Usman Asif hit his 7.2 million dollar goal, then kept building

The 10-Year Vision at 21

Muzamil opens by noting that Pakistan needs to move from a dollar-outflow economy (imports and consumption) to a dollar-inflow economy (exports and production). Services are the low-hanging fruit, he argues, because they require only people and skill. Usman Asif then walks through where his drive came from.

He was born in Rahim Yar Khan, the last city of Punjab, and raised there. His father died early in his childhood. “I do not remember any one-on-one conversation with him,” Usman says. His mother, a government servant, earned just $9,000 when he was young. In a landlord culture, landlessness is invisibility. “If you are living in a landlord family and you don’t have land, you don’t exist,” he explains. He was an average student, unremarkable. No one bet on his future.

At Rahim Yar Khan, there was one college. After FSC, his mother gave him 5,000 rupees and told him to go to Lahore. He had no contacts, no connections. “I was the first time I was traveling alone,” Usman says. His friends on the bus reassured him: “Lahore is really good, you will figure it out.”

He got into FAST-NUCES, the only engineering university accepting his marks at the time. His math was strong, but he was lazy and procrastinating in other subjects. He nearly failed a semester and had to pay 12,000 rupees to retake a course. That money was devastating for his family. “Excellence for me is not a choice. It’s a survival thing,” he says.

The First Speech That Rewired Everything

His first real job came in Lahore, at a telecom company called Cieses. On his first day, the country head, Nadeem Hashmi, gave a talk. Nadeem said something that “ended up defining my whole life,” Usman recalls. “The guy who has the clarity of the vision, what he wants to become in 10 years. That’s what direction matters. Go back home and write down what do you want to become in 10 years.”

Usman took it literally. He sat down and wrote his vision: “I want to make a lot of money. Money is my motivation, bro. Survival. And it’s driven by your own experiences.” He wanted to marry before 30, have 4 kids, and travel the world. He calculated the exact number: $7.2 million dollars, in dollars, to avoid inflation.

That number stayed with him for the next decade.

Building DevSinc: The Aga Khan Moment

Usman left his job to start DevSinc as a services company. He and his team built an exam-checking software (eduLeef) to solve a real problem. One day, while playing tennis, he got a call. Aga Khan University needed someone to build a comprehensive exam system. The project was worth millions.

“Turns out that I won the project,” he says. “Even though it was more expensive.”

He beat Aga Khan’s incumbent by changing the pitch. He told the decision-maker, Nisar, that cheaper was not the point. “We are the most expensive player, but we provide quality and feedback. This data that we will provide will help your generations manage the game.” That trust in a bootstrapped startup over an established institution changed everything.

The Silicon Valley Bet

In 2013, Usman received a green card. His wife was 34 weeks pregnant. They had $8,000. Moving to the US during pregnancy was risky, but staying would lose the visa window. “Let’s do it. Let’s figure it out. That’s why I’m saying my wife supported me a lot,” he says.

They landed in Seattle. In the first week, he got a job offer for $207,000 per year. He accepted, walked into the office on Monday, opened his MacBook, and after 1.5 hours realized it was not for him. “I’m a startup guy. I’m not a job guy,” he says. He resigned the same day and felt free.

For years, he built startups in Silicon Valley. Multiple exits. Multiple equity rounds. By 2017, he had his $7.2 million. Exact. “I had my $7.2 million. It was 2017, roughly in November-ish time.”

Why He Came Back

Then DevSinc in Pakistan got acquired for $5 million. He had $12.5 million total. He was depressed. “My goal of life is fulfilled. I have so much money that I cannot spend in my lifetime.”

He studied why high achievers collapse after hitting their goals. Darwin fell into depression after publishing his theory. High strivers need something to rush towards. “Our life without passion is not worth living,” he says.

He decided: “I really want my kids to grow up in Pakistan. Pakistan is the thing. You have good houses and 30 years plan and investments and this and that. But life is in Pakistan, bro.”

He returned to Pakistan with a new vision. Not a startup exit. An 80,000-person services company in one decade.

The Case Against Startups for Pakistan

Usman argues that Pakistan is making a structural mistake. Startups like Airlift and Uber are consumption-based. They rely on wealth that is shrinking. “You go to India, you go to Indonesia. You first lay the building blocks that bring in the wealth, and then you convert that wealth into something.”

India’s TCS has $26 billion in revenue and 5.65 million jobs. Meta has $560 billion in revenue and 87,000 jobs. “We need services companies to produce that kind of jobs,” Usman says. “We need exports. We need recurring business.”

DevSinc now has 1500 employees and is growing 70 percent year over year. His plan is to reach 80,000 employees on $3.5 billion in annual revenue. At a 4x return, that is a $14 billion valuation. “We have to double our numbers every single year,” he says. “Blitzscaling, not simple scaling.”

Pakistani industrialists avoid tech. “They need easy money. You pump money in and you get a 40x return. Services is work. It’s grind and it’s day, day in, day out.”

The gap is 30 years. India started in 1961 with IIT Bombay. Pakistan is 30 years behind. But that is also the time it takes for ambitious men to mature and build. “It will never happen before. Because our software house mostly has been built by techies,” Usman says.

DevSinc is his bet that services, not startups, will build Pakistan’s middle class.