TechLahore

Michael Dell's company is investing in Pakistan

Dell has been pretty active in Pakistan of late. They’ve got a decent reseller network, with companies like Gerry’s and DWP Group reselling their wares. Heck, Michael Dell’s even had his business cards printed in Arabic script!

Moving on from the conventional box-pushing business and standard PCs (yawn!), they’re now growing in to more of a solutions focused sale. There’s additional components, like storage, servers, thin clients and virtualization infrastructure that are increasingly becoming part of a standard desktop replacement deal. To highlight some of these new solutions for their customers, Dell has invested in a brand spanking new solution center in Karachi that they refer to as a “Center of Excellence”. They want to make sure you – as their customer – get a good view of all the components that go into a modern IT infrastructure. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Aysha Saeed: the up and coming Pakistani fashion maven

This is a great follow-up to my long, painful diatribe on the solitary trials that entrepreneurship subjects you to, and the HR woes you often have to deal with.

Pakistan’s Aysha Saeed, now based in New York, has clearly grappled with the challenges of a small business head on and made it work too! She’s basically a one-woman shop, surrounded by a few advisors, a couple of interns and some contractors, but her business is taking off and she’s turning heads. In more ways than one! [Read the rest of this entry...]

Bad employees are those heavy boxes weighing you down, and you are the ASS.

The software industry in Pakistan is still nascent. We started off with grandiose visions, poor execution and bureaucratic nonsense but, to be fair, we’re since covered considerable ground. You may recall that it was Benazir Bhutto, when she was PM, who loudly proclaimed that we would quickly – and magically – build a double digit billion dollar industry. No surprise that coming from a politician, those dreams were not backed by anything meaningful. And so what usually happens to empty slogans ended up happening to this one too… the jackass beauracrats probably stole the funds allocated for initial “research” and that was that.

But today things are different. The multi-billion dollar software industry that has developed in Pakistan since, growing at 50% YoY, is a testament to the entrepreneurs and private industry. Not the Government. And that is not to say the Government hasn’t done anything at all – the 18 year tax holiday is a good thing! But the biggest thing the Government can do is just get the hell out of the way. No Government can really take on the charter for building an industry. This is a function best performed by private enterprise, to whom success and failure are the difference between getting a pay cheque/getting rich on the one hand and failing/having a hard time paying the monthly bills on the other. You need that sort of Darwinian motivation sometimes. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Visitors from western countries that visit Pakistan are often surprised at the developed infrastructure, friendly people and safe environment. Fox News notwithstanding!

Putting the blithering idiots in the western media in their place, William Dalrymple, celebrated scholar on South Asia and author of numerous best sellers, such as The Last Moghul and White Moghuls, talked about the differences between Pakistan and India as part of a recently held IQ2 discussion forum.

Dalrymple has been living in India for 20 years and has visited Pakistan on numerous occasions. I was unfortunate to have missed his last series of talks in Lahore, connected with the launch of his most recent book. Suffice to say, his first-hand knowledge of the sub continent is uncontested.

He goes on to talk about the infrastructure in India and Pakistan and says that he finds Pakistan far more developed in this area. He praises Pakistani roads and airports, calling them “infinitely better” than those in India. Talking on security, Mr. Dalrymple says that he felt completely safe in Pakistan and other than FATA and some areas in the Frontier, “you can go anywhere… drive anywhere” and be completely safe. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Apps for social platforms like Facebook are booming!

This is another guest post from White Rabbit’s Hassan Baig. I hope you’ll enjoy Hassan’s writing as much as I do! More about the author at the end of this piece.

“Walls are only built to keep out people who don’t want it bad enough” – Randy Pausch, Last Lecture Series

Some drab definitions first

Drab definition 1: First you’ll need to understand what a ‘network effect’ is in the social media context. A ‘network effect’ is the ability of the social graph to exert influence. So the higher the network effect, the more important the role of the social graph becomes.

Drab definition 2: There are two kinds of network effects: positive and negative. A positive network effect is where the size of the social graph positively correlates with the utility of the underlying system. A negative network effect has a negative such correlation. [Read the rest of this entry...]

South Asia's most modern city, Islamabad, Pakistan.

It’s been a while since I wrote about how I see Pakistan’s macro situation developing. Even though the noise in the media about Pakistan has died down considerably over the past year or so, you still come across oddities now and then that make you wonder how mainstream publications can put across nonsense that couldn’t be further removed from ground realities. Well, I suppose they count on the fact that their readers won’t take the flight over to confirm things for themselves, and selling the image of conspiracies unfolding in a mysterious and ornery land is so much easier than dealing with reality!

But ignoring the actors playing to the audience, what really is the nature of the Pakistan that is emerging early in the 21st Century? What trends and developments are shaping our future and what do we have to look forward to? These are obviously vast topics, but I’ll try to give you a glimpse of how I see things and will try to convey as much cold, hard fact as I possibly can so as to point out the underlying reasons that cause me to believe what I believe. [Read the rest of this entry...]

CBR's NTN verification service is full of security holes

Electronic government initiatives are excellent, in general. They increase efficiency, make information more accessible to the public, prevent people from standing in long lines and wasting their entire day with the most mundane of things, and generally lead to a happier populace. But when they aren’t thought through properly, they can also result in some really disastrous outcomes.

This case in point was brought to our attention by a watchful reader, Shehzad A. Shehzad came across the online NTN verification service deployed by the CBR (Central Board of Revenue) and immediately pointed it out as a not-so-well thought out initiative. And we agree! [Read the rest of this entry...]

Run Razzle Run is one of TkXel's gaming titles developed in partnership with Sunstorm Interactive

I’m pretty bullish on this move towards product development in the Pakistani software industry. We’ve recently covered a number of up and coming startups that are working on exciting technology, going direct to the end customer and trying to  move beyond the sometimes-boring “software thaykaydaari”…

Just recently, we had Hassan Baig from Islamabad based Facebook app developer, White Rabbit, tell us how he’s building teams and motivating key contributors. We also looked at Lahore based Pepper.pk’s work in mobile app development and their recent appearance in the Handango Top 10 Blackberry Apps list. And of course, we’ve talked about TkXel too, but today we’re going to get to know this company a lot better. [Read the rest of this entry...]

The Sirius Handheld Computer (Prototype shown) was designed and built from scratch... in Lahore, Pakistan

I often get emails from readers that I try to respond to as quickly as possible. A couple of weeks ago, my Inbox binged with an interesting question from an un-named Pakistani hardware engineer (aka Batman). Batman is originally from Lahore but is presently working in Austin, Texas. I thanked Batman for his email and told him that since I had received several similar queries, I would respond via a blog post rather than via email. But that was two weeks ago. With so much else happening, I wasn’t able to get to it as quickly as I’d thought… so, apologies for the delay, Batman!

Without further ado, here’s  Batman’s question, followed by my answer:

Assalamo Alaikum:

My name is [[Batman]] and I am originally from Lahore. Currently, I am working as a Hardware Verification Engineer at a chip-design company in Austin, Texas. I came across your blog in my search for tech job opportunities in Pakistan. I was wondering if you could give me an idea of what sort of opportunities exist in Pakistan. Is it mostly software jobs? Are you aware of companies that have sites in both Pakistan and America ?

Thanks for your time,
[[Batman]]

[Read the rest of this entry...]