High-five, Five Rivers!

As the year 2010 draws to a close, Pakistan has received some positive coverage internationally, bringing it to the positive spotlight.
Of the latest felicitous events, one was Aamir Khan, the Pakistan born boxer who beat his Argentinean rival to become the World Boxing Association champion. Then were the energetic 19 girls from Karachi who managed to squeeze themselves to a world record.And now, a Pakistan-based IT firm, Five Rivers, bagged the prize for designing the best selling paid-for application for the Blackberry. The product, a state of the art application for photo editing, is quite user-friendly, and that is the main reason for its remarkable success.
With the intellectual property rights of the product with the local company, the revenue generated will bring benefits home. And the returns on the product are quite mouth-watering.
Sources in the company said, "It is not a capital-intensive business model, but is largely knowledge and skill based. Therefore, the returns on a successful product can be quite high."
The growth of such promising ventures is, indeed, a light in the tunnel for Pakistan. In July-Oct FY11, exports of computer software and software consultancy services was only 0.7 percent of the total exports of the country, indicating that the sector holds considerable potential for further growth. Software exports made up 20 percent of Indias export revenues in 2003-04.
Quite rightfully, the export of information technology in the country is tax-exempted, in order to promote the industry further. Representatives of Five Rivers indicated that currently, the US is the largest importer of IT services, a country boasting one of the highest rates of internet penetration in the world.
Entertainingly, Pakistan may also stand at a competitive advantage in terms of IT services versus its neighbour and contentious rival - India. While the latter had enjoyed a phenomenal IT boom, with the sector making up as much as 7 percent of the GDP in 2008, lately, the IT industry in India has been brought under the radar.
Besides the removal of tax advantages for the IT sector in 2008, India also faces a threat from the shortage of suitable labour for the industry. An article in The Economist claimed that while Indian engineering schools award around 200,000 diplomas each year, and produce around 250,000 graduates, only half are employable by the IT industry.
In addition, the rising salaries of Indian IT workers are also removing the cost-competitiveness factor for India. This can help Pakistan emerge as an alternate destination for IT solutions for international clients.
However, where Pakistani firms provide outstanding services to international clients, local usage of IT still leaves a lot to be desired; only 11 out of every 100 people use internet in Pakistan, as opposed to 45 in India.
Why the low local usage? "Its the mindset of the people of the country who are still reluctant to use IT solutions in their organisations. Also, pirated copies of software products provide less costly solutions to some basic IT needs," said a representative of Five Rivers.
Despite that, sure and steady steps from Pakistani IT companies can help the sector go a long way. Whats next IT?