Startup Guide Issue 7

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Editor Shehab Farrukh Niazi Finance Ahad Wazir Art Directors Aleeza Javed Mahnoor Haroon Niazi Operations & Outreach Abbas Khan

EDITOR’S NOTE The Pakistani entrepreneurial ecosystem is on the brink of growth – at the core of this are efforts towards resolving thi macroeconomic issues and establishing market fundamentals, the lack of which has been hold back entrepreneurial and business growth. We talk to Syed Ahmad, CEO of DPL and Chairman of P@SHA who is also on the Prime Minister’s Task Force for IT & Telecom. We discuss the hurdles fo that businesses and startups face and what policy level considerations are underway to overcome some of these hurdles.

Ayesha Khan, CEO of Acumen talks about social entrepreneurship and the need for looking at the concept of social change differently. Tech-enabled solutions are the key to solving lifestyle problems with technology. Najam ul Assar, the co-founder of rearts tells us about the platform he has put together to promote arts through technology. Huma Ejaz delivers some expert te advice for startups about how to manage their cash flows effectively. We explore how village incubators are adding to the potential of rural Pakistan.

We give you a look into the launch of the Facebook Innovation Lab, the 3 rd Women Entrepreneurship Conference and the Ent International Women’s Day Women Techmakers Conference by GDG Islamabad.

Till next issue – Happy Reading!

SHEHAB FARRUKH NIAZI

CONTENTS INSIGHT

CREATIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

08

News and Events

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05 08 12 14 16

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EDITOR’S NOTE GDG ISLAMABAD WOMEN TECHMAKERS CONFERENCE

FACEBOOK INNOVATION LAB PAKISTAN

WECON 2019 WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP CONFERENCE

UPCOMING EVENTS MARK YOUR CALENDERS

18 22 26 30 32

AYESHA KHAN ON SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

EXPERT ADVICE

ON CASH FLOW MANAGEMENT FOR STARTUPS

COVER STORY

SYED AHMAD ON THE MACROECONOMICS FOR FOSTERING ENTREPRENEURSHIP

INSIGHT RURAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

NAJAM UL ASSAR ON PROMOTING ARTS THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

FEATURING “Unfortunately, we’ve done a lot of drumming for startups, but we have not tried to fix the macro-economic issues and market fundamentals to give them a more enabling environment” On the Macroeconomics for Fostering Entrepreneurship

Cover Story

“Social media has already revolutionized how we look at talented individuals and how viral things could go in a matter of minutes” On Promoting Arts through Technology

Najam ul Assar

“Markets are fairly brutal – unless you are tapping into real demand, you will not be able to survive” On Social Entrepreneurship

Ayesha Khan “Women Techmakers is one of the events in which we highlight the success stories of women who are really doing an amazing job and empowering women by creating a change in society in challenging the status quo” Women Techmakers Conference

GDG Islamabad

International Women’s Day Women Techmakers Conference

by GDG Islamabad

Google Developers Group (GDG) Islamabad organized the International Women’s Day Women Techmakers (IWD WTM) conference to celebrate International Women’s Day and to highlight the expertise of women in technology. The event was held at the Telenor Pakistan 345 Campus and was attended by a large number of executives, entrepreneurs and students. The event was themed #BalanceForBetter with the belief that gender equality is the key to a truly diverse, inclusive future with equal opportunities for all.

Through Women Techmakers, Google is helping and encouraging women of Pakistan and the world to enhance their participation pa in the technology industry. This year’s conference highlighted the inspiring stories of the growing female community of Pakistani designers, developers, and technology entrepreneurs. It was a one-day event revolving around tech talks, panel discussion, and for the first time in Pakistan #IamRemarkable workshop was conducted which is a Google initiative empowering women and underrepresented groups to celebrate their achievements in the workplace and beyond.

Sharing his thoughts on the occasion, Muhammad Bin Masood, Manager of GDG Islamabad said, “We have built this Islam community with a vision to empower developers, designers, marketers, entrepreneurs, technologists and change makers from the twin cities to really put a dent into the technical technological ecosystem. Women Techmakers is one of the events in which we highlight the success stories of women who are really doing an amazing job and empowering women by creating a change in society in challenging the status quo. Today I’m proud to announce that IWD Womentechmakers 2019 was a major success with participation from all walks and an amalgam of students as well as professionals who interacted and I know that a ton of opportunities and collaborations will come out of this event and every individual would go back inspired and motivated and make a change in future”

During his keynote, Sardar Abubakr, Chief Digital & Strategy Officer, Telenor Pakistan, highlighted the importance of women’s participation in the tech world, Abubakr said, “We now live in a world where technology at our fingertips, if used wisely, has the power to change lives for the better. Events like Women li Techmakers thus become instrumental in making our female population even more aware about the benefits technology can bring them and those around them. The share of women’s tech participation in Pakistan presently stands at 14% and such su opportunities should encourage girls to acquire tech-based education and skills, and leverage them for their betterment and empowering society.”

Saif Arshad, Chief Data Office, S&P Global also took the stage and briefed the audience about the importance of emerging technologies on market intelligence and about S&P Global’s current initiative. He said “S&P Global’s latest initiative is ChangePays, which aims to use the data that firms fi collected to work towards inclusion of women in the workforce. We believe that an investment in women is an investment in us all”.

The event proceeded with the first session of the day, the lightning talks, revolving around the remarkable journeys of Asna Javed, Lead Developer IBM Pakistan, Azka Ather, Team Lead – AUJ Formula Student, and Umair

Khurshid, 4o1 Bakers - a passionate baker. Their stories taught us that the journey is valuable, but believing in your talents, your abilities, and your self-worth is what actually empower you. emp This was followed by a thought-provoking panel discussion with an amazing lineup of panelists, which included Sana Khan, Director Digital Applications and Software Development, Telenor Pakistan, Humna

Raza, Influencer & Blogger, Anum Akram, Associate Director, S&P Global, and Sadia Khurram, Chief Customer Experience Officer, Jazz. The panel was moderated by Makkiya Jawed, from Sehat Kahani.

The discussion focused on ‘women empowerment’ and how the digital age can help us achieve the balance required for both men and requi women.

After the panel discussion, all the participants mingled

and had an opportunity to meet like-minded peers at the Networking Brunch. After this, GDG Islamabad announced the Women Techmaker Ambassadors Islamabad - Aiman and Hufsa.

Following this was the most awaited session of the day, the #IamRemarkable workshop conducted by Huma Mobin from BBDO Pakistan. This interactive workshop included an amusing activity where am students and professionals alike got the opportunity to interact and engage with each other. The workshop brought forward the exceptional, inspirational stories of o the boss ladies out there who are juggling their families and career impeccably.

At the end of this daylong session, Madiha Parvez, Manager Corporate Innovation, Telenor Pakistan thanked all the participants and congratulated the GDG Islamabad team for making the event a tremendous success with one of the largest turn out of women.

The day concluded with an engaging musical session by Abuzar Mir and Sarim Bukhari.

Pakistan gets its ver y first Facebook Innovation Lab in Lahore at LUMS. “The Innovation Lab will focus on providing infrastructure access to developers, entrepreneurs and community groups, enabling them to network, train and grow their exper tise,� a press release for the event stated.

The lab will host future initiatives, including housing community events,

workshops and training for star tups. It also welcomes star tups and entrepreneurs based in Pakistan who would like li to deep dive into the emerging technolog y space. The initiative will also help developers build products and applications using emerging technolog y like Vir tual Reality (VR).

T he lab is located in the National

The third Women Entrepreneurship Conference took place at Islamabad Marriott Hotel which was attended by some of the most influential and iconic entrepreneurs of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

WECON has been taking place annually since last 3 years however an during its third edition WECON Portal and WECON Tribe were launched in a ceremony during the conference. WECON Tribe is an initiative designed to help female entrepreneurs in the early stages of their business journey through local communities. WE Portal is designed to create a place for

women to market their products to corporates and organisations.

The Conference was themed around Allama Iqbal’s idea of Khudi: Self belief and selfdetermination. The concept of Khudi was beautifully explained by Maria Qadri (Head of Advancement NUST) in her opening talk about sufism and self-determination. self-dete Maria shared her journey of self-discovery and left the audience spellbound with the energy and determination behind her story.

Followed by Maria Qadri’s talk was

the Panel Discussion. Panellists for this Panel Discussion were Shahnaz Kapadia Rahat (CEO Mera Maan), Humayun Mazhar (Founder\ CEO Cres Ventures), Sharmeen Ali (Host\ Journalist\ Writer) and Anashka Afzaal (CEO Solutions Brigade).

Bri The discussion held was based around the Power Of Khudi and all panelists shared their journey and struggles that they faced on this journey of self-discovery.

In this conference some iconic female entrepreneurs were also highlighted under the category

of Wonder Women. Romella Hameed was one of the Wonder Women; wheelchair bound ever since the 2005 earthquake but she never lost belief in herself when those around her did.

Romella shared her struggles living with the disability but also li encouraged people to not let their disability get in the way of achieving their dreams. Romella Hameed is now Founder and CEO of SMT (Self-management Training) an online platform dedicated to training t people with disabilities so they can better live their lives.

Next was a very interesting Fireside chat with Nicole Waheed (Founder Loafology bakery and cafe) which was moderated by Shumaisa Rehman (anchor PTV News).

Next was a talk by Dr Muhammad Khalid Masud (former chairman council of Islamic Ideology, ad-hoc judge, Shariat Appellate bench, Supreme Court of Pakistan) on Islamic Perspective on Women Entrepreneurship. In his talk he addressed add many

everyday questions asked about women entrepreneurship such as should women be allowed to work? Should they be allowed to leave home? Etc. Huma Mustafa Musta Beg (Co-founder and Co-Director of Serendip Productions and Founder of Ministry of Change) gave a talk on the topic “Search and You Shall Find”, which was again a very enlightening talk on the power of self-belief and self-discovery.

Aneeqa Ali (Founder of Mad Hatters) also participated in the conference as a Wonder Woman.

Usama Javed Mirza (co-founder and executive director) and Aaminah TirmizI Faheem Azam filled the hall with energy and laughter with a very interesting talk on the topic “Hello from the other side”’ presenting male point of view on women entrepreneurship. While keeping it light and humorous, Faheem managed man to address some of the major mindsets that prevail in our society about women entrepreneurs. This talk was followed by Networking Lunch where participants had the opportunity to expand their networks. network Shannon Grewer ( CEO\ Co-Founder Victoria Road) addressed the delegates after

lunch break and her topic was “Building Bridges; the global marketplace”. Saima Sayyed (Medical Trainer\ Visiting Faculty) talked about her recent project“ Going Global with Robotics) under the Out of School Children’s School.

Child In the end a celebration was held; WECON Annual Awards in which female entrepreneurs were honored for their efforts in different fields of business. These awards were divided into four categories. The Most Promising Female-Led Startup Sta award went to Ayesha Ahmad, co-founder and CEO of Pak-agri market, a tech startup that has established an online marketplace to address market access problems in the current supply chain faced by small farmers. Founder of SWITCH Danielle Sharaf grabbed the female tech entrepreneur of the year award for bringing health solutions to adolescent girls, bridging the knowledge gap and empowering women across all socioeconomic strata st through cellular technology, while the social entrepreneur of the year award went to founder and CEO of TrashIT, Anusha Fatima for working on Organic Waste disposal by making neutriantrich composed and empowering citizens to adopt a sustainable lifestyle. Tasleem Bibi got the Women of o Influence Award for directly impacting the lives of more than 425 women and contributing to the livelihood of 1000s more; encouraging them to start their businesses.

Sayyed Ahmad Masud, CEO of Change Mechanics Pvt Ltd and Managing Director of Channel 7 gave his closing remarks in the end which marked the closing of WECON’19 Conference.

Startup Weekend is an immersion event –a unique experience where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can discover if their startup ideas are workable. Through Startup Weekend, entrepreneurs get a platform to share their ideas, form diverse teams and launch their startups over the course of a weekend.

Date: 26th - 28th April 2019 Venue: The Nest I/O

Momentum is a global startup community designed to educate, inspire and connect Pakistani entrepreneurs who work on innovative and disruptive technologies to create the knowledge economy to drive Pakistan's growth over the coming decade.

Mark your calendars! Momentum Tech '19 comes to Karachi on 30th April - 1st May at Pearl Continental Hotel.

First Technology exhibition in Pakistan.

Witness the biggest #DigitalTransformation on industrial scale this April at #Digitalpakistanexpo !!

It's not just an event, it's a tech-syndicate.

Ensure your presence.

You’ve had tremendous experience in working with social entrepreneurs and at the same time you have a strong business background. How would you define social entrepreneurship?

The term social entrepreneur has been applied rather widely across the spectrum of for profit, non profit and hybrid business models.

However, at its core, a social entrepreneur is working towards creating positive social impact. This may come from hitting specific sectors, like health, education, energy and affordable housing. Or it may be focused on more macro variables like the environment, gender parity or financial inclusion.

Social entrepreneurship is a greatly misunderstood phenomenon. What do you think we can do to overcome this hurdle?

I don’t think it is possible to have a one size fits all categorization of social entrepreneurship. By definition, this is a rather loose term that can encompass a lot and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Instead of getting caught up in the semantics of whether a business leveraging grants/donations to solve a social problem (e.g.

TCF) is a social enterprise or whether that term is limited to those businesses that earn revenues directly from end users (e.g. Grameen bank), we need to think about the primary focus of a business. A business that places an equal, if not greater importance on social impact (in terms of social or environmental indicators) instead of a singular push on financial indicators is a social enterprise. The more activity we see in this space, the more we will all start intuitively understanding what it really means.

In your opinion, what is impact and how important is it to look at the business side while keeping impact in mind?

Financial sustainability is critical for any business to survive. As such, there really is no question of being fuzzy headed about the “business side” of things. If you are not able to manage your cash flows, you will not survive, no matter how worthy your goals and how lofty your aspirations for social change may be.

Similarly, when we talk about impact, we have to be very careful to define precisely what we mean by that. Are we referring to depth of impact?

Breadth of impact? And impact on whom?

“Markets are fairly brutal – unless you are tapping into real demand, you will not be able to survive”

What comes first – the business side or impact for social enterprises? Or can they go hand in hand?

All social entrepreneurs focus on social impact.

Unfortunately, without a steady focus on the financial/business side, they will not be able to scale. In other words, being solid on the “business side” is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a successful social enterprise. You have do both.

For social entrepreneurs, funding is a huge issue. What kind of a roadmap do you think they should follow to resolve this issue?

Funding is a huge issue for all entrepreneurs, not just social entrepreneurs. The problem sometimes is that social entrepreneurs, simply because they are trying to do something good for society, expect that things will be easier.

They will not. Markets are fairly brutal. Unless you are tapping into real demand, you will not be able to survive. So, maintain laser focus on your financials, stay close to your market and document everything. The funding will follow.

What do you see as the future of social entrepreneurship in Pakistan?

There are so many fundamental problems that need to be solved in Pakistan – healthcare, education, water, housing, access to finance – there are gaps in every direction. And we are a large, growing country desperate for solutions, which means that there are tremendous opportunities for social entrepreneurs to create value. As such, I am not only confident that the sector will grow but that the growth of our nation depends on this being this happening.

Tell us about yourself and your background.

Since I was studying at a local uniuni versity, I had it in my mind that I wanted to do a business of my own.

At that time, startup wasn’t a word and there wasn’t a lot of clarity on what a software house does – I graduated in 2002. While I knew that I wanted to do this, there was no guidance. The Internet was very expensive; no networking events or blogs. I think that helped me because now when there’s too much to know and too many people to tell you, you don’t get to learn. We might have taken missteps, but they were a great source of learning.

During my fifth sixth semester, I got business cards printed. I was known to be a good programmer; there was no shortage of people who could do various tasks for me. Wherever there was an opportunity, I would take those people along. I got job offers very early in the student stage and explored a lot of opportunities. More than studies, I focused more on the skill development – writing, presentations, business development etc.

By the time I had to do my final year project, I had actually landed a com mercial project that I used in my final year project; it was on tele-medicine. That one final year project took us places. At that time, we got a P@SHA Award, which was huge for us. We realized that from the technology point of view, it was a great product. There were donor opportunities available, but we didn’t want to take that route. We learned the hard way that there was no market for the product.

When the dot com bubble crashed, we did a local project, but we had to face a lot of problems locally in getting projects. So, we decided to focus on the US and European markets. Along the way, we have worked for a lot of big clients, including Fortune 500 companies. As an entrepreneur, I realized that the industry association was responsible for solving our problems as

businesses and there wasn’t enough conversation happening around it. I started to get involved in 2007 – started talking about policy level changes, technology zones etc. – all the things that are being done now. With P@SHA and the Prime Minister’s IT and Telecom Taskforce, we’re working on policy interventions that would improve the overall market conditions.

We have lagged behind when it comes to capitalizing on IT. What do you believe the reasons are?

It is due to this that many accidents also happened, like the call center industry in 2006, which went down when the only fiber optic channel got cut off. When you don’t have people at the top who understand these things, it becomes very difficult for the IT industry to prosper.

These things happened because of which we lost 15-20 years in which Pakistan could have prospered in this sector. When they come into that market with the aim to generate revenue, they realize that it’s not easy to work in Pakistan. Until they stay in incubators, they do fine, but when they go out into the real world and are faced with the policies and regulations and opportunities, they face problems.

These are the same problems that are not letting businesses grow. Unfortunately, we’ve done a lot of drumming for startups, but we have not tried to fix the macro-economic issues and market fundamentals to give them a more enabling environment, perhaps because those are bigger problems. We have not solved the bigger problems that make these startups fade. These problems are very big – startup is mostly going to be about innovation – you disrupt the market with something new.

Internationally, there is greater understanding of these dynamics and a disruptive innovation is not killed. Over here, regulators don’t allow innovation and discourage it.

There are many reasons; some of them were out of our control. The biggest reason has been the War on Terror after 9/11. In terms of the infrastructure, our ranking is not that bad. However, if we look at it from the perspective of political instability, that is the reason for big IT contracts not coming to Pakistan. We’re in a knowledge economy where trade happens with the movement of people, not movement of goods. This issue related to the free movement of people has not been resolved and no one has worked on it. For big IT contracts, one needs to meet potential clients face to face. Law and order, country’s perception and political instability are some of the other big reasons. I think some of those things have improved.

Another big issue has been the lack of good leadership for the IT sector. People who look after the trade and business sectors understand the industrial side of things and not IT; they don’t understand the knowledge economy. You would find IT savvy bureaucrats very rarely. This discourages people from doing and growing IT businesses, which is a major problem.

If it’s a big company making the innovation, it can mostly pay itself out of the problem. This doesn’t apply to small startups that have just started out.

All over the world, the government is the biggest enabler and buyer of startups’ solutions. No one can give an idea the level of scale that government can. Here, government discourages startups and it starts doing the same thing itself. There are infrastructural issues. If the government promotes digital payments, people would instantly adopt. These are a few examples that at the policy and regulatory level and infrastructure level – the consumer awareness and trust. All these are things that are part of the basic platforms that a government needs to provide upon which a startup can build its systems and offer the solution.

An example is that Jeff Bezos started Amazon in America where the road network was already there, FedEx was already there, and all the addresses were already organized. All he needed to do was connect the dots. When he went to India, he had to work on the road infrastructure, last mile delivery solutions, cash on delivery – he had to spend 6 billion dollars right off the start just to get things going to bring e-commerce to that level where it would start working. Pakistan is significantly behind India, so a huge investment is required to resolve the e-commerce issue – something that our startups are unable to deal with.

Even if a startup reaches the Series A level, there are incorporation and structural challenges due to which startups are encouraged to incorporate abroad and apply from there mainly because of the country’s perception. Any startup that gets investment from abroad is asked to go abroad and shift teams there. So, when they grow, it happens abroad. It is unfortunate that our entrepreneurs are not succeeding and they don’t even know the reason.

Another example is Knowledge Platform, which has made an incredible edtech product, for which they were facing problems in scaling – within months of going to China, they’ve reached 100x in terms of customers – again it’s about the fundamentals. It’s a chicken and egg situation – It is difficult for people who work on technology to generate revenue.

These are things that are not being talked about. We don’t see what led to success and what led to failure, especially failure. No one wants to look at failure – from the government and otherwise. Talking about failure creates a lot of hostility here, but it’s important to talk about the failures because until we do, we won’t know all the problems. If we want to come up with solutions, we need to be on the same page about what the problems are.

In your opinion, what are the attributes that would be required to shape the future?

“Unfortunately, we’ve done a lot of drumming for startups, but we have not tried to fix the macro-economic issues and market fundamentals to give them a more mo enabling environment”

What needs to be done is to fix the fundamentals – the taskforce is working on that. The Finance Minister is also very keen to solve the real problems instead of promoting things short term.

They’re committed to solving the bigger problems. The government agrees that the private sector needs to be strengthened because it is not the government’s job to do business; promoting ‘made in Pakistan’ – if we talk about artificial intelligence, it is important for it to be made in Pakistan because buying it from abroad doesn’t serve the purpose. Regulations are being designed and policy interventions are being done – whether it’s flexible financing instruments or founders equity, those things will start showing soon. They’re also focusing on fintech to resolve digital payment issue. With a technology zone, we’ll at least get a specialized environment to address some problems because startups would have a more enabling environment due to specialized regulations. The issues that our industry faces cannot be resolved in days, it will take months and years – within 2019, I think there would be fundamental decisions that would benefit the startup ecosystem, which is on the verge of launch the verge of launch and we will see instant growth during the time to come.

Where did the idea for rearts come about?

I worked in the performing arts sector for national and multinational organizations, my experience as an employee was great but when I would talk to the artists, they would share the stories of struggle to achieve their goals and ambitions.

This one evening, I was at Azeem Hamid’s residence (Co-founder of rearts) and we listed down majority of the challenges one could face to establish themselves as an artist in our country. We were exhausted, tired and disappointed by the ecosystem, but motivated to make a change. That night, on 18th October 2017, we founded rearts, which is taken out of two words re (reclaim/reimagine/reorganize) and arts. Our philosophy was to build a product, which will encompass the experiences of the artists, designed by the artists and for the artists with a technology platform as the core heart of it. Later on Ahmad Butt, a talented upcoming musician, joined our core team as a partner, which helped us to drive in the right path by learning from his personal experiences.

We had always believe rearts to be a movement of like minded individuals who want to address the core issues with-in arts ecosystem of Pakistan and inspire it by a mix of Technology.

What kind of response/feedback have you received from the artists so far?

We have been extremely careful in the way we have laid the foundations of rearts, which are on trust, transparency, diversity and ownership. In a short span, we have been able to win the trust of many established and upcoming bands, artists and performers. For us, the driving force has always been to team up with artists and not treat them as a third party. We listen closely to the problems faced by artists and provide curated solutions to meet their needs. Hence the response we have received is tremendous and sometimes very overwhelming (in a good way). ve Artists understand they can always count on us, resulting in an evergrowing relataionship. We maintain a log of all the tasks with minute detailing, which result in relationship growth and mutual alliance.

There are not that many tech-enabled solutions in this area working in Pakistan. What motivated you to go into this domain?

You would be surprised to read that to there is no research about the size and statistics of Creative Industries economy of Pakistan. We are ignoring the potential of how big this industry is and how it can grow. Knowing all the challenges, we knew that in order to engage majority of the people, we need to bet on technology as the driving force.

Technology around the world has revolutionized many sectors, and if Pakistan’s creative economy has to stand out, we have to look up to technology. Apart from this, I already had a great connection to the technology sector of Pakistan. In my university days, I was volunteering with TechJuice and the more I absorbed myself in technology, the more growth opportunities I saw.

In our team, most of the team members have deep knowledge of technology and it was a given that we want to reimagine the industry and we can’t do it the old school way.

Hence the motivation made us apply to the leading Tech incubator of Pakistan, Plan9!

We were rated as one of the most promising startup and after graduation we are located at Daftarkhwan Gulberg. We have a strong connection to arts, technology and everything in between.

“You would be surprised to read that to there is no research about the size and statistics of Creative Industries economy of Pakistan”

In your view, what is the future of talent management in Pakistan?

Social media has already revolutionized how we look at talented individuals and how viral things could go in a matter of minutes. There needs to be a systematic process in which talent is not lost.

Usually what we see is that artists get viral. For example Arif painter who recently broke the social media after his soulful signing video went viral but what’s the follow-up of it? Within a few months, audiences forgot about it and moved on. Similarly, there are many such cases where raw talent is exposed via social media, but there is no proper mechanism, which can help talent grow.

We envision a future where talent is not wasted as a one-off opportunity or exploited at the hands of talent managers. rearts believes that we have to provide systematic opportunities to talented individuals, keep track of their growth through technology tools such as talent exposure through records distribution (Spotify, Apple Music etc), database to connect stakeholders and clients and an App for effective management.

Where do you see your company in three years?

In a short sho period, we have worked with leading stakeholders and our talent has performed at leading festivals in the country and Internationally. We recently entered record distribution through rearts records, which enables talent to distribute their music on International channels. The content released through channel us has reached and is being purchased in Europe, USA and other International markets.

Currently we serve 20 bands, 80 artists in the Pakistani ecosystem. In the next 3 years: • We want to release our mobile application for both Android and iOs platforms which will serve as a gateway for effective talent representation and management. • We would like to tap into more countries in South Asia, we are already discussing with possible partnerships in Sri Lanka. • Lastly, we want to grow the talent pool, but not at the expense of mismanagement. For us numbers are important but more important is to represent talent which we can effectively manage.

rearts has never been about how many numbers we have or artists we represent, it has been about making meaningful change in the ecosystem. We believe that in the years to come we want to transform the narrative around creative markets by exploring possibilities and opportunities both locally and Internationally.

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