Looking at the current news, it is with a heavy heart that I reflect on what seems to be the unraveling of one of Pakistan’s most ambitious technology ventures, The Resource Group (TRG).
📈 5-Year High & Present Low
All-time high: PKR 186.49 on April 25, 2021
Current price: PKR 56.68 as of June 20, 2025 — a ~70% drop from the peak
As someone who joined early at SATMAP (now Afiniti), built the first engineering teams from scratch, and later helped scale TRG portfolio companies including DGS (which listed on the LSE:AIM) and played a role in the early incubation of the idea/experiment at DGS of what would become the $600M e-TeleQuote exit. This decline is more than professional disillusionment.
At its height, TRGs key asset Afiniti was a $6 billion (perhaps more) jewel in a constellation of companies, many of which were seeded, staffed, and scaled from Pakistan. With over 6,000 employees in the country and several thousand more across a dozen or more global operating entities, TRG was one of the few truly international firms built from the Global South, anchored in the discipline of private equity and powered by the ingenuity of local talent. It was, in many ways, the country’s most successful soft-power tech export.
And yet, today, that legacy is like witnessing a liquidation sale, not in a market crash, but in slow motion: through boardroom reshuffles, asset divestitures, and courtroom drama, based on the publicly reported news.
The ousting of TRG’s founder, while presented as a governance necessity, triggered a chain of events that seemingly appear strategically reckless, if not economically ruinous. Afiniti once its AI-first flagship when AI was still academic curiosity has been gutted. IBEX, a top-performing Nasdaq-listed BPO built under the TRG umbrella, has seen large insider divestitures. From the outside the confidence seems to be shaking, with it, the earliest Pakistani Tech Dream.
But perhaps most jarring is the treatment of the affiliate companie’s, Pakistani workforce, the very foundation on which this empire was built. Lenders-turned-owners have reportedly/allegedly reduced employee headcount from the ecosystem that enabled TRG’s meteoric rise. It feels less like strategic restructuring as (some units are now lender led) and more like a dispassionate carve-out, where neither history nor human cost seem to matter.
Between 2003 and its peak, an original PKR 10 share catalyzed a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. This growth wasn’t theoretical it manifested in USD-denominated salaries in Karachi and Lahore, upward mobility for thousands of middle-class professionals, and the creation of a deep, scalable talent pool in AI, BPO, and digital marketing. TRG was arguably the first Pakistani employer to internationalize talent at real volume and velocity.
I was fortunate to hire hundreds of engineers, marketers, analysts, and operators over two tours across two TRG entities. We built DGS from a handful of people to over 1,000 in Pakistan alone, pioneering PPC and lead-gen capabilities long before the regional market even knew what those acronyms meant. We dreamed in data. We scaled in grit. And most importantly, we delivered. It was not easy, it never is, but there was a pride in doing things never done before at scale.
Now, all of that is at risk not because of market forces, but due to strategic myopia and a loss of institutional memory. This was no startup flameout; it was a mature operation with demonstrated outcomes. Its dismantling is less a business cycle than a case study in how misaligned ambition and short-termism can dismantle even the most promising platforms. It truly is a Platform.
Let’s be clear: great founders build great companies. Hired guns/PE Firms, no matter how credentialed, seldom understand the alchemy of mission, culture, and endurance. What we are witnessing is a textbook failure of that understanding, economic operators acting with surgical disinterest in the very communities that created the value they now seek to extract. You could argue, I do not know the details and I most certainly don’t, but I can still reflect on what is visible in media.
And yet, all may not be lost. There remains an opportunity albeit shrinking to preserve what remains, reorient toward long-term value creation, and ensure that the dreams TRG made real for thousands are not extinguished.
To the shareholders, employees, alumni, and believers my heart is with you. We built something rare. Let’s hope it’s not the last chapter, but merely the end of a miswritten one. I have no horse in the race just some reflections based on the news in popular media and some time to reflect.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this post are my own, based on publicly available information and personal professional experiences. This commentary is not intended to defame, accuse, or harm any individual or entity, but rather to reflect on broader organizational outcomes and their socioeconomic impact. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research and form independent conclusions. This post does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice.