Pakistani ‘Apprentice’ star fired early

LONDON: Young Pakistani businessman Zeeshaan Shah has been fired by Lord Alan Sugar from the hit BBC show ‘The Apprentice’ but the Pakistani contestant says he is proud to portray Pakistan in a positive way before millions of audience.
Now based in London, the Karachi-educated property entrepreneur was fired from the show after successfully completing 5 tasks. He led a team to Dubai to source items for a leading hotel at bargain prices but failed which ultimately led to his being fired from the show. Host of the show and billionaire tycoon Lord Sugar in a rare occasion expressed his appreciation of Zeeshaan’s success in business.
Lord Sugar said he admired what Zeeshaan had achieved in business at a young age. Zeeshaan Shah’s family hails from Jhang in Punjab but he grew up in Karachi.He told The News: “One of the key reasons for my participation in the show was to show the wider international community that Pakistani’s are progressive people and are making a significant contribution to business worldwide.
I wanted to show that we have ideas, we are doing good to ourselves and to others. We are in sports, commerce, arts and in every filed. We are not a monolith type that we are often portrayed to be. I also ensured that I am known as a Pakistani because I take pride in my country and being Pakistani for me is a matter of pride. We are a confident nation.”
Zeeshaan believes commerce and economic prosperity are key to tackling extremism in Pakistan and to promote this he has launched the Pakistan Trade and Investment Corporation to encourage international investors and governments to explore investment opportunities in Pakistan.
He told The News: “With the 5th largest population in the world and a rapidly growing middle-class Pakistan presents an opportunity parallel to any other major developing nation in the world.
Unfortunately due to negative PR Pakistan’s Foreign Direct Investment is lagging with investors choosing alternative emerging markets such as India, whereas Pakistan has been rated No.1 in the South-East Asian region for ease of doing business.”
He said that the Pakistan Trade and Investment Corporation will educate international investors on the potential Pakistan holds and provide consultancy services to foreign investors and governments looking to work in Pakistan.
“My most memorable moment on the show was negotiating and bargaining in Dubai, although we lost the task as we didn’t secure enough products, on the products we did
purchase I secured disco-unts of up to 70% from retail price.
This was acknowledged by Lord Sugar in the boardroom and was a great testimony to underlying business acumen and sales/negotiation skills.”Zeeshan feels that he was fired too early in the programme despite being more successful in business than the others.
“It is clear that I was one of the most successful candidates on this series of The Apprentice, which can be seen not only from my capabilities but my track record in comparison to the other candidates.
This was an opportunity to go into business with Lord Sugar, going from a job into business with one of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs and indeed it would have been for me as well but it was slightly different as I have an established business and already do commerce on an international level with business leaders.
Overall I believe and many other viewers of the show that I went way ahead of my time and I should have been amongst the finalists of this year. On that note there are over 100,000 people who apply to be a part of the process every year of which only 16 finalists are selected and even getting to this stage is a huge honour.”