreneurs from Pakistan as well. The
common universal trait is being able to take the
leap. Often what you also find is that they’re
focused and dedicated and believe in the work
they’re doing. Essentially, all these are good
qualities in an entrepreneur.
What might be lacking might also be universal –
failing to anticipate how much hard work it will
take, how hard it would be to convince the
market that it needs a product and how long it
will take to do so. Sometimes, it can even take
up to five to seven years to hit the market in the
right way.
From personal experience, I can give you the
example of a company I ran in 2002, which
might seem very familiar. It was a small startup
– this was before Google came around. This
product made it possible for you to find a
restaurant, places to visit, cities to explore.
During my time as COO, we added a new service
– a SIM at the back of the PDA. With that, you
could not only find a place to visit, but also plot
a map to get you there. This is Google Maps
today. It was fantastic technology, but it failed
spectacularly. Investors had put millions of
pounds in it. When the company was closing
down, I was the last person to leave the office –
there was no one to sign my release. I hadn’t
been paid in 10 months. Later on, when the
whole IP for the technology was sold for just
50,000 pounds, I got a cheque for 310 pounds
and 50 pence, which I’ve never cashed – I’ve put
it on a wall in a frame to remind me of what
failure can be like. That’s a story of
entrepreneurship way before it was even a word!
This story carries a big lesson for entrepreneurs
to learn – you can have a brilliant technology and
idea, but if the time for it hasn’t come, it will fail.
This doesn’t at all mean that you shouldn’t think
ahead. Thinking ahead of your time is how
revolutions come, so you have to do that.
However, at the same time, you need to be
cognisant of the fact that you may have a
brilliant idea, but you may have to work for it a
little bit. One of the things I teach entrepreneurs
is that above all other qualities you need as an
entrepreneur, is that if you believe in your idea,
be patient and stick it out, it will work.

How do you define success? How
has your idea of success evolved
through the years since you were
younger?
You think a lot about success, as you get older.
Typically for a young person, success is mostly
about having that dream job or making a certain
amount of money. At 20, I was convinced I
would make my first million dollars and be
successful at 25 and then I revised it to 30. I am
still trying to achieve that goal !To me, success
today is being where I am without compromising
my core values of integrity, honesty and doing
the right thing at the right time, patience and
treating the other person in a certain way. If you
can hang on to your core values in spite of all
the things that life throws at you, then that is
success and it’s priceless.
Are you a perfectionist
or do you believe in
getting things right
along the way?
I’m a total perfectionist – my
family accuses me of having OCD. I
think that’s also essential to
success because if you do not
demand the best of yourself and
that of everyone else, you would
never really achieve the goals you
have set out to achieve. Second
best doesn’t count! Do everything
in life to the very best of your
abilities.
Your take on the country’s
entrepreneurial ecosystem?
In Pakistan, I believe the ecosystem is at a
nascent stage. It needs a lot of work around
the ecosystem. When Parvez Abbasi and I
launched the NIC two and a half years ago, it
was a rare dream come true. We had started
with the concept of an online
mentorship-coaching platform. At that time,
everything was very basic. All the NICs that
have emerged since then are great and are
going to contribute a lot. However, if you look
at the bigger picture around the ecosystem,
we still need to have the correct legislation
to encourage entrepreneurs like giving them
tax breaks. To enhance access to funding, we
need incentives and schemes for investors –
we don’t have the right ecosystem to
encourage seed funding and early stage VC
funding. We need to work very closely with
the government on legislation around all
these processes.
When it comes to academia, we do not teach
entrepreneurship – there are some attempts,
but they’re not very successful.
Entrepreneurship, by definition is to take on
a new venture, take the risk, and put in the
work to make it a success. Typically, the
people who teach the subject are academics.
While they’re highly qualified in their own
right, the reality is that they haven’t been
entrepreneurs themselves. The practical
experience of having done it yourself is gold,
in my opinion. I think we need more
successful entrepreneurs, even failed
entrepreneurs to come in and do the
teaching. At least a majority of what is taught
needs to come from these people.
The whole concept of growing
entrepreneurship has to be based on
entrepreneurs getting together, kind of a
Silicon Valley. They should be able to hang
out together, share experiences, and learn
from the practical side of it from each other.
When you talk about teaching
entrepreneurship, it has to start early, even
the practical knowledge behind it.

What advice would
you give to your
20-year-old self?
This is a secret that I don’t
often share. When I was 20
years old, I was totally
convinced that I would one
day lead a company and make
it very successful. It took me
another 25 years to get there.
If I were to give advice to my
20-year-old self, I would say
‘chill, you’ll get there’.
What game-changing
opportunities/industries are you
keenly looking at for the future in
Pakistan?
I think everything in Pakistan is going to have
great potential in the coming future. When we
look at international giants like Facebook,
Amazon etc., Pakistan is not on their roadmap –
I look at this as a huge opportunity for Pakistani
entrepreneurs to take the lead. I would say every
area from e-commerce and fintech to agriculture
and education offers tremendous opportunity – I
would not limit any sectors, we have the
opportunity to go all across the board and make
it happen. The future of “Naya” Pakistan will
change with technology implementation across
all sectors of society so that we are able to leap
frog in to the future!
You have been a part of
numerous ventures
throughout your lifetime.
Which has been your
favourite so far? Why?
It’s been a long haul, but I would say,
my favourite has been a company
called Mobilink. I was employee one at
the time when it was launched as
Mobilink – it was a rare privilege to be
able to set it up, hire the first team, go
out there and see the first cell sites
being built, introduce the branding that
I was very intimately involved in and
look at the way, having that mobile
handset in your hands, change people’s
lives.
During the last 25 years of the
company’s existence, I have been
somehow associated with it, as CFO, a
member of the Board of Directors, as
CEO of the company and now as
partners with the company for NIC. I’ve
done many different things, been a part
of the launches of numerous
companies in multiple countries, but
this one is very special because it has
been a part of my life for a very long
time.

In your view, what are the qualities of a
good mentor?
A mentor is someone who has done it
and who has seen it; someone who has
fallen many times, who knows the
theory and who knows the turf.
Someone who can tell others what to do
and what not to do. For that, you need
to be very honest. Most of us talk about
all our highs or all the achievements,
the successes and wealth creation, but
only a few of us will have the gut to say,
“here is what I didn’t do and if I had, I
would have done things differently”. So,
after 99 falls, if you get one big high, it
is necessary to state the 99 failures to
show the mentee that it’s not all about
the highs. So, a good mentor has to be
not only experienced, not only
knowledgeable, not only skillful and have
a great attitude, but also has to be able
to infuse his entire learning into the
lesson. How effectively you do that is
what really matters.
If you lose concentration, if
you lose the attention of the
person you are trying to
mentor during the process,
it means you are not
connecting with the person.
Another important thing is
engaging your subject; you
have to keep them engaged.
They need to start believing
in you in terms of what your
learnings have been. So, as
a mentor your
communication skills have to
be more than good. A good
mentor is a very effective
tutor and a friend,
somebody who speaks from
the heart and knows his
thing.
As a seasoned mentor, in
your experience, what are
the common mistakes
startups make in pitching
themselves and their
businesses?
They are not trained in
pitching – it is a science and
an art. There is a method to
pitching. Some people are
born pitchers and some are
not while some are trained
pitchers. It’s just like you are
a born singer or a trained
singer or you are a bit of
both. In terms of what
startups don’t know is that
pitching is more important
than their innovation. This is
because they might have a
billion-dollar idea, but if they
can’t pitch it to the right
people and get across to
them, it is good for anything.
Pitching well is something
that has changed people’s
lives. When I started training
people in pitching, I didn’t
even know how effective it
was for people in their every
day lives.
One crucial thing is that
most startups are all about
engineering or about sales
and finance. They don’t focus
on trying to get across to
people who matter. Whether
they are judges in a

competition or investors. The sales guy has to
be a great pitcher. So that’s one of the arts
lacking. They can crunch numbers very well,
but they cannot pitch well. I would say that
pitching is the most important thing.
What would be your tips to startups on the art
of pitching?
The first tip is that you have to put your whole
business plan in the first five seconds. If you
don’t sting you can’t capture the audience’s
attention. So the main thing you need to do is
to grab their attention and their engagement
and I call that a stinging operation.
The 5 attributes of a perfect pitch are:
precise, complete, correct, fast and
effectively communicated. I can enumerate
these 5 on my fingertips because I have
done this workshop many times. You can
master these by practice, practice and
practice. You can be a natural pitcher or
you can be a trained pitcher. It has a lot to
do with effective communication skills,
which is verbal as well as non-verbal. While
you can watch these pitching techniques in
TV shows and pick up points from there,
when you do it with a trainer, the trainer
will put you through those exercises and
will chisel and cut your proposed pitch
into a clear one. And that’s what people
are looking for, as they don’t have more
time than that.
You have mentored many startups and
individuals. What have you learned from
the experience?
What I have learned is that I have a 56
model Chevy that had been lying in a
garage. I built it from scratch literally from
a garage. Now that I coach, I mentor and
judge some of the pitches and I look at the
startups and the young blood, I have
decided that I am going to get that Chevy
out and get it dented and painted and
launch it again.
The other thing you need to do is to raise an
alarm. What is it that is so painful and that
prompted you to do this? Third thing is how is
this problem being solved currently? How are
you going to solve it? And what is in it for the
listener and investor? Why should he/she refer
you to someone? Why should he open his
roll-o-dex? Why should he signup or cut a
check? Why should he be interested?

My experience is that entrepreneurship or
self-employment is the only answer to
unemployment. I personally think that
passion rules everything. For those startups
where I see passion more than some
sensible, I consider that to be a
successful startup. Another thing I worry
about is that 90% will not make it may be
not in the first attempt, not the second or
third or fourth. I worry about them when
they hit their thirties and the ones who are
still students in their final semesters, how
are they going to earn their living. When
they go back to a bank or to get a job of a
manager or less what will that do to them.
Another worry is that, as these startups
make it, money starts to flow in. Most of
the time, they become like a teenager with a
loaded gun, so they don’t know what to do.
All startup founders and co-founders and
their initial stakeholders needs a mentor.
Whether they give them equity or whatever,
but they need mentoring because that’s
how they can keep their feet on the ground.
My learning is that whatever fear, I see hope
and I see this thing becoming like a fashion,
a wave – I see everyone having an idea and
it’s fantastic.
What aspects of mentorship in the
ecosystem do you think need
improvement?
I think we need more mentors and, in
some way, mentors also need to take
something home and I am not saying
money. Mentors need not be like those
teachers who teach to the rest of the
world and they can’t make their ends
meet. So, we need to incentivize
mentors too. A careful selection of
mentors so they conform to minimum
standard, lest they teach their own
philosophy and are creating monsters
out of what they do. One of the things
lacking is true venture capital, so all of
the incubation centers, the software
technology parts in Pakistan have not
yet seen the true venture capital
companies coming into Pakistan.
Venture capital is mostly considered
just money, whereas venture capital is a
combination of a few things that are
mandatory – one money, two
management experience, three big
roll-o-dex from the same sector to
enable the business to accelerate
quickly and four is an exit strategy. We
need to remember that venture
capitalists are not operators, but they
are people who come in, make multiple
P/E ratios and nobody is willing to leave
in Pakistan, especially those who write a
check, but the reality is that you get
out.

DIGITAL MARKETING
The Future is
Now
Ali Khan Swati
of Awaami
on the
Evolution
of
Digital Media
in Pakistan

Tell us about your background and
how ‘Awaami’ came to be?
I have around 10 years of experience
in the digital marketing world,
having worked with various clients
from the US and the UK. I have built
branding and digital marketing
strategies for local and international
companies and because of my
background in this field, I partnered
with Ehtisham Khan and co-founded
Awaami with the concept of a
socially conscious content platform
for social media. We have focused on
developing animations, graphics and
short films on social issues such as
child abuse, women’s rights and
other important topics to develop
social awareness through engaging
content on a massive scale in
Pakistan.
What are your views on the
evolution of digital media in
Pakistan?
Pakistan is evolving to a digital
landscape at a very fast rate, as of
right now there is 13% increase in
social media usage annually in
Pakistan and 68% of social media
users are on the mobile platform. I
believe that companies and
individuals need to start thinking
digital now if they want to catch a
slice of that huge digital space in
the future, as it is the future now.
What are some of the hurdles you
face as a company while interacting
with potential clients about
adopting digital media?
I believe that
companies
and
individuals
need to start
thinking
digital now if
they want to
catch a slice
of that huge
digital space
in the future
as it the
future now.

I think right now companies are
more adaptable because they are
witnessing how their competition
is aggressively using social media
to promote themselves. When I
meet clients, it is easy to make
them understand what kind of
services my company can provide
them because they already have
an idea of how it will benefit them.
The biggest hurdle I face about
digital media adoption is that a lot
of companies want to either
advance too fast on it because
they think progress on that
platform is quick, but that’s not
the case. Due to that, the main
hurdle is to bring their attention to
the fact that digital marketing has
no exact formula to it and that as
such they need to keep revamping
and adapting their strategies in
order to hit the right mark
because the digital trends and
market move fast.
“Give your
brand time,
digital
marketing is
an art as well
as science”
What would be your top 5 tips for startups
and entrepreneurs for using digital media
effectively to promote their businesses
with a limited budget?
1
Always know your target market and
make content for that niche
2
Use good graphic design in your
posts and videos because that reflects the
quality of your brand
3
Do not overspend if you are not
getting the right response, go back and
change your whole strategy
4
Give your brand time, digital
marketing is an art as well as science
5
Be innovative and engaging and keep
a good frequency of how much content you
put out
What are the top 3 trends you see
emerging in digital marketing in the future
in Pakistan?
There is no exact way of knowing what new
thing will emerge, but I do think that new
and innovative forms of video based
content will come in the future in Pakistan.
What’s next for ‘Awaami’?
Awaami will develop video and animation
content on more topics and keep
developing the social media platform in
Pakistan with new ideas.

HOW THEY DID IT
RICHARD BRANSON
“Respect is how to treat everyone, not
just those you want to impress”

TRIVIA
He was born
1950
1973
Launched the
record label
Virgin Records
with Nik Powell
Formed Virgin
Atlantic Airways
and Virgin
Cargo
1. He went into
business at the age of
16.
2. He loves Star Trek.
3. He bought an Island
for $180,000, well
under the asking price
of $5 million. It’s
worth upwards of $200
million today.
1992
1984
Launched Virgin
Mobile in 1999
1994
1950
1997
Sold the Virgin label
to EMI for £500
million
2004
Launched Virgin Vodka
and Virgin Cola
2010
Launches Virgin
Trains
ACHIEVEMENTS
United Nations Correspondents
Association Citizen of the World Award
for his contributions to humanitarian
causes
ISTA Prize by the International Space
Transport Association for his
contributions pertaining to space
transport systems
Launches Virgin
Galactic
Launches Virgin
Racing, a formula one
team previously
known as Manor
Grand Prix

How did the idea of Modulus Tech come
about?
The idea of ModulusTech came about
in 2016 when the Syrian refugee crisis
was at its peak. We noticed how there
was a large influx of people in a short
span of time in these crises, resulting
in massive housing shortages. These
people were exposed to harsh living
conditions, exposed to all sorts of social
problems and epidemics. The solutions
that did exist in the world at that point
in time were either too costly or took
too much time to implement. Being
Pakistanis, we could relate to their
problems equally as well, with our own
IDPs and people affected by floods and
earthquakes. Hence, the idea was to find
an environmentally sustainable housing
solution that could be set up in minimal
time and be cost effective. That is how
Modulus Tech came to be.
As co-founders, what do you each of you
do? What are your backgrounds?
All three co-founders studied Civil
Engineering together at NED University,
where the idea of the startup came
about. Nabeel is managing the business
and management side of things.
Yaseen Khalid is mainly responsible for
operations and M. Saquib works on the
technology side.
What do you believe is the biggest
market for your products?
The biggest market is the millions of
people living without adequate housing
today. According to a McKinsey report,
the affordable housing sector is an 11
trillion dollar industry in construction
costs alone.
The solution you’re offering is very
unique. How has the response been so
far?
Our solution is in fact very innovative
and has characteristics superior than
products available globally. We have
filed patents on multiple aspects of the
technology. We were recently recognized
by the United Nations and various other
organizations globally for our invention,
we also won awards at the Global

Cleantech Innovation Competition held
in Silicon Valley. We were also recently
selected by Techjuice in the 25 under 25
list.
Tell us about your prospective customers.
Our set of prospective customers includes
governments and NGOs working on social
projects; B2B sector for labor housing and
site offices and B2C market for consumer
products and stand-alone units
What would you say is the secret to finding one’s
passion?
I believe passion finds you sometimes, as long as
you’re honest to yourself. One needs to be foolish
enough to pursue where your interests take you,
no matter how impractical they may seem. We
genuinely cared about the problems we wish to
solve, and the impact we wish to create keeps us
going.
What do you believe has been the highlight of your
entrepreneurial journey so far?
The major highlight is being able to develop a
technology better than other large business groups
and organizations, who have been working in the
sector for decades.
Where do you see Modulus Tech in 5 years?
We see ourselves being a large business
capturing major markets around the world, while
creating huge social impact. We aim to be a
multibillion-dollar social enterprise.
What do you dream of
achieving through Modulus
Tech?
Creating large-scale social and
environmental impact globally.
When did you (founders)
realize this was the idea you
wanted to work on?
The moment we tested the
prototype and achieved
significant results, we knew
that this was something we
needed to work on, mostly
because of the potential for
the technology to create social
impact.

CONTRIBUTION
Business
Viability
for
Success
“Good design
successfully manages the
tensions between user
needs, technology
feasibility, and business
viability.” — Tim Brown
Launching a company is a risky endeavour. It
takes your money, blood, sweat, tears and an
immeasurable amount of hard work to
successfully turn your business idea into a
running profitable business. The reason I
advise the future and my fellow
entrepreneurs to always start a business
based on a viable business model is that they
must know whether their idea is profitable
and whether or not the company is capable
of surviving and sustaining the tremors of
the market or not.
According to a research, 42% of startups
fail because they don’t solve a market
need. If there is a market need, the
company will make profit. Turning a
brilliant idea into a booming business
isn’t as easy as it may seem.
Sustainability and viability is essential in
creating businesses that will give you
profit in the long term. Having said that,
the first and foremost is to understand
why we are starting a business. Is it
going to fulfil our financial needs, pay all
bills, and other day-to-day expenditure
(the primary source of income) or is it a
hobby through which we want to earn
some money (the secondary source of
income). Your business viability model is
then developed based on the primary or
secondary business strategies.
The viability of a business is measured
by its long-term survival and its ability to
sustain profits over a period of time. A
business is able to survive when it's
viable because it continues to make a
profit year after year.

Any successful business revolves around
viability. A business idea that cannot
continue to serve the customers is not a
viable business. A business idea that cannot
compete is not viable. A business idea that
is not scalable is not viable. Hence, viability
means that your business is living, breathing
and growing and has the potential of seeing
the stages of infancy to adolescence and
maturity.
When I had started my company, NShield
Solutions 2 years ago, I knew that the
demand for cars is inevitable. People will
continue to buy cars and would need a
reliable company to maintain its looks and
functionality.
My extensive market research gave me my
viability outline. The automotive industry in
Pakistan is one of the fastest growing
industries of the country, accounting for 4%
of Pakistan's GDP. Over 180,000 cars were
sold in the fiscal year 2014-15. In Pakistan,
automobile sales are on a continuous
positive trajectory.
According to a Gallup report based on
Pakistan Economic Survey 2015-2016, in
the past 15 years, there has been a 268%
increase in the total number of registered
motor vehicles in the country. These figures
clearly showed that my target market will
continue to grow and so my profit.
“The viability of a
business is measured by
its long-term survival
and its ability to sustain
profits over a period of
time”
Validation of a great idea for business is the first step in establishing its viability. Here are
few basic questions that can help you evaluate it
Are your ideas
implementable
in real life?
Do you have the
skills,
resources, and
manpower to
implement the
idea?
Will you be able
to make enough
profit from the
implementation
of your
business idea
for a
considerably
long term
period?
Is there a
demand for
what you are
selling? If you
were a
customer,
would you want
to buy your
products or
services?
Lastly, is your
idea innovative?
Can it be
moulded to give
birth to new
products and
services?

“Viability means
that your business
is living, breathing
and growing and
has the potential
of seeing the
stages of infancy
to adolescence
and maturity”
Another high-end definition of business
sustainability, which is the next level of
creating a valuable and viable business, is to
create social or environmental impact through
your business. According to the Cone
Communications 2017 CSR study, 87% of
customers will make a purchase from a
company that advocates for an issue they
consider important. To be truly successful,
companies need to have a corporate mission
that is bigger than making a profit, meaning it
creates a social impact as well. So, once you
are into your profit-earning mode, your next
sustainability strategy is to create meaningful
impact on the society.
Ideas are always great, but an idea that is
viable with a potential to bring a positive social
change, is always a winning business strategy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: ZIA S. HASAN
Zia is the co-founder and director of NShield
Solutions (Pakistan & UAE). She is the first
and only woman in Pakistan who is
successfully leading a surface protection
company, breaking barriers and setting an
example for other professional women to
lead non-traditional businesses. NShield is a
Nanotechnology based surface protection
company, which offers nano-ceramic glass
coating services for automobiles, and liquid
steel & antimicrobial coatings for various
industries. NShield has a nation wide
presence in Pakistan with corporate
branches in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and
Peshawar.
“According
to a
research,
42% of
startups fail
because they
don’t solve a
market
need”

GEN NEXT
Peshawar-based Aprus
On Changing the Future
of Medicine, One Product
at a Time

“We are working
on different
medical
equipment, but
initially, we are
focusing on
one product only”
unwanted thermal damage of tissues. We are
working on new technology, which uses
artificial intelligence-based control system
or instant response technology. This
minimizes the charring and unwanted
thermal damage of tissues. We will be the
first in the world to achieve this result and we
are also 10 times cheaper.
What was the vision behind creating your
product?
Our vision revolves around using
electrosurgical units during surgeries to make
them safe, to reduce the recovery time after
surgeries so that patients can live healthy
lives and to reduce the side effects of
surgeries.
Are there any other devices like yours in the
market internationally or locally? What
makes yours different?
There are other local as well as international
devices available in the market. With the
other local devices, patients face alternate
site burns and shocks. Other international
devices don’t have such issues, but the
problem with them is the charring and
How do you see this technology making a
significant change in the medical section
locally and worldwide?
According to a research, 66 million surgeries
are performed per year in Pakistan. If we
only consider the benefit of this device in the
country, this device can eliminate the
charring and unwanted thermal damage to
those 66 million patients. In addition, the
same number of patients, with the use of
this device, would experience faster recovery
time and safer surgeries.
Are you working on other similar products
for the medical sector?
Yes, we are working on different medical
equipment, but initially, we are focusing on
one product only. We would like the company
to grow with this product first and then
introduce our next product, which is a
sterilizer.

How has NIC Peshawar
contributed towards your
growth?
Our background is of
engineering we had no
knowledge of running a
company – we pitched our
idea at NIC and we got
selected. Here at NIC, we
got the right coaches,
mentors and the right
knowledge through
Founders Institute’s
course. We also got the
right linkages with
industry – all these are
factors that we have been
lucky to get access to as a
startup.
Where do you see your
company in five years?
After five years, we would
have captured all of the
Pakistani market and
would also be exporting to
the international market.
We see ourselves as a
million dollar company by
then Inshallah.
“In five years, we
would have
captured all of the
Pakistani market
and would also
be exporting to the
international
market”

MARKETING INTELLIGENCE
According to him, leading Starcom Mediavest Pakistan as the
CEO has been the biggest challenge he took on. He has recently
resigned from his position and is moving on to other avenues.
Given his experience from leading the agency of the future, we
ask him about the trends that are going to shape the marketing
landscape in Pakistan, with the rise of digital and social media
marketing.

I
II
III
IV
V
Marketers will develop a better understanding of the digital space.
They will try to keep pace with the ever-changing landscape, as much
as possible. They will not succeed entirely.
Marketers will realize that the agency is not their slave / servant / pet to
be mistreated at will. They will realize that the agency is the professional,
they know stuff about their work that the marketer cannot know, simply
because it is their job to know. Hopefully, this will result in a more equal
relationship, one based on mutual trust and understanding, that will
result in better work.
Marketers will start taking calculated risks, in their communication, their
social spaces, their activations, their media choices.
Brands will realize the importance of building brand equity and will refocus
on this much neglected and misunderstood area. They will reduce the
number of shortcuts they take in their work, focus on building real
consumer insights, and building strategies based on those insights.
Owners (saiths) will start investing more purposefully in marketing, not
because they want to, but because they have to. Competition in almost
every industry / category will increase exponentially, and brands that
are not differentiated will find it impossible to fight solely on price
(specially against the Chinese!).
VI
Digital experimentation will rise and ROI-driven marketing will become the
rage as owners / CEOs demand a return on the marketing investment. This
brings us back to point #1 above.

How do you believe digital media has
changed the way marketing is done in
Pakistan? How do you see the future of
digital marketing in Pakistan?
The explosion in the digital media space has
caught most marketers off guard. While a
small percentage have taken an active role in
understanding and capitalizing on the
opportunities that this new frontier offers,
the majority either believe that digital is the
same as social, or give it a polite nod and
allocate 1- 2% of their marketing spend to it.
Savvy marketers are investing behind these
new media opportunities, they are testing
and trying new ideas and new ways of doing
things, and above all, they are pushing their
organizations to become more digitally
savvy, not only in their marketing, but in the
way they do business.
Digital marketing will represent 30% of
the marketing budget of most companies
within the next 3 – 5 years. Globally,
digital spend has already overtaken
traditional spend, and it will do so in
Pakistan as well.
There is a new awareness about creating
and marketing quality content in
Pakistan. Do you think this will change
the game and the way agencies operate?
Hopefully, yes. It will take time however,
since the approval process remains the
same. The current content creation
process in Pakistan – whether it is for 30
sec TV ads or simple FB posts – remains
the same – play it safe. What will the boss
think? Can we plagiarize an idea that has
worked in other markets? We are talking
about content as though it’s a new thing,
but it’s not.

Any shortcomings you see in the
local industry for embracing new
media and the future of
marketing?
1
2
3
The average owner / saith is well
above 50. This puts the majority of
them at a disadvantage because
they are digital immigrants, and as
such, do not really understand
“digital”. They try, but it’s hard for
them.
There is a saying in Urdu that
roughly translates, as “their
stomachs are full”. They are not
hungry for more growth than they
are currently getting. What they do
not understand is that what got them
“here” will not get them “there”.
The lack of professionalism in
management is quite serious.
People are not valued, their
contributions are taken for granted;
they are replaced at a moment’s
notice.
Recently, marketing
has become all about
context and
humanizing. Your top
tips on how to go
about it?
1. Be authentic
2. Be consistent
3. Be unique
4. Don’t try to target
“everyone” – it’s
impossible
5. Speak with a human
voice – and engage like a
person
6 Know your consumer
well – so that you know
when they are likely to be
receptive to your brand’s
message
You recently stepped
down from your role
at Starcom. What’s
next?
Wait and see
4The myopia infecting the majority of
owners is pandemic. Most look to this
month’s or this quarter’s sales. No one is
really interested in investing for the future
(with a few notable exceptions). This, I
think is the single biggest reason that a
nation of +200 million people is yet to
produce a single global brand. I don’t
mean a brand sold in multiple countries –
there are a few of those. No, a brand
recognized globally with its roots in
Pakistan. There are a few companies
working now on this vision, but they truly
aren’t unicorns.

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