Investing in Dreams
As my car enters the posh surroundings of the Arfa Software Technology Park, I notice a plainly clad girl getting off a rickshaw and briskly walking towards the entrance. The spring in her step belies the haste with which she wants to reach her destination. Maybe she is late for a meeting; maybe she doesn’t want to be seen getting off a rickshaw in these posh settings. As we enter the lift together, I instantly recognize her. Sidra is one of the young entrepreneurs in the startup incubator setup by the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB), called Plan9. Sidra, along with her co-founder, Waqas, founded an Internet e-commerce service last year and started selling handmade leather shoes to the world from a warehouse in Okara. Hometown now employs 11 people and uses technology to scale a traditional handicraft business in Pakistan. Two months ago, they closed a deal with Fab.com (world’s top ecommerce store), with customers in European and US markets. Sidra’s company, Hometown, is one of the 30+ IT startups housed in Plan9. Each startup in Plan9 is working on an innovative IT product ranging from fun mobile games to hardware gadgets. However, there is one thing all these entrepreneurs have in common: ambition. No one joins Plan9 to start a “respectable” company with a few thousand dollars in monthly revenue. Instead, every entrepreneur in Plan9 is pushed to work towards a dream of launching the next Google or Facebook from Pakistan. Government of Punjab, through Plan9, is investing in these dreams. Plan9 provides free, furnished office space in the Arfa Technology Park, laptops, stipends, administrative and legal help, training, funding for travel and access to world-class mentors and investors. The program is structured such that entrepreneurs can walk in with an idea and walk out with a company. Even though Plan9 is the first organized effort by the government in Pakistan to setup an incubator, such facilities are not uncommon in other countries. Seoul has over 300 incubators in one city; many successful companies in US have come out from famous incubators like the Y-Combinator and techstars; countries like Estonia (with the highest number of startups per head in Europe) have many successful incubators that have helped it leapfrog other countries in high-tech entrepreneurship. Another example is Israel, a country, with its successful startup ecosystem, which has produced more NASDAQ listed companies than all of Europe combined! Even one startup like Skype, founded by two young entrepreneurs in Sweden and sold for $8.5 Billion, could be a game changer for Pakistan’s economy. Our entrepreneurs have not disappointed us. Many started turning profits and attracting investments within our six-month incubation cycle. Others learnt the art of constructive failure and made something out of absolute nothing. PeerCloud, company with a struggling product plugged away to pair up with a VC from Khosla Ventures (one of the top Venture Capital firms in the Silicon Valley) who they met through Plan9. Another startup Eyedeus Labs was recently featured by TechCrunch and Gizmodo. Eyedeus Labs is also among the eight lucky startups from around the world selected by Google for Entrepreneurs to attend this summer's Blackbox Connect. At the same time, Plan9 has put together an Angel Investor Club, where successful businessmen in Pakistan get together every few weeks to evaluate Plan9 companies for possible investment. Already grown to a size of over 15 members, this group has also provided us an opportunity to develop a legal and corporate framework for investments in technology companies. In the absence of organized venture capital in Pakistan, we have started looking at governmentsponsored models like SBIC (Small Business Investment Company) in US and Yozma program in Israel to kickstart a VC industry in Pakistan. We believe that Hightech entrepreneurship can be one of the key enablers of our economy. If we can provide the right ecosystem, Pakistan, with a population of 200 times that of Estonia, can be a hub of startups. Statistically, it’s just a matter of time before Pakistan produces a Google or a Skype. And we, at Plan9, will not settle for anything less.
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