Musings

Drive around the country, drive around in big cities and small, look at the names of the streets/roads/avenues. We cant get past sports men, leaders of yesteryears(most of whose f**kups have really put us where we are) yet they all continue to get an honourable mention, some in their life time most posthumously. Not to forget war vets and other leaders of a different ilk. Some educators thrown in for good measure, a few poets, some judges, some “notable family/scions” some of the 21 Club fame. What is missing are the businesses, the true industrialists (pre nationalisation even) and those who have done well in trade and commerce. A nation that cannot create business heroes, will continue to  produce zeros. We have not let businesses thrive, we have not let people come out on top due to innovation, of those who have “allegedly” become big names, all have small dirty secrets of tax evasion, bribery & influencing the law in their repertoire. But generational wealth washes the sins of your grand daddies, so you can start fresh.

We have to genuinely ask the question about who is representing us in the govt machinery? Where are their interests? Are they aligned with any national outlook or just personal. Let us start from the basics, what do we need to build business heroes? we need businesses, what can launch businesses at a national level, the ability to have:

A) Access to land
B) Less regulatory burdens
C) Ease of doing business (Not just BS around it)
D) Not having STATE compete with commercial enterprises

Let us look at it simply, Why do we need a National Bank? Why do we need Sindh Bank or BOP? Why do we need LDA/CDA, Why cant these things be privatised? Similarly Airports? Railways, PIA. Heathrow is private, the Toll road in Canada is private. We have to encourage people to come and do business, we need smiles at the airports, not to have them look like Thanas and pissed off morons manning the counters. Some times I wonder what side of the immigration desk is the crook?

In the same spirit, lets look at ease of visa. Why the hell do we not have visa free entry for just every one? Do the screening on arrival, its time to increase trade and FX. If they come they shall bring in $$… This small mindedness around national security and spy agents and others, is a glaring admission of not having security really where it needs to be, intelleignce where it needs to be vs the generational bullshit we feed our selves, that we have to take the extreme measure of stopping every one. No ones coming to steal nuclear secrets, people are coming to attend weddings, business meetings, trade missions, just to see whats going on. This whole nadra site for visas is more confusing than it is easy. If i need a chamber letter and invite and then submit it a the airport pre arrival, it is just pure stupid on so many levels that it is not visa free entry…

Lets look at this scenario, some one comes from the US, we submit their docs, they land at night given thats where the GCC carriers typically come to our shores. By night the person leaves the airport, gets stopped on way to PC as it says “no foreigners in cantonment” move the ffing cant out of the city then. Let every one come, dont scare them dont make insane rules, think this through. Make room to do business. Sorry it may inconvenience a few but it will open up the economy.

Tell every one we are open for business, open for trade, open for cultural exchanges, open for some expat in Dubai who on the weekend wants to visit friends or just come have some authentic food. Have tour operators, certified by private entities who can do food tours, who can do city tours who can do business tours, who can do pop up meets with families who want to take in airbnb style guests. Atleast start the conversation. Make insurance mandatory from local firms on tourists. Make money, dont send them back… Silly tourism ministries and cutlural exchanges where our ffing ministers go over seas wont fix this, instead of saying come see our northern area, bhai open the airports, make it cheaper for flight charters to land. It starts with first getting your internal security right, work past the hype, tell every one to come. We are solving the wrong problems.. Our internet is open(so far) dont block returning expats phones, remove shitty systems for tax payment of phones, fix the root cause dont make people suffer for your governmental and security apparatus failures.

Before any of this, take a piece of paper, if you are in government and write, “I will not be over smart any more, I need to fix my domestic issues around security and stop making claims, I will do some thing productive in my life time and my career”. Change happens with the realisation that you need to have change.

We are in the worst economic cycle we need to have open borders and open flights to get FX coming in, when people come in then companies will follow.

Threatening Google and FB and begging Netflix to come when really they cant even travel here makes me wonder how stupid our government machinery really is, are these guys in line for the Darwin awards?

Ease of business should be so simple that an incoming person or a local resident should be able to either go online and provide an ID and be able to get started and open a bank account. People should be able to come in and spend 200$ – 500$ and open a business account. This is the stuff we need to do to kick of a mini foreign SME revolution. Simplification of SECP nonsense and SBP SROs is next inline with taxation and just getting started. Reputed and regulated money changers should follow next. Allow banks to do it too. Hint Hint, any one coming with Dollars should be able to spend them with ease, period.

Stop building govt spend based incubators and accelerators, start building farmers markets, fresh produce packaging efficiency, local product displays, food sampling stations so people taste, eat, get hooked and buy and take back. Package it right, they will come.

Before most of this fix this airline situation please, next stop this bullshit around a soviet era steel mill, donate the land to any one who wants to put up a factory, give loans to SMEs without domicile BS. Clean up the govt machinery and make it fair to get into govt. Make it mandatory for govt employees to have to send their kids to public schools. KGS and Aitchison aint it. If Ghabrana nahin hay to make this the bench mark. Stop all foreign govt travel, open Pakistan for business. Let people come see us at our best or worst, enough pitching. Start showing, showcasing.

Oh whilst you are at it, f**ing fire all of the airport security staff that allows people to smoke in bathrooms at all the airports. Take bids let people make and build out airports. Just put in the rules. Starting from getting your basic act of security of non-smoking enforcement. You want me to believe these circus acts can manage security even with visa restrictions, they cant even stop people on the right side of the Quaid from smoking. Loads of introspection required. Mann all your airport counters, stop hiring retirees.

On to my fav subject of the govt competing with private enterprise, tell your ministers that the state doesnt compete with private enterprise, it helps them flourish. Pakistan post cant compete with Private mail operators and shouldn’t, just like DHA shouldn’t even be around to compete with private developers(of which there are none, Malik Riaz is a state within a state, like DHA) Similarly Pakistans largest enterprise/startup listed and otherwise is full of retirees who are veterans of an other state institution. In a country of 50% or more 25 yr olds, learn to Ffing retire and let others get a chance. This holding of secret ballots hand shakes, systems, exams, referrals etc is all non-sense holding us back. You had one shot in active service, don’t make the nations young pay for your power hungry desire to never retire. (R).

Be honourable do the honourable thing.

Have bankruptcy laws. Its not too hard, weve been at it for 70 + yrs get the basics figured out. Fix the tax structure, tax agriculture, why the f**k dont you, because of your vested post retirement zameen interests and of those who are in power and have massive agricultural land. Reform will only happen when it starts from within. Iss hamaam mein sab nange hein.

Extension dain to bhai achay kaam ki. Extension dain to make late payments, for helping succeed. Its simple, we all know what needs to be done, starts with having a voice and raising it, Do not continue to live in this country on rent, and dont let the 1% collect the rent. Make them pay, its time for change, be vocal.

Stop all the khaipias on flights from Dubai, Srilanka and Thailand to khi.(No dis respect, but action starts from calling out the issue, if you take a flight you know it, you have seen it. Open other avenues so a generation of these guys do other stuff, put their business sense to productive use.

Misguided religion much. Carry Agent:) Wow.. This is whats wrong with us. Steal with one fine swoop and include god in the other.

Who is bringing the pans? the garments without the paperwork? Who is paying off the customs guys at the airport? opening bags on the belts? swapping items? I have been put through the secondary scanner but the guy bringing in a 75 inch tv walked past:). I pay taxes, he steals from the govt, he is under invoicing, making us loose FX and paying $ equivalents to get on those frequent flights to bring in goods that are all vastly illegal. Dont raid the markets, stop this shit at the airports first. You want to stop these Mffers, not the tourists who bring their phones on roaming to make calls and spend money. Solving the wrong problem is the larger problem for us. Mr IK the exam question is, are you going to do any thing to change the status quo?

Every ones under invoicing, but the guy who is not, cant compete with them? Do you see the problem? You want to fight FATF, go stop all the hawala that is going into trade, at the point of import find out how those goods were paid for? auction them when there is no money trail. Google the price of an item it takes 2 minutes. Auction when found to be illegally imported. Stop the gift receipts and under valued shipments. Oh whilst you are at it, stop Alibaba/Ali Express from sending 90% of their goods to retail based sales and B2C thats coming in duty free and depleting FX. You dont have to look hard. Stop being taken to task by traders bodies and market associations, they are all crooks if they want time and concessions. If they strike you strike back. Basically the issue is no one is used to 5% or 10% or 15% margins, the guys at the top want a windfall. The only way that happens is at the cost of the rest of the nation.

It truly is time to promote people to do business, trade, to get into exploring new ideas, making business easy for all those who want to do some thing. But more so than SMEs make it easy for big business to establish a strong hold, allow large infrastructure projects. Equity like land smells like shit when you pile it up, when you distribute it, flowers grow in it. Spread the wealth. #nayapakistan

Ps. If you are an expat Pakistani and want to suggest that we focus on the positive things the govt is doing and that IK is one person only. You only have a vote if you bought the Pakistan Bano Certificates. Your once a year guilt ridden trip to see your ageing parents and bringing gifts does not qualify you to an opinion. Dont send us #prayersandwishes send #greenbacks or come and participate from within. Change seldom happens from tweeting. No roads will be named after you for your Hashtag tantrums!

No, I don’t have any outsider, let alone insider info on Amazons plans on the Pakistani market. I also have no pictures of meetings with Amazon staff, past present or future. What I have is the media view on the tough love Amazon is getting in India and the relative change of direction Mr Bezos is orchestrating by  stating that the e-commerce giant will use its global footprint to export $10 billion worth of ‘Make In India’ goods by 2025.

This gives a good insight of whats to come and the directionality of the market. Interestingly Bezos also stated that Amazon is going to invest $1 billion in digitising the small and medium businesses in India. By that measure keeping that their GDP is roughly 7 times larger than ours, we need about a 150M$+ run rate to ramp up our own digitization and infrastructure to get similar export access. But what is missing is, we have no Amazon in Pakistan.

Our sellers cant even really, authentically sell or setup fulfilment by Amazon unless the use intermediaries or ship and store with Amazon state side or other nearshore destinations where Amazon is engaged in FBA. Other complications include, identifying the product, listing it, setting up a legal entity to collect the payments, exporting from Pakistan and other launch based items that gate the average person, exporter, product developer to really not get in to the value chain, instead they offset their product by consigning it to some body smarter, more resourceful and some one who can take their product at 35c a dozen and mark it up to 5$ a Dozen and sell on Amazon/Ebay. This value addition doesn’t see the FX delta come to Pakistan and doesn’t add any special value addition skills to the net-producers domestically.

With amazon ads business nearly in full swing allowing a company to customize and curate a multipage digital storefront, our producers are missing out. They will continue down the path of middlemen. Stores aren’t new, but the company has added features like shoppable images and the ability to schedule updates like new releases or seasonal changes. Imagine if just for the textile industry or additional traditional large scale non value added exporters this channel was made available?

The simple view would be that you would have an Ideas Store on Amazon or an Al-Karam store on amazon plus all the others who are engaged in selling bed-sheets and towels and others D2C(Direct to Consumer). They can continue down the export path to be vendors of record for Macys and others but once they start earning US D2C margins the ball game will change. This is just in the higher end of the value chain. Imagine all others who are not as large but want to explore the global market(s). Imagine if they could hold inventory at FBA and others used this to drop ship using their own brands? You now become a multiparty supplier as apposed to just a manufacturer of record. The game changes significantly as does the growth multiple. Not like no ones doing this already from Pakistan. Shan has a store on Amazon, but the average Shan Masala retailing in the US at under $2 and selling on the Shan Amazon store for over 6$ doesnt Make sense. Interestingly Shan has 800gs pink salt for $3.50 Whilst competing stuff sells for higher. https://www.amazon.com/Shan-Himalayan-Natural-Grain-Powder/dp/B07XTN7DMB/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1AXN3MQRNBHT8&keywords=shan+pink+salt&qid=1580720515&sprefix=shan+pink+%2Caps%2C336&sr=8-1 and more confused pricing for amazon prime and refined salt etc. Also most competing products are listed in Ounces and Lbs. Its interesting but clearly shows the disconnect even large brands seemingly have. So there is a lot of upside potential here.

So where do we start? Amazon isn’t coming to Pakistan just yet, based on what ever data they are crunching, their bet has been India and GCC (Amazon.ae). But can we get smarter, can we use the .AE route to reduce one more middle man and get on to the Amazon bandwagon? Lets back up a little bit, before we get down to having visions of grandeur we must learn from the Amazon example in India and them digitising small businesses to the tune of 1bn$, in its simplest form it means having accurate product information data, moving toward Harmonized System (HS) for classifying goods is a six-digit code system. It means getting the producers ready to make the product Amazon (export) ready, in turn making it globally ready.

It also means linking the money chain, from export to bank to return payment to FX transfers. I would be shocked if Amazon didn’t get into a Stripe model to allow direct merchant on-boarding, albeit a localised version because they are present in India. Hypothetically a vendor could sign up locally, price in USD/INR equivalent, collect the net sales proceeds locally and the only person doing FX conversions is Amazon, imagine the float and the local payments play, if Amazon got in to a captive wallet and expanded it into a system to pay for inputs by local manufacturers and vendors.

Only time will tell where this is headed but sadly looking at the state of our export chain and value addition we are almost stuck in what we did generationally without really taking the leap of faith on doing some thing different, the only thing that has grown is the countries over reliance on the same sectors to export to earn FX.

Even the domestic market is too big to ignore long term. In the short term there are other bigger bets to make and Amazon is making those, we should no less be prepared and be ready to exploit these companies and these systems when they are accessible to us. Or figure out smart ways to plug in to the existing FBA value chains and store fronts. As a starting point all the Pakistanis Immigrating to Canada/Australia and other locations, nothing is stopping them from setting up a bridges to provide cheaper arbitrage for the Made in Pakistan Narrative. Kamyab jawan should find plug-ins to extend beyond just rhetoric .

We need to bring our own plug-in for selling on Amazon, instead of buying into dubious VPN based setups and being completely out of the value chain and at the mercy of the evangelical church equivalent of used car sales people promising our manufacturers sunny outcomes. By getting on to FBA programs and taking unassuming college kids to partake in get rich schemes of doing Drop ship form China to Amazon store fronts. Granted some of those work, short term for the person researching top selling products/categories on Amazon and doing drop shipping etc, but it adds no value to local manufacturers and to our FX items. In turn most of the money made this way is retained offshore.

We have to think of a longer term play, starting from working to increase over all exports, to increasing the value addition. Simple example is Pakistani Pink Salt, imported in to Dubai by Indian players, re-branding and adding world class packaging and marking up by 200% for retail sale in the US and Canada. This phenomenon is still on-going. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/10/03/763960436/pakistan-wants-you-to-know-most-pink-himalayan-salt-doesnt-come-from-india (This article will you give you some more insights) We have yet to protect such things, lets take a que from New Zealand AND Manuka Honey ( http://theconversation.com/manuka-honey-who-really-owns-the-name-and-the-knowledge-105508) Some other things now that we have gone down this path that the government or other individuals should consider are Kashmiri Chai (Either ready to brew like instant Cofffee) or As a solidified crystal or using other packaging mechanisms for delivery and even popularising some thing local. Along with brand protection for an entire segment.

We have some amazing startups in Pakistan that are working hard to bring unfair advantages to businesses both local and international in the global trade space. From knowing your markets to one click research to expanding your footprint, data is your friend. One such startup http://www.tradeforesight.com/ is a hidden gem. If you have access to figuring out whats selling where, how since when along with trade based regulation and laws, half the battle is already won. Not sound like a product endorsement but if would truly help a new generation of exporters online.

Its not just Amazon, but if for instance you saw the pink /Himalayan salt exports go up from Pakistan and you could enhance the upstream value chain in real time by packaging and then re-exporting would you not try to take a go at it? Coupled with having the ability to sell on amazon or ebay for that matter? But the first you need a view into the space. Whilst research on Amazon tells you whats selling on Amazon, it also gives you additional insight if you can see country by country, region by region, export and import types and vendors/manufacturers etc.

For instance, Traderjoes the notoriously famous food chain out west in the US has an entire team that does global food sourcing. Has any one even tried from Pakistan? https://www.traderjoes.com/contact-us/new-vendor-requirements are we just too lazy and too focused on traditional trading partners and markets? Are we ready to enhance our value chains.

All the money the govt and aid agencies are dumping into stupid projects should be redirected towards helping local industry achieve export related certification , local presence and certification outfits etc so we can up-skill and up-scale at the same time. Kudos to those who using their scale have already done FDA and other certifications and exporting into those markets. None of this will happen by waiting on international players to come to our door step. Some international players who have come, come at a price of giving exposure to Chinese led products even on their market places(I explored that in an earlier post). So whilst the Chinese have it right, they came to our market and allowing their exporters to export in to Pakistan, we have to figure out a way to export our goods out of Pakistan into other markets. If we continue to let others treat us only as an import first destination we will have no control over our trade deficits.

The time is now to really revisit what we have to offer as exporters and figure out a sustainable path to value addition. Waiting for others to come and disrupt our market, will lead to a different kind of disruption that we are likely not prepared to handle.

This will not be easy, I have decidedly been off the grid to give changes in our surroundings a fighting chance. My friends said I am not bullish on the tech sector + government action and PMR Items. They say, progress takes time. How much longer should we wait for things to get better?We are a nation in waiting it seems. Our governance rhetoric has not changed, there is one entity in charge of the country really. That shall not be named. Lets look at the alleged digital progress we are making under the new government and under the tailors of technology(*some insights from a previous article).

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the following tweet the other day.

Everyone please stop buying fruits and vegetables from market. Download our Durust Daam app and get them delivered to your houses with no delivery charges and that too on Govt rates. Rs 2500 shopping from market will cost only Rs 1300 through this app. Try it to believe it pic.twitter.com/heEYaoZEFs

— Office of Deputy Commissioner Islamabad (@dcislamabad) January 6, 2020

Before we get in to the UI/UX, the App it self or the aesthetics or functionality of the screen shot embedded in the tweet. Let us first reflect on the messaging. As best I can remember we are a free market economy, so how can a DC *(Public Servant) tell local constituents to stop buying fruits and vegetables from the market. Among the listed mandate of the DC is “He is responsible for efficient use of public resources for the integrated development and effective service delivery.^[1]” I am confused how can a public servant actually work to dis-intermediate free market systems and economics.

This clearly had to be investigated further. For an app that is made for the Awam, lo and behold it default loads in English, Albeit credit where its due it has a visible Urdu toggle. So once inside that App, todays vegetable rates for example would not load up(Re tried at 12th Jan./2020).

The rate part is great. People deserve to know what if any control rates are in place so that they get a sense of benchmarking. We know circa last 70 yrs that those rates do not hold in practice so I was some what excited the government machinery is trying to do some thing right, but the jury was out if they could be the next grocery e-tailer/ala whole foods. There is an online order button. So then naturally I had to go to Durust Daam App and check its about section, which clearly doesn’t have any stated goal at the time of launch about selling stuff online.. So whats going on? Whose selling the groceries?

Well so naturally I had to go and click the order button within the app to see what wizardry was afoot. Lo and Behold

This is where I encounter MIT level logic. ICT Administration Through Market Committee, ICT, has shortlisted the following delivery providers after due process.. Wah bhai Talian….(screen shot also attached for ICT site)

1. Can this selection criteria be made public, the largest grocery related e-tailers would I am sure like to know as would potential market place aspirants and established companies.
2. Wait, the text says delivery providers. Time to take offence, are these Sabzi sellers making margin on bulk delivery of COD or double dipping and also selling and making margin on the products them selves? (Mandi Express, Bykea, FoodPanda, EatMubarak by this measure could all participate then?) Did they? Fowrrys website claims its a market place no less but govt says delivery provider. So lets make up our mind please…
3. Shortlisted and added to the app are 2 very different things. So my Tax rupees are being used to list only 2 market vendors where dozens exist so the cost of customer acquisition is being borne by the Citizens of Pakistan. Because you get taken to a download link . Bhai I want in on this business… Having built and run some of the most viable lead-gen/CAC based businesses this is the first time I am seeing the government being an affiliate partner. Not a bad deal if the deal is made public and we see what the ICT Admin gets in return for their support so that they can re-invest that for public good. I will give you a simpler answer to make this a free market system. Read carefully, if the govt has a published rate, then make sure you enforce that rate to all marketplaces, offline or online, instead of integrating links of select market places/delivery service into a govt entity app. Instead list all the online market places in the country, because if there was rule of law, every single one of them would be inclined to sell at no other rate besides market rate. So you see, like all other things wrong with the govt machinery, they put on boots to go running instead of running shoes. Solving problems that dont exist without solving for root cause. Some applied common sense could save every one concerned serious time effort and tax payer money. Instead of solving the price enforcement item, honourable PM is endorsing the effort of all constituents who are trying to solve a systemic problem by creating alternate lines of solutioning. FIX the damn price enforcement issue vs getting in to competing with and getting the business of apps, market places, logistics, infrastructure etc, you already have a country to take care of, fix the macro and enforce the micro without getting into PR stunts of app launches and self serving solutioning that will have zero to no material impact. We can do the math, how may people have internet enabled and subscribed smart phones, how many of them live in sub-urban areas, how many know how to engage in online commerce, would it not be easier to use tech to enforce pricing control so when I walk to my market I know that every one has to play by the underlying pricing rules. Not thats #PakistanStrong and True #DigitalPakistan if you can use tech to dis intermediate first the arthi and then enforce rule of law on pricing and then work backwards to pay the farmer on time and fix the agriculture cycle of the country vs launching apps.
4. A quick glance through the customer feedback on the apps shows that like almost all items no turns, were taken to test the apps or their usage or the back end process. Its not my view, read the app store review. So the same consumer you want to save from the plight of the crooked middle man you are screwing via a govt endorsed service. If my govt tells me to buy some thing that its backing or has vetted and my online reprieve is the PMs portal, then #DigitalPakistan is actually being fought out at the cost of the citizens of this country. Like every thing else, because a good idea allegedly by someone was put out in the form of CDO of Pakistan, seems like it wasn’t endorsed likely in some govt or bureaucratic camp resulting in turf wars fuelled by app wars instead of big picture policy and strategic moves. Every ones “dair einth ki masjid is evident” The pettiness of the thinking may not be visible to all, but this point scoring is going to take down the nation in more ways than one.(We will come back to this later). Were you expecting #DigitalPakistan to be this? I most certainly wasnt. So whats going on here?

I was unable to find Sabzi Mandi Onlines website and their app is listed as developed by Neuron solutions who have in their repertoire some amazing credentials like making data collection apps, wrestling event apps for booking partners, activation apps for village based marketing etc. Most having 50 Downloads, but Sabzi Mandi having 10k+ So that validates the piece that free marking viz a vi a govt based affiliate download program really does help user downloads if not adaption. Perhaps the govt should think about a national policy on creating affiliate links and monetising govt sites using Google Ads? Perhaps some thing the CDO Can spearhead, given every one is alleging thats what she did at google. If the govt has sites that are visited 100s of thousands of times a day, ads revenue could be the new FX the govt has waiting for and this is an issue they can likely solve in house. I am sure Google would be open to piloting a national program and open avenues of now being an aid-fx agency style partner for major governments. All this because I was forced to see what the govt app was up to.

So Fowrry was delivering Nachos in sept 2019 per their twitter,

so this transition to market place and being synced up with the govt is great for the citizens of Pakistan. What is more promising is that the above feedback will now be replicated in Karachi. What ever is left of Sindh will now be serviced par excellence by an Islamabad based outfit. Given FoodPanda, EatMubarak , Bykea, Careem Now all operate at a bigger scale if Nacho deliveries were to be taken as a benchmark. How do we know this is coming to a neighbourhood near us…

Meeting regarding provision of logistic services for home-delivery of essential commodities (fruits and vegetables) at government-notified rates to the households in Karachi from New Sabzi Mandi Super Highway.This is a new initiative underway in the office of Commissioner Karachi pic.twitter.com/mxbQKtQoG7

— Commissioner Karachi (@CommissionerKhi) January 11, 2020

So this is less about sabzis or the last mile fraternity or the market places. This about mis direction of resources, mis direction of people, mis direction of policy and using govt services without thinking. The intent is for us to collectively think about problems we are trying to solve vs every one coming on side and championing a cause where a pic with a pm can be taken for drawing room conversations. We must think past this.

This thinking is endemic. It doesn’t end with Sabzis lets see some more colourful examples. A few form app for overseas Pakistanis to lodge complaints. Again focus on the, on-ground issues, overseas Pakistanis went overseas for a reason or 2. Will the govt machinery continue to admit failure of policy and implementation of rule of law and the writ of the the govt because it seems every app being released or developed has to do with rules not being followed and complaints being generated. Again focus is not on solving systemic issues but finding round-about ways of doing things. If the negative reviews are to be read albeit from said constituents who are desired to be served, it paints a shitty picture, seems like a zero sum game to me.

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Some free advice to the Chief Digital Officer of Pakistan. We the people of Pakistan don’t know who is in charge, but hope some one is. If its a group of people, can we first start by not having govt bodies taking credit for the following online and that too publicly. Why you ask, because on the one end we want Paypal and Google and others to come (thats the govt rhetoric) yet we are listing the following as our key accomplishments installation of Lan, doing procurement. WTF? Lets stop doing meetings govt wide, focus on creating solutions focus on increasing inbound investments, focus on dissolving sub comittes and task force and shadow bodies who do nothing besides have the zerray walay biscuit and chai in Islamabad. If Islamabad could fix our woes we wouldn’t have needed you. So get folks, to get with the program(heres to hoping there is one) and leave the sabzi selling and app making to the free market economy and let the best players win, you have them focus on rule of law and using digitization to bring universality of application of rules and regulations to all the citizens of the country.

“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.” ― Plato, The Republic

“The Emperor’s New Clothes” is a short tale written by Danish author  about two weavers who promise an emperor a new suit of clothes that they say is invisible to those who are unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent – while in reality, they make no clothes at all, making everyone believe the clothes are invisible to them. When the emperor parades before his subjects in his new “clothes”, no one dares to say that they do not see any suit of clothes on him for fear that they will be seen as stupid.

That is the state of the tailors(advisors) who are advising the PM, the Government and IT Ministry etc. But power to the Emperor too, for selecting such tailors. Ministers come and go, this has less to do with who the person is and more about what the person needs to know to do their job in a manner that helps Pakistan.

It’s much like having a veterinarian doing cardiac surgery on a paediatric patient. The tech sector in it self is in a state of infancy and we are using the tailors and vets to chalk the course of what is to come. I don’t even know where to start. We have academic press releases and conference presentations from the Ministry of IT to the Ministry of Commerce, not one person from these ranks has either been an entrepreneur or an information technology professional nor have they the academic fortitude to debate things like the NII(national information infrastructure). The only thing they can do is cut ribbons, read pre written statements and not speak two cohesive words to address their constituencies who are victims of natural selection not doing its job in time and be at the receiving end of this wisdom.

Let us run a comparative on IT Ministerial candidates in the region with similar aspirational targets as ours. Lets start with Indonesia, their progress on the tech front is no Joke, 4 Unicorns and counting. Btw they have all kinds of payment systems and the likes of Google and FB in town. We continue to be impressed by the shiny veneer of foreign companies and sponsored trips where-in our counterparts have done lasting good for their countries. The Indonesian Minister for Communication and Information Technology and his credentials below. Just so we know what kind of tailors to get.

Malaysia that has Lazada , ie 1 unicorn in its count, has the following Minister of Technology.

Moving on to Singapore and its 3 Unicorns lets see the credentials of the Minister in charge.

I am sure you get the theme now, well versed, professional, held key strategic roles in public and private sectors. Thats a start. Also Age has nothing to do with it, we have from the young to the seasoned in the small mix profiled above.

For comparisons sake the official Bio for our representative. Just saying, if Information Technology is the name of the game; your sites not being secure is not good start. Further not sharing any profile info is probably not a confidence boosting measure for all the alleged investors and VCs and funds they are working to bring to Pakistan.

Even if being IT minister was a popularity contest, we aren’t winning it. Just see the view count on the tweet from an industry event yesterday. Clearly there should be more than 8 people(well 7 if discount my view) that care about the national IT Agenda or consider any value being created out of these “shaking hands and kissing babies” activities.

At the said event, which in it self is a great melting pot of getting the right stake holders in a single location, the Member IT(what ever the f* that role is supposed to help the tech industry) claimed a 3bn$ IT Export. According to SBP data that isn’t even half the picture, let alone him taking credit as Pakistan being the 4 the largest free lancing market.

Ironically he was saying this whilst sitting at a Knowledge Economy panel, where-in free lancing is the exact opposite of knowledge creation, it is skills based execution that over time goes to the lowest cost provider bypassing repeatable process and knowledge creation. He was hailing how India is now too expensive, sadly without realising that they are working on value addition and moving away from basic services, which to-date, we cant do.

We had other gems from PSEB, TDAP and the Commerce Ministry. The biggest gem was the e-commerce policy framework that the Commerce ministry has given itself the charge to manage. If there was a more exciting idea out there, I haven’t heard it in a while. More amusing was the fact that whilst in 2019 I can forgive not knowing PowerPoint, I cant forgive folks working on policy who are checked out from reality and local context. Let me ask you a question, why isn’t it so that people in the private sector are lining up to hire these Members and Ministers if they as bastions of Tech and Commerce and all things progressive?

At the moment our infatuation is reverse, industry and government is top loading tailor after tailor from local to expat, we can already see the new dress shaping up at the hands of these tailors. Mostly not their fault, they get doused in the romanticism of helping nation and government, sprinkled with a healthy dose of political show and tell, blended with the pixie dust of a tour-de-pindi-boys. Tough to resist.

The thread of choice of all tailors today is digitization. In the history of Pakistani ministerial and government ineffectiveness has a word been murdered more brutally without understanding the reason to undertake the crime of passion. From this particular conference to others, to the national agenda and national IT boards these games are high stakes ego battles with me before we and I before us, we are all about to get f**d at the hands of these digital weavers.

We have had zero movement on national payments issue, no indigenous clearing or payments mechanisms that sit outside the banks or the regulators. Instead of promoting home grown and building solutions, we want to just borrow examples from else where without knowing local context or use cases. The brilliance of these items is that the ones making these power point decks, have never left the corridors of power and gone to tier 4-5-6 cities of this country to understand how financial inclusion will really work, how the under banked or un banked will give up cash, which is friction free, to go to cashless which at the moment is full of friction. Again academic exercises by tailors. I am waiting in earnest to see what the emperors clothes look like in the end.

We have zero movement on up skilling talent, or real tax benefits to the tech industry, we have zero movement by the government to attract a single serious VC fund to come to PK. Domestic private equity is just a fancier version of the so called “pathan loan” (no disrespect to any one) just describing what the market calls this variety of loan sharking. So do our startups even have a chance?

Finally a child cries out, “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!” 

Update: The Theme for Digital was influenced post the conference where I heard emphasis by the powers be on augmented reality, artificial intelligence, smart products + digitization..

We are going through a major hype cycle. If you are not familiar with what the hype cycle is heres a representation to quickly come up to speed.

In the absence of a real technology trigger, but just people talking about technology things; we have built up expectations on the domestic front of being a near a technical revolution that will fix and or repair the state of the nation. Whilst technology can help and change the dynamics of a host of things, talking about technology really wont. There is a lot that must change but just talking about change wont do any thing positive in the short term, it may lead to select individuals doing select things to achieve select goals, but at a whole sale level not much will change.

Lets start with e-commerce, the expectation was that as the Chinese come in, viz a vi their investment in Daraz, there will be in an overnight revolution. The revolution in my mind was the fact that there was a real exit of sorts and it did create buzz but since this was announced in May 2018, various pundits claimed the retail sector would be re-imagined, local industry would finally see the real potential given Ali Babas global scale and experience with all things tech, payments and e-commerce. As always we tend to celebrate early. In the time that has since passed the only visible item I see as a consumer is that service levels have not increased, product listings across the e-commerce sphere remain stagnant across the board and as any basic level of social media search shows the general dis-content of the online consumer on customer service. Cash is still king, no one has figured out a real use case for Wallets, if HBL/Meezan/Jazz/Telenor et all discounting were to end, some would argue there is no real benefit to the consumer either to shop online at least in KLI(Tier one markets). More alarming is the fact, that was perceived to be a win for Pakistani Businesses and Pakistani Consumers, seems like a net net win for every one else but Pakistanis. Simply if you look at the case of the Ali Baba acquisition, whilst part of the FDI may have come into PK on the transaction, what about the FDI that leaves the country daily on the same platform? that was touted to be a saviour for Pakistan and Pakistanis. The usual disclaimers apply, these exercises are not witch hunting exercises, especially in a global world and in a country that imports net net, this should not come as a surprise. But I searched for a 6.35mm Audio Jack. Total listings 362, Slight Catch though. See the Images below to see if you can spot it?

So Only 6 Items are being shipped or available from Pakistan, 356 from, you guessed it China. So is this e-commerce panacea and progress every one wants/wanted or is this merely an FX drain? Much like the many drains on AD Expense dollars etc that Ive written about in the Past. Whats the check and Balance on this cross border FX loss. The thing is, its not just one brand or entity doing this, there are dozens of Amazon drop ship operations happening in Pakistan and locally operated Chinese e-commerce players. Not to mention AliExpress it self ships to Pakistan using China Post and Pakistan Post. Who is regulating the FX component of these transactions and the many mushrooming local trading enterprises that are bringing in near commercial quantities avoiding most duties/taxes but depleting FX.

Who if any one is responsible for the customs duties on these items + the FX leakage on credit cards etc? Does any one see the irony in the so called e-commerce and digital revolution? Who is really benefiting from this? Before you jump in and say well these Ali Babas of the world create(d) employment in Pakistan , But does that employment off set the FX Losses we continue to get? Again no sense in blaming the channel, but rather the inefficient process of the institutions that have set out to regulate, they are actually stifling domestic e-commerce growth and growth at large without putting in pertinent clauses to manage around these advantageous tactics being used by the players in the market.

Dont have to look too far to evaluate what productive regulation looks like “On Feb. 01, the Indian government implemented several restrictive changes (pdf) to India’s FDI policy for e-commerce. The new rules state that online marketplaces can no longer enter into exclusive deals for selling products on their platforms nor can they have a single vendor supply more than a quarter of the inventory. The government also restricted marketplaces from influencing prices in a bid to curb deep discounting. It also forbade the marketplace for forcing vendors to use its own warehousing and logistics, payments financing etc.”

The smart move was to let the FDI come in via investments from Amazon (4b$) WallMart 15$Bn and then give the domestic brick and mortar retailers a chance to play fairly in the e-com space without discounts and venture money as the only value add.

In this new world, data is the new oil. And data is the new wealth. Anil Ambanis view has been that in India’s data must be controlled and owned by Indian people and not by corporates and most particularly not global corporates who have direct insights into online user behaviour. Clearly across the pond the regulators seem to agree. I had raised similar concerns earlier in an article around data being the new currency. 

Sadly we continue to measure vanity metrics a reflection of which is evident in the current economic growth numbers. Its not e-com alone, lets look at Fintech, half the folks talking about or dispensing advice on the subject work at large scale Banks, most of which have been fined in the recent past for various KYC/AML issues globally, or have been hacked. Do we really want to, or are in any capacity to trust the same brands/institutions? I have written extensively about the fault lines and both the technical inability of the switch companies and their Incestual relationship with the Banks. Sprinkle in the regulatory teams at the Bank that are near retirement, who do not want to take any “un safe” actions 2-3 yrs before retirement, we are consistently at the mercy of self interest and the average consumer continues to get F**D. This has more to do with the political environment and the NAB related items, no public servant wants to serve time by doing shit that they know nothing about 3 yrs before retirement. Can we blame them? The relationship and attitude in the Halls of the regulator are extremely odd, I have worked with regulators globally, ours are way more special. Most have the right idea, but are not equipped to dispense justice to the cause. Thus there is a stalemate. There is virtually nothing been done to enhance SME growth. Yet the government continues to chime about helping just that sector.

Last-mile is an other flavour of the month of the Hype cycle crowd. There are many many contenders in the space and many more will come. The ones aligned with the hype cycle are the VC/Angel funded ventures that are not concerned with the bottom line but focused on customer acquisition ala Amazon style model, where over time your scale allows you to dominate. The other end of this spectrum are traditional players who will continue to thrive, because they grow organically and long after the VC money is gone. Purely because there is a growing population and increasing demand around logistics at large. But there is a hybrid model for the taking if you can effectively figure out mobile money and tie brick and mortal to last mile. Sky is the limit, in tier 2, 3 cities there is a much larger demand that can be opened up if the stars align on this. Tier one cities are still easier, the real enablement happens when you cover the smaller cities. But smaller city activation really doesn’t much to the valuation multiples, so typically overlooked.

If you have staying power today the real space to play in is a combination that will benefit from the economic value that the CPEC will create. Depends on who you ask and where you look. Domestic players have a once in a life time chance to scale businesses to meet existing demand in virtually all retail sectors by adapting technology minus the hype and by trying to create domestics multi party alliances to keep the competition in check. The only catalyst required is effective policymaking, when that happens the hype cycle will start to break and we may uncover real value.

Just like we only tax the salaried class in this country and refuse to grow the pie, we see similar items happening in relation to people movement. Last year we had about 7M domestic Air travellers and about 15m International travellers. Indonesia did roughly 34M international travellers. By the same measure look at the maturity of their online space, real fintech companies, real tech companies and real unicorns(ride hailing etc). Many similarities in population numbers and general make up, but they have completely outdone us because of having a progressive government and progressive IT Minister who understands the value of real growth vs hype. They have allocated tax $ to growing their eco system, our tax $ go into ill planned Incubation etc with out any directionality, that select on most occasions pre existing companies, white wash them, re launch them to essentially win the Incubator race that no one really cares about.What state money should be spent on is to make the ease of doing business and run road shows to invite VCs to town as opposed to taking tax payer money to attend “meetings” overseas. Had they been producing unicorns i’d have sent them easy load to continue down that path. But besides photo ops nothing of value having come from their ill thought out initiatives, I really don’t see a continued use to funding them from my tax money. All this eco system talk makes sick to the core, it’s essentially for people to hold on to a govt funded subsidy. There is definitely a better use for all this money to really support the ecosystem if some one thought this through.

“You can hype a questionable product for a little while, but you’ll never build an enduring business.” Victor Kiam

If you are a startup or established business in the content business in Pakistan, you already know that the CPM Rates from AD-Networks really suck. Yet most people continue down the path of building content alone and praying that they start getting international traffic that commands higher pay outs, that may remain a panacea because the content being pushed out is neither creative, timely nor distributed across all relevant channels. The ones who have marginal to decent successes in terms of revenue are click-baity and continue to produce 3^rd tier content, driving views on objectionable and culturally and morally inappropriate content. They no less have discovered what you still haven’t. Video is king, short form content is a close second but specialized long form is also in that category. You cant evaluate any of these without knowing your audience and structuring your content for instant-mass propagation.

Lets look at a few under served segments in no particular order both content wise and technology wise.

Recipe’s: This is by far my favorite segment and one that continues to be disorganized, yet it has a fantastic number of organic traffic potential and a vast spectrum of searches. Whilst content is available both in Urdu and English from Pakistan origin sites, its haphazard. But it shouldn’t be, if you are in the content business, even if you aren’t but are looking to get in, what will set you apart is fairly simple. Google has pages and pages of documentation on it. Perhaps it’s time for you to get in to this space. Most sites, copy content off each other, half of it is in image form particularly the Urdu content, scanned recipe-book content. That shit doesn’t work online. It drowns the site. The second is English recipes but in roman, something that domestic publishers and content creators aren’t really focusing on. I wonder why? It opens the path to audio delivery on assistant.

So let’s start at the beginning.

Mark up your recipe content with structured data to provide rich results and host-specific lists for your recipes, such as reviewer ratings, cooking and preparation times, and nutrition information. Your page is eligible for different features depending on how you add structured data to your page:

Search: Add recipe structured data to drive better engagement in Search with rich results.

Guidance: Enable the Google Assistant to guide users through your recipes on Google Home and smart displays. (This is one to focus on, every android phone has built in assistant, when will you build for that? You need to get started today, especially in a market where text search volume is lower in Urdu than it is in English, but you can surely do some basic items to make your content discoverable in audio)

Carousel: Add carousel structured data to enable your recipe to appear in a carousel of rich results. This can include images, page logos, and other interesting search result features.

AMP: Build your recipe pages with AMP to provide instant-loading recipes.

The Difference between doing it right vs doing it wrong:

Imagine if your content was formatted the right way. Had all the check marks, you would rule the category. At the moment, sadly whilst search volume is very high on the subject of Korma the reality of where that content is being served up from, is any where but Pakistan. Take a look below.

An other overlooked space is some thing that started very strong many years ago.

A discovery engine for Unique Places, Products & Events so no not a Google Business Listing or search for one-off things. Think of it as a grown up version of the infamous Khi Snob page + Yelp + Recommendations paired with relevant content(not mass produced) and not a check list of features or listings. Consider the size of the middle class population, consider their age, consider their connectivity. FB doesn’t serve the need for authentic consumer driven reviews nor does it curate things in perpetuity in a single place. If you were a business the way it works is that past your 1% of followers you gotta pay to be relevant.

Consider the salaried millennials, like many most don’t have  big liabilities and want  to explore the city and see what different parts of the country have to offer in terms of culture, entertainment, and dining. And guess what? Contrary to what Telenor, Jazz and Zong would have you believe and even sprite, its not about finding a Karahi chicken or holding a DSLR and looking cool. Beyond that garbage, options are generally severely limited when it comes to Friday night out plans. No one just wants delivery recommendations or listings for this one thing happening at this one place, or an event near you via Facebook, there is more to a city than these tv advertisement idiots would lead you to believe, based on their marketing prowess on television.

The Urban millennials  who, unlike their predecessors, study hard, work hard and want to party harder. They have a good spending capacity on account of being part of a well paid working class or having turned entrepreneurs and making sizable incomes.

This crowd wants to look beyond information – provided by FoodPands or EatMubarak or discounts by BOGO apps or other credit card discounting platforms,  for numbers of local businesses and go-to places.  To date nothing exists for restaurant reservations and barely two or three ticket booking sites for entertainment regarding the latest films, plays and other events taking place in town. They(the urban folks) want to  zero in on specific events and exciting undiscovered places that are the pride of every urban area and which are as yet, not on anyone’s radar. In other words, places that are cool and awesome enough to spend an evening with friends.

Build it and they will come. This also plays in to aspirational visitors to your site and aspirational folks who want to re-live a virtual experience when the real thing is either expensive, out of reach or some thing that drives nostalgia. But please don’t go out and do yet an other f**ing episode on BurnsRoad. Please know your audience. Don’t just make BuzzFeed type videos for food reviews only. Think bigger, think at scale and make sure you build for the mobile and voice web. Content is king, build audio, video, short and long form once you know the audience you want to cater to.

Pro tip: Build event booking, reservations, delivery and payments all into one location, don’t try to build a closed loop ecosystem, the more partners you have once you have your content and discovery strategy figured out, the most incremental revenue you will make past ad $s alone. Think affiliate networks.

An other all time favorite of mine, that is very often overlooked is the absence of a Shared Blog/Content Network in a place like Pakistan.

This is not an easy one, this requires some common sense and or some serious capital.

On the common sense piece, I’ll elaborate more:

There are a few dozen individual run blogs, sites, news portals, content plays etc that all do marginally well. Some are in the business of toxic reviews, others are in the business of the 3rd tier click baity business (you know who you are). Irrespective there are others who have good content, a good fan following; yet individually they will only scale to a point where they make money off it as a side hustle or as a very basic form of monetary growth. Yet if these blogs and their custodians got together and agreed on forming a consortium, they would give the established players a run for their money. Be the Baskin Robins of content, 32 flavors. The media companies, traditional or the Lahore variety funded by the fumes of fertilizers continue to only bring readers using paid facebook tactics or by spending ad$. You can completely change the equation and turn it on its head.

If you are the owner of a blog or content play:

1. Get together and choose a leader (Please don’t build a society or nominate the oldest person in the group, they likely know the least, also stay away from any brand name big media players-they will be irrelevant soon if not already)
2. Work together to define content standards and technical standards
3. Bring all your work under a new brand or figure out cross domain sharing arrangement where by you preserve canonical references
4. Yet build/deploy technology so advanced that if a user comes to say a tech review site, they should have the ability from your site to navigate to your partner member site for other related content like the best place to get a falouda.
5. This way you will own the user(and their cookie) as long as they continue to stay on the merry go round, which is your “shared consortium”
6. Over time you can build your own ad-network should you be that successful (I hope you are)
7. Stay away from hard news instead integrate dozens of sources from twitter etc, based off keywords that interest your audiences.
8. Focus on multi lingual content in Urdu and English
9. Agree on content frequency and freshness, agree on cross network integration and banner promotions.
10. Hire a lawyer and contract this stuff in to place. You will only get one shot a this. You can try and get UthoDaikho.com (its available at the moment ) and build the first shared content creation and delivery platform that will eventually out live, out maneuver and out grow traditional news/content players. They aren’t innovating for shit. This is your chance to all get in a room and make more money as a collective. Strength in numbers.

Be under no illusion all this is a lot of hard work, both technically, organizationally and whilst content is king, architecting this the right way is equally important. Google tells you how to do all this, you don’t even have to be above average to get the basics right.

There is one more thing you could do, if you were in this space and had cash. Just buy into the blogs and aggregate them. Give the owners a fair piece of equity and acquihire every one. Not like any real Valley VC money is about to show up any time soon. Also most folks may want to raise 500k and 1m$; the thing is, you could get some thing like this going for 1m$ total and give every one an earn out. If only people were smart enough and took the money and went on to solving other problems. The thing is, whilst they may be making 4k$ a month, in their minds eye every entrepreneur thinks they are at cusp of greatness. Make them an offer they can refuse and serve some reality on a platter and let them cash out a bit.

Key technical take aways:

AMP AMP AMP

Follow the markups Google tells you to do

Stop focusing on AD$s alone, focus on what people want and then build for that.

1000 Visitors or orders a day is not big enough, the magnitude that matters in 200 million people is far from that.

Focus on the ex-pat market, their ad$ and their engagement is higher figure out ways to build, deploy and cater to their needs.

Keep it simple, don’t over complicate it. Know your audience and ask the question, “is there a google help forum article on this”

Video is king. (But not the 2 cassette tape variety on which your mamus valima was shot) Keep it brief, bold and brilliant.

I promise to add a few more segments to this. Verticals I think would do well if executed right along with the technical marshaling you could do to smoke your competition. Ill be sharing thoughts on :

1. Maps
2. Last mile delivery + some interesting plays on integrations and APIs
3. Consumer ratings
4. Comparison and data led resource providers
5. Matrimonial’s
6. Business and Finance
7. Non-Traditional Classifieds + Payment Integrations
8. Education

“It’s in our biology to trust what we see with our eyes. This makes living in a carefully edited, overproduced and photoshopped world very dangerous.” 
― Brené Brown

One thing across every major mall in America is the presence of Thai food. Whilst Mexican and Chinese restaurants might be more abundant that also has to do with population dynamics. With over thirty-eight million Mexican-Americans and around six million Chinese-Americans, it’s no surprise that these cuisines have exploded on the American foodie scene.

Comparatively, there are only about 300,000 Thai-Americans—less than 1 percent the size of the Mexican-American population. Yet there are an estimated 5,342(today) Thai restaurants in the United States, compared to around 54,000 Mexican restaurants; that’s ten times the population-to-restaurant ratio.  It just got me thinking, why is it so. Is this really new age “gastro diplomacy”?

Remember Arthur Anderson? I do. In 2001, I read a WSJ piece which I recalled recently, and was amazed at the far sightedness of the Thai Government. They were raising 10M$ to bring between 1000-3000 restaurants in 5 years to the US and 8000 globally to serve authentic Thai Cuisine. Back then I wondered why?

 This didn’t happen overnight. Since the 1990 the Thai Government methodically sent qualified chefs all over the world, they also setup in-country institutions for culinary arts. They set up manufacturing lines across the nation and re-tooled old utensil factories to deploy neo-modern cooking utensils fit for a new class of yuppies, enthusiasts and professionals alike.

The global movement of McDonaldizing Thai Food. Now that’s an idea and something to be proud of. Something we need to still copy and emulate as the government of Pakistan. Instead of making insanely dumb committees and task forces, with a vast majority of dumber people and has-beens who besides self-enrichment have done nothing at scale in this country or any other. The yes sir, ji boss, bull$hit is back.

Without being side tracked, in 2001 or there about the Thai were exporting 6bn$ in food related exports worldwide, meaning ingredients, herbs and spices. In 2017-2018, Pakistan is struggling to export rice greater than 1.3bn$. Spices and other Pakistani-ethnic foods don’t even show up on the radar. You want to see the kicker? Thai exports to just their foreign restaurants were as $1.5bn in 2000…

Some one really needs to just copy this model and get started. Its been tested over time and given dividends in all the areas our current government aspires to draw in-bound dollars. Tourism, Tech to name the two top of mind items. But it should be exploring entire ecosystems of industries as opposed to one offs.

Just to re-cap, in 2001 or there about the Thai were exporting 6bn$ in food related exports worldwide, meaning ingredients, herbs and spices. In 2017-2018, Pakistan is struggling to export rice larger than 1.3bn$. Spices and other ethnic foods don’t even show up on the radar. You want to see the kicker? Thai exports to just their foreign restaurants were at $1.5bn in 2000… Some one really needs to just copy this model and get started. It’s been tested over time and given dividends in all the areas our current government aspires to draw in-bound dollars into. Tourism, Tech to name the two top of mind items. But it should be exploring entire ecosystems of industries as opposed to one offs.

Why did the Thai government do this?

The predominant motivation for the venture, according to the government, which was to hold a stake of less than 30%, was the frustration caused by the fact that people cooking Thai food abroad just weren’t doing it right. There are too many western distortions in what purports to be Thai cuisine.

The restaurants themselves were to be established with start-up funds of over US$10m and split into three price bands, upscale, mid-price and fast-food, and be called Golden Leaf, Cool Basil and Elephant Jump respectively. Experienced franchise partners would run the companies on a day to day basis, but according to the then, Thailand’s deputy commerce minister, Goanpot Asvinvichit, the government will be playing a “strong role” in the conception of the menus, and overseeing quality. How ever mis-guided that sound(s) then or today, It catapulted an export revolution.

Knock-on effect in export markets and tourism

Market watchers had expressed concerns as to just how much Thai food can be digested in the west, but a glance at export figures shows that as the taste for cuisine in specialist restaurants grows, so did demand for “authentic” Thai ingredients – both for foodservice sales channels and home consumption. Clearly this has been a global winner by way of execution.

Indeed, the government played this right, they had intended and made sure that at least 70% of the foods used by the Global Thai Restaurant Co. are exported from Thailand.  As stated earlier, the country already grossed over US$6bn from food-related exports annually, and over US$1.5bn from supplying restaurants with both food and cultural merchandise, and the Thai food industry gained a significant boost from the venture and continues to grow to this day. An idea well played out.

As well as the profitable growth in the ethnic food sector, and the related export boost, Thailand also gained from  the intrinsic link between exotic food and its destination: the tourist trade is booming even when the politics was at all time low. During 2000, the country welcomed nearly 10m tourists, double the amount that arrived in 1990. In 2018 those numbers were at 22M. The increasing availability of long-haul flights is a major factor of this, but so too is the advertising provided by popular local restaurants. Imagine the mix at play, all well thought and executed correctly to now stand in 2019 at the top of the game. It did not happen by accident it happened by deliberate planning and by way of some thing every Pakistani feels strongly about. FOOD…

Over the course of this exercise it has been fairly evident that People who enjoy Thai food are more disposed to visit the country, and tourist officials are widely distributing leaflets and brochures in eateries. Its an ecosystem of one. One mission, one drive, one end result, brand Thailand.

Further evidence of the close link between Thai food and the country is in the establishment of cooking schools in Thailand to cater for the tourists’ desire to learn more abut the cuisine. One such example is the Samui Institute of Thai Culinary Arts on the popular island of Koh Samui, but similar centers have mushroomed in the tourist hotspots in recent years. We need to learn from this. Whilst Indian food is on the up and up in the West, similar examples of Pakistani food are far and few in between.

What have we been doing and what should we be doing?

We continue to focus on the wrong thing, set in motion by the wrong set of people leading self driven agendas. We need to think outside the box. Pakistan doesn’t have a PR problem, we have an “Idiot” problem, we are taking our versions of political idiots and putting them in charge of solving economic problems. Actually this whole model could be copied by any half decent so called local group or company that has the where with all to think beyond its table stake businesses of being a rent seeker.

The Thai Govt didn’t import the London Bukhar equivalents to dream up these things, they didn’t invite other patrons of high-business and high-friendships to devise new ways to save the Thai Economy. Do remember they have had 12 Military Take overs; yet continue to be perceived as a safe destination, rampant with ease of doing business, tourism and now a center of high tech innovation.

Whilst Facebook goes through its own set of challenges from data, privacy, security, hacked elections and congressional outings. FB in Pakistan especially in the new year poses a very clear and present danger and strategic challenge to its users in the country and their in-ability to understand its basic constructs around privacy and security.

Many if not most folks using Facebook in the 1% neighborhoods of Pakistan, at large, do not secure their profiles. More times than none, FB is a huge vanity play, where Madam wined and dined last year, what her social butterfly calendar leaves no room for mere mortals is a must see for all.  This leads us to the less than secure privacy settings on the profile and most importantly images.

Which brings us to the brave new world of proximity, filter bubbles, wifi-signatures, Friends of Friends and other algorithms at play. In a social experiment done a little over one year I have come to the conclusion that this a very poorly thought out vanity play of not knowing and not securing your privacy settings.

Even if you are a tech noob, you must pay attention to this one of a kind, non-business driven post, because you are most certainly putting yourself, your information and your family’s social movements under the eye of people you have both met and most certainly will never meet.

So you have a rotating stock of security guards in your house, the average house has a trusted old cook/driver(substitute the person you rely on) and in the current day and age you at a base case give them your wifi password, if not verbally you enter in on their device. Which is a good thing to do, 100% giving access to free internet, to make calls, consume video, if they are so inclined learning new things is a social good that comes out of this activity of making sure they are also connected to their loved ones.

The lesser known fact is, if they don’t have your password in writing, your internet will now be shared by using their mobile phone within their social circle. It takes about a week of using the same internet connecting/wifi location and geo-location for FB to magically start showing you people you may know in your feed. Plust folks who have your mobile number saved or may have a text message from you. (Now imagine the circle of interaction, your delivery guy from last night, your last Careem or Uber text exchange, your call to reserving a restaurant etc etc)

You may be one of those who never looks, but the opposite is also true, your un-secure profile is now visible to every one using your common/shared internet as a base case or with text/phone interactions with your self. FB has denied this for ages, but let congress find the answer to that. Not you and me.

So all of a sudden all your December night parties and Qawwalis and your cute pictures with your BFF are the proud hyper local Vogue Magazine outside your house at the daily congregation of all your employees and their friends.

You may be ok with this and have an initial reaction, akin to calling me names saying, that your house hold help is like family. But this family has an extended family and now all of begum sahibas friends and in turn their friends and everyone who is tagged in any picture is on the front page of the neighborhood daily. So long as their vanity play is turned on and privacy is set to off.

Now look at both the social and scoio-economic impact of this, as much as you’d like to tell your self you are fair to your staff, imagine their plight when they see you sipping a cold one on the Amalfi Coast at the pool side. Clearly this stems all kinds of social , cultural and economic issues over time. There is a sense of dis-content, further inequality and alienation when the life style they see couldn’t be further from the truth they deal with daily.

This post is not to vilify domestic help in any way or marginalize those already dealt a hand by fate, that is not easy.

As part of turning on a free Wi-Fi for 200+ days the #1 traffic source after 9pm was Facebook. It took 3 days net, for every one to realize that there was free internet. Looking at traffic data, landing pages (traffic it self being encrypted) high end phone would rarely connect to the Wi-Fi and if they did they would stop using it, most of the connection was from sub 100$ devices. FB was king at 9pm and YouTube around 10pm. Total bandwidth being consumed was in the 100s of gig quotient(particularly high for Youtube).

Lets now look at the safety element on this, once people know who you are and really do want to target you and track you, your FB timeline/pictures are a good place to start. Given basic skills if they only continue to watch and you continue to post they will know your kitty party locations and spots, times of day, week of month and time of year type info, where you are , who you go with. If like most normal people your images are tagged, all they need to do is copy paste the name in to FB and then latch on to your friends etc. Done with enough compulsion over time, this a starting place for people to start stalking in the digital age.

FB has graduated from old colleagues and high school sweethearts from tracking you or checking out how well you are doing, there is an entire underbelly of folks who are tracking and trading in the business of FB driven personal content. In and around you and in and around where you live and go to work every day. The level of sophistication varies and will only continue to grow.

In most cases your vanity play is allowing them to do this, all you have to do is hit the privacy button and make your content available to only those in your network. That would be a first pass at making sure, the Culligan water delivery guy is not sending friend requests to begum sahiba on his next trip to your place.

Further there are entire WhatsApp groups that then trade the links to Madams pictures and parties, being shared from say your Gali Cluster to the next cluster one street down and one street across then across towns and nation wide. This is a serious cause for concern, you may be ok with people admiring your looks, but with your profile links also making it across, it now adds a devoted fan following larger than some celebrities. The groups are trading content via links as most do not use the app to go to the site, they use the browser. Plus they also use screen shots and pass these pictures around.

This not just true in the case of groups and group members trading in begum sahibas pictures or her friends, even though that is the prevalent category, there are categories of sahabs cars, his houses, his vacation spots his “daru” collection etc all being circulated in groups. Most groups have 0 conversation and only message exchanges. People use voice notes to comment on the pictures and the vacation spots or putting annotated voice prints adding their meta tags so other group members can quickly catch up. Whilst most of this may be sans a criminal intent(like more voyeuristic), but truly people do not realize the likely implications over time. You are putting your self, your family, connections and almost any one else that’s tagging you being exposed to an ecosystem completely outside your own comfort zone and you have no idea what it is.

Startup idea for this would be a FB health check and help to those who want to keep their mimosa outings to not be outed in places they didn’t even know existed. Sort of like a wealth manager but for online health check and privacy management.

 

“Who would you impress if the world was blind?” 
― Shannon L. Alder

The fear mongers are out. The verdicts are in. In 100 days supposedly every thing was to be fixed and the generational crap shoot we have been down should have been reversed. A round of slow clapping and applause to the educated class who continue down this path of not accepting that, this shit storm has been in the making for decades and that if they are the beneficiary from past governments and contracts and “concessions” they have to for once, for the love of country and not greenbacks get off this bullet train to disaster. Clearly self interest reigns high. I meet the so-called investor types, industrial money and old money. The only thing common across most of those, is ill-gotten money. I will loose some so called friends and associates over the post, but I am happy to loose friends and gain a flourishing country, by calling out the BS.

No doubt there is economic decline, but it didn’t start and finish in the last 100 days, the current government is fairly silly in even having such a yard stick and talking when they should be working and nation building as opposed to optics building. With the sad state of FX reserves, free lancers and the tech folks who can actually contribute to fixing this national crisis are looking to bail, so it would seem. Given all that’s going on and with payment aggregators being unable to send money across to PK this situation is only going to get murkier. Unless the Banks and the regulator steps in. This is a crisis of confidence. We need to get some seriously competent and confident people guiding the government and not the generational multi-party idiots we have always had.

Let me illustrate why such is the case. We supposedly have an IT Minister and now also an IT/Tech Task Force of turning around the state of affairs of the industry. Couple of things to point out, this body whilst it has some very competent people also has others who may be competent in other facets of life but clearly a “wasta” inclusion is so evident in this group. We have a Retired(R) Naval individual perhaps I missed the memo on the Navy doing some block buster Tech Innovation and National Defense Sales and Commercializing stuff for export. To the best of my knowledge Arms Sales are in the Range of 300m$ a year. The free lancers in Pakistan are doing about 1bn$ or more in work, net-aggregate. So who should be advising whom here? We continue to include irrelevant people in these real time conversations, who have no role to play.

Then we have a representative from the Pakistan Engineering Council. Allegedly they represent the graduate engineers from across the country. All I will say about them is a reference to the Image below making the rounds from their 2018 elections.

We also have some has-been box pushers and CD/Software sellers who have never done a days worth of honest entrepreneurship and or value creation domestically. If you worked for a fortune 500 Company per se in Pakistan, whilst you made out well for your self, the only thing you have done or are good at is working for your sponsors to take their product(Namely Software or Hardware), sell it domestically and export the resulting revenue back to them. Meaning your net contribution in life has been at the expense of the Nation and a net FX loss. So why the state or these committees continue to idolize these folks is beyond my imagination.

This is not a laundry list of knocking down people and or individuals, it is a walk down memory lane of how we continue to F*k up things whose intent is generally good.  As a side bar the Task force has not yet met up since the mid November announcement and formation. Some of the government efforts are mis guided on this front they continue to deploy good people in bad positions.

In short, get some folks who know what they are talking about who have done demonstrable things in the space and can make impact at scale. If you wanted to make a real task force you would invite real change makers who understand  technology, scale commercialization, payments and growth.  Id like to find out the median age of the Task force, you do not have a single millennial in the task force. If digital is your way out of this mess, than at-least get some digital natives to be a part of the narrative. Some of these folks struggle to use a smart phone. We are trusting them to drive the national narrative on technology.

We should be done with the Sahabs and the Bureaucrats and the Academics. We have held on to that formula for the last 50+ years, that shit has not worked. There are very many respectable people in these groups and committees but that doesn’t mean they will have any impact. Starting with the overqualified minister in charge this ship needs a new steward.

So what is the way out? Clearly I do not have an answer, but if any of these government types and task forcers had their eye on the ball they would be using the public money already (wasted/applied/used (depending on where you stand on this narrative) on all these nation wide incubators to stop doing these dumb hack-a-thons and force-creating startups that wont amount to much. Some will but they would have done so any way, most wont. We aren’t in SiliconValley we cant continue to fund these Starbucks conversation at the cost of the tax payer at these various Incubators. As a tax payer I have a serious issue with these locations not being optimally used, optimally staffed and optimally run. If nothing else turn them in to co-working spaces, people need space to work, stop hosting events to fill your social calendar again at the cost of the tax payer. What is one good commercial product to come out of any of these state funded incubators? Whats the benchmark of their success? Who is the net beneficiary in these setups? Do the people who are tasked with running these have any credible experience or success to be imparting advice and mentorship?

Sadly, mentorship is the most over used and least understood concept at these incubators any one who can speak fairly fluently or by virtue of their connections or recognition by virtue of their employer and job, literally show up and start imparting advice, which has no basis in reality and is of very little to help these incubatees. But no one seems to call this out. Perhaps a topic for a different day.  The one good thing is nationally ready infrastructure to be repurposed for the good of the people.

So public money has already been spent how do we reclaim what we have spent and done? How do we move in to cash-in on the next wave of tech. How do we think past BPO and force creating me2 startups or incubating them. Because we continue to emulate what we see vs innovate at scale.

Some time back I wrote about the Onavo Mindset, luckily we have an other chance. Seemingly a wave is coming, not too many people are ready for it, but its a wave that likely on-boards the Next Billion Users. Luckily you can build for them and cash-in and cash-out in a big way.

Right about now, you are going, Wtf? We all know about Android, and whats the point of preaching about building android apps, actually the world is slowly moving in a different direction. Its the voice driven revolution fueled by feature rich phones that work and feel like smart phones. Its a revolution fueled by your imagination and building services for the first time internet and “device” users. So what is it?

Its KaiOs, if this is the first time you are hearing about it, trust me it wont be the last time. In India the revolution has already started, powered by voice and free data. We aren’t too far away, realistically what you build for Kai, powers any one and any where and you can continue to make money independent of your location. Don’t hold your breath on our committees and our regulators and our leaders and our ministers. Go build, be ready for the revolution. There is a reason Google invested 22m$ in KaiOs. Go to your incubator, knock on their door, they used public money, most are smart enough to recognize they have an abundance of space, politely ask them to use this space for working on your next KaiOs idea. Or any other idea. The time literally is now, you do not want to get into this space once its too late. Googles working on localization across India, meaning local language support. If we were to venture a guess, Urdu is likely not too far away. Try to understand the space, most particularly voice. On its own and tied to KaiOs that will be the future that drives the next generation of growth and services.

Looking at the data we are doing well in the gig-economy space. A 2018 study by the Oxford Internet Institute re-affirms the fact that we are on to some thing good here.

We need to capitalize on this trend, we need to put our minds and our resources to good use. We need to learn from the success and mission driven narratives of people like Yasser Bashir who have built worth while national narratives around putting good tech to good use by being great corporate employers and investors in growing the ecosystem by virtue of things like  PyCon .  I can cite many many examples at the risk of people saying I’m biased. Full disclosure I only know of Yasser’s work and do not know him beyond interacting at industry events. But I do not need to know him to know his work, thats what I am getting at. Its a mindset thing. Thats what we need to focus on.

A lot of good things are happening in and around us, we need to get past the petty and focus on the real stuff. We need to work on giving ideas and opportunities to those who can translate them in to growth and FX, we need to highlight and make inclusive committees and offer their memberships to people  who can do good at scale. Not because of party or personal affiliation as is evident presently.

There is a reason old money hasn’t scaled in to tech because they worked in the “rent seeking” economy and model, they have no desire to create wealth across the nation, so why do we continue to include them in our national narrative around tech? The most tech, their kids(second third generations) know are iphones and ipads. Not like, they don’t  have the money or the access to replicate global success in Pakistan, they are just not comfortable in allowing the creation of wealth that transcends their own families.

My question to all those who aspire to change their own fortunes and the fortunes of their teams, colleagues, their country. Why must you spend all your collective energy in complaining why not take charge and try to do some thing different. Aisa Kai ko nahin Kartay?