This may sound a bit clichéd, but the turnout at the conference held by MIT Entrepreneurship Forum in Islamabad this Sunday morning really bore testament to what Abid Butt--CEO of E2E Supply Chain Management (Pvt) Ltd and the winner of last years Pakistan100 Awards--sums up: Pakistan is like a candy story for any budding entrepreneur.
Pakistan100 is a list of top companies that meet the international standard of AllWorld--a platform that aims to find and give visibility to all the growth entrepreneurs of the emerging world by 2015-for competitive fast growth companies, and 12 "start-ups to watch".
Amongst the many reasons highlighted to showcase the candyness of Pakistan at the conference, a few stood out. These include a bulging demographic dividend that boasts an enviably low dependency ratio; a rising middle class with increasing desire to spend and increasing levels of urbanisation even in areas still officially classified as rural.
These, against the backdrop of the rise in telecom and internet outreach as well as media penetration that has led to a heightened state of awareness in socioeconomic classes beyond the formally-educated ones, put Pakistan at the centre stage of economies with great potential to rise.
The participants of the event--held with the support by the USAID--agreed that from among the many sectors offering lucrative opportunities to innovators and entrepreneurs, four stand out.
The first of these is the agriculture and food sector with immense business potential-ranging from corporate and efficient farming to supporting technologies such as those offering weather or price updates to farmers. The second area revolves around technologies that offer clean energy, including energy efficient products. Then there is the education sector, and lastly the innovation and new business ventures in the field of trade infrastructure and services--ranging from logistics, supply chain, etc.
Lucrative as they may all sound, a few participants lamented the countless obstacles that lie in the way of entrepreneurial success-the least of which revolve around an inefficient government, terrorism and law and order issues, and shortage of resources in the short-medium term.
Yet, while the existence of these troubles cannot be denied, perhaps the best advice in this context was given by one of the conferences keynote speakers Kenneth Morse. Kenneth, who is the founding MD of MIT Entrepreneurship Forum, said that innovators and entrepreneurs in economies like Pakistan must have three traits to become successful: they should be habitual hard workers; they possess a resolve for patience; and they don complain.
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