Pakistan’s resilience, opportunities impresses HubSpot executive

KARACHI: There’s a lot of negative talk about Pakistan but investors and entrepreneurs have a lot of opportunities here to build upon them.

These were the views of Sam Mallikarjunan, Executive Strategist HubSpot, who was in Karachi to attend a two-day 021Disrupt conference organized by Nest I/O.

Talking with The News about his experience, Mallikarjunan said ‘Pakistan nation’s resilience and ability to take risk is what you don’t find in many Western countries’.

When asked about the most amazing thing about Pakistani entrepreneurs, the US expert, who was the keynote speaker at the moot, said ‘high level of energy and optimism’ is I didn’t see anywhere else.

In his inaugural note, US Consul General, Grace Shelton assured the audience of her country’s support to help boost investment.

“Facebook, Google and other leading teach companies were the ideas executed by those who have belief in themselves,” she said.

‘Purpose’

During a session Frederic Sicre, Managing Director of The Abraaj Group, advised the companies to must have purpose if they want to succeed as those missing this important element don’t go longer.

Stressing on the importance of retaining talent, he said the companies that fail to do so would lose consumer.

Digital transformation of Punjab

Chairman Punjab IT Board, Dr Umar Saif shared his thoughts on working with the government and the hurdles he faced.

Recalling his first meeting with the Chief Minster Shehbaz Sharif, he said my first response to his offer for working with the provincial government was ‘god forbid’ which socked everyone present.

Dr Umar Saif

“You know it’s very difficult to work with the bureaucracy and initially my experience was not different either.”

The government can help entrepreneurs in a lot of ways as there are enough funds at its disposable , he said adding that through legislation “we can create an enabling environment”.

‘AI: The Revolution has begun’

Google’s Country Lead for Pakistan, Khurram Jamali shed light on the transformation the tech giant achieved through artificial intelligence.

“We were able to cut down our cost of cooling down the data centres by 40 per cent when we implemented the machine learning.“

He suggested the innovators and entrepreneurs to take benefit of Google’s advancement in the field.

Khurram Jamali

Pictures and video: Nasir Jamal