The industrialist betting on South Punjab's future

Growing up in Multan, and the education path nobody expected

The episode opens with Muzamil introducing a guest he had been trying to schedule for several months. Anees Khawaja, Director of Mahmood Group and CEO of MG Apparel, arrives carrying a biography that spans textile exports, cricket governance, venture investing, and sustainability — all rooted in a city most business conversations skip over entirely.

Khawaja’s early life in Multan was deliberately unglamorous. He went from a small Beaconhouse cohort to a government college class of two hundred, where, as he put it, “full unka dar hai, NCA ho rahi hai, maar pad rahi hai, daante pad rahi hai, kabhi firing ho rahi hai aapke saamne.” The contrast was formative. His parents insisted he stay in Multan for his bachelor’s and master’s degrees rather than go abroad — a decision he resisted at the time and now considers one of the best things that happened to him. He finished his master’s at twenty-one, benefiting from two calendar-year shifts that compressed his schooling, and went straight into the family business.

The international education came later, in short bursts: London School of Economics, London Business School, Harvard, Wharton — all executive programmes taken while already working. The sequencing mattered. “With work and while doing work — that was a great advantage,” he told Muzamil.

On Multan itself, Khawaja was precise about what the city gives that larger cities do not: “Humein hamare paas itna wahan par sukoon ka time hota hai… you know where you have to be, you know where you don’t have to be.” A population of five to six million, he noted, is not small — but it is manageable in a way that Karachi or Lahore is not.

From a ground-floor leather trade to one of Pakistan’s largest spinners

Mahmood Group’s origin story is a study in compounding across generations. Khawaja’s great-grandfather began by trading raw leather from the ground floor of the family home around 1935, living upstairs while conducting business below. That tanning unit still operates today. His grandfather — whom Khawaja describes as “a very real, true entrepreneur” — took a ginning factory on lease at the time of partition, expanded it, bought it outright, and grew the ginning business steadily until Bhutto-era nationalisation wiped it away almost overnight.

The nationalisation episode is told with a kind of controlled grief. Thirty-five years of family effort, gone in a day, with a nominal payment and no notice. One uncle was getting married around the same time — the factory was taken either the day before or the day after the wedding. “That is not just insane,” Khawaja said, “but you know one of my uncles — shayad unki shaadi ka din tha ya ek din aa gaya tha ya peeche tha.” The factories were eventually returned after a change in government, but the episode left a permanent mark on how the family thinks about political risk.

His grandfather’s response was to invest in agricultural land — “ab karobaar to koi hai nahin” — and his father then moved the group into spinning in the early 1970s. Weaving followed in the nineties when an uncle joined. Today the group is among Pakistan’s largest spinners and ginners, and has diversified into energy, real estate, mango exports to Japan, and poultry egg exports — the only Pakistani exporter in each of those last two categories, Khawaja said.

Why South Punjab needs its own province — and where that stands

Muzamil pressed Khawaja on the South Punjab province question, noting that the 2018 political moment that raised the idea had produced little visible change beyond a secretariat under construction. Khawaja’s answer was grounded in a specific operational experience rather than political sentiment.

He served on the board of MEPCO, the electricity distribution company covering South Punjab — one of the largest distribution companies in Pakistan by geographic area. “That was the first time it actually hit me that why we need a province,” he said. Recovery rates were among the worst in the country. Agricultural tube-well users were subsidised but non-paying. Remote areas lacked manpower and funds. Every recommendation had to be routed through Lahore. “Uska solutions jo bhi aapne recommend karne the, wo aapko baar baar Lahore se figure out karwana padna tha.” Twelve or thirteen years later, he said, the company operates the same way.

On the current state of the province question, Khawaja acknowledged that the previous government had placed additional secretaries and built some structure, but said they were not empowered enough. He is nonetheless optimistic — not naively, but because he believes the alternative is paralysis. His own response has been to act rather than wait: MG Apparel, his apparel manufacturing project in Multan, was built explicitly on the premise that if people with resources in South Punjab do not invest there, nobody will. “If not us, then who?” he said. “Kaisa develop hoga? Kaisi cheezein theek hongi?”

The energy crisis nobody is solving

The conversation’s most pointed exchange came when Muzamil raised the recurring criticism of APTMA — that the textile industry lobbies for subsidised gas at the expense of the rest of the country, and that this is unsustainable as domestic gas reserves deplete and LNG prices rise.

Khawaja did not dismiss the criticism. He acknowledged that gas is sometimes a literal raw material in textile processing, not just a fuel, which makes it structurally different from other energy inputs. But his broader argument was about priority-setting and visibility. The government, he said, has never clearly defined which sectors get gas first and why — and without that definition, no business can plan. “Aapne priority decide karni hai. Why should one get the priority is what this country needs to define.”

On electricity, he was blunter. Circular debt is growing, solutions keep shifting — production problem, then capacity payments, then consumption, then distribution losses — and no one in government gives a consistent account. “As a businessman, the fact is that ten-year outlook mein meri jo sabse sabse important cost hai, main us cost ko to main alag tawakkul chhoda hua hai maine ki magic ho jaye to ho jaye.” He has given up expecting the energy question to be resolved and is planning around that uncertainty instead.

The deeper structural point he made was about CNG: Pakistan imported enormous quantities of gas to subsidise vehicle fuel, when that same money could have directly subsidised petrol. “Hamne itni gas import kar di us par? Agar itna aapne kisi ko subsidize hi karna tha, maybe you should have just subsidized the fuel directly.” The wrong call was made, and the country is still paying for it.

MG Apparel, women empowerment, and the myth of South Punjab’s missing workforce

Muzamil asked about the workforce challenge in South Punjab — the conventional wisdom being that the region lacks the skill base to support industrial operations. Khawaja rejected this directly. The biggest objection he heard before launching MG Apparel was that he would not find human resources. Today the plant employs around 2,000 people, heading to 5,000 within six months, with 85 percent women — all recruited from the outskirts of Multan, trained from scratch.

“Unko Lahore mein, Karachi mein, Faisalabad mein kaam karna padta tha. So they are now all sort of coming back home.” The workforce was always there. What was missing was an employer willing to build in the region rather than assume the region could not support it.

The plant also carries what Khawaja called the highest sustainability certification in Pakistan — LEED Platinum. That certification connects to a broader programme the group runs: adopting villages near its facilities and delivering what he described as a 360-degree intervention — hygiene, infrastructure, school improvements, kitchen gardening, embroidery training, and water recycling from mosque ablution areas powered by solar panels.

At Davos, where the group received a sustainability award as the only Pakistani textile company recognised, Khawaja made an argument he clearly considers central: “All of us talk about sustainable planet, sustainable products. How many of us talk about sustainable human beings?” His answer is that physical health, mental resilience, hygiene, and work-life balance are prerequisites for economic development in places like South Punjab — not luxuries to be addressed after growth arrives.

Agriculture, organic cotton, and the food export opportunity

Later in the discussion, Muzamil raised Pakistan’s agricultural potential — poor yields, small farmers trapped in old methods, and a looming global food shortage that could be either a disaster or an opportunity. Khawaja’s response was candid about both the potential and the policy failure.

He described working with Jahangir Tareen on a cotton crisis task force during the previous government — a model was built, approved by the prime minister, and then never implemented. Cotton, he noted, is now one of Pakistan’s largest import items, despite the country being a major textile exporter. “Hamne itni aapne mujhe textile aur export ki baat ki hai ki marwa diya. Aapne import ki baat nahin ki.” The group is now supporting farmers in Balochistan directly, partnering with HBL to buy their cotton and provide seasonal support — but Khawaja was clear that private effort alone cannot substitute for policy.

On organic cotton specifically, he described a partnership to develop 10,000 acres of organic cotton near D.I. Khan. The economics are straightforward: organic cotton commands higher prices, but yields are lower and costs are higher, so the premium is not profit — it is cost recovery. The real advantage for Pakistan is land. “We have a huge potential of not just converting those virgin lands but also giving back something to the planet as well.”

On poultry and meat exports, his cousin who runs the poultry business is already studying liquid eggs and powdered eggs for export markets. The opportunity is real, Khawaja said, but it requires people willing to “thela uthake, duniya phir phirke figure out karna chahein how they can create a difference.”

Family businesses, professional management, and the stock market gap

Muzamil raised two connected questions: why Pakistani family businesses resist professional management, and why the stock market remains thin. Khawaja’s answers were self-aware in a way that is unusual for someone in his position.

On professional management, he said the shift is already happening in his generation — not because of ideology but because the scale of operations demands it. “Aapko professional se hi kaam karana hai. Aap har jagah par khud kaam nahin kar sakte.” He credited his commercial director, CFO, and marketing team explicitly, saying the group’s success is more theirs than his. The CFO “makes our life miserable but at the same time makes us sleep well in the night.”

On the stock market, he agreed with Muzamil’s diagnosis: easy money — agricultural land held for appreciation, cars bought and flipped, real-estate files — absorbs capital that should flow into productive businesses. Government tax policy makes it worse, taxing stock market gains at thirty percent while offering real-estate amnesties. “Doesn’t make sense at all.” But he sees change coming, pointing to the GEM board listings, PSX CEO Farrukh Khan’s awareness work, and a cohort of friends in Karachi actively trying to grow the retail investor base. “Yeh double kaam hai jo ki ho raha hai. It’s a slow process, bardaasht karna padega, hum peeche hain. But ho jayega.”

Cricket, grassroots development, and the role of heroes

Khawaja chairs the South Punjab Cricket Board, and the shift in his tone when the subject came up was noticeable. He deflected the debate about the old departmental cricket structure versus the new regional model with a single question: “Mere domain mein South Punjab mein — barah saal se school cricket nahin hui thi. Kyun nahin hui thi agar itna accha structure tha woh?”

The board now runs a full calendar across 14 districts — school leagues, club cricket, university cricket, college cricket. Around 175 schools are currently playing in structured leagues. Women’s cricket is a priority: a ground was built from metro construction debris, with PCB installing a hybrid pitch. A programme called SPCA selects 100 young cricketers, pays them a stipend, feeds them, trains them, and teaches them how to speak and carry themselves publicly — because, as Khawaja put it, “ultimately aapke yeh heroes hain.”

The point about heroes was personal. His son came to him two years ago asking to dye his hair gold because a cricketer he admired had done so after taking five wickets. “That’s where it hit me that we need to focus more on having these heroes. Because they are role models.”

Pakistan in 2050

By the end of the conversation, Muzamil asked Khawaja the question he puts to every guest: where does Pakistan stand in 2050? The answer was neither evasive nor falsely cheerful.

“My optimism is based on the fact that when I see my children — they wake up at eight on a Sunday to watch a Pakistan match. That’s for the love of the nation.” He sees more people in his lifetime actively wanting to fix things, feeling ownership of the country rather than detachment from it. He sees literacy rising, entrepreneurs multiplying, and the work done in the last few years beginning to produce results. “I see that this country is gonna prosper. I see that a lot of our root causes will be fixed… and with that, I think there’s no stopping to this country.”

The optimism is not unconditional. He acknowledged that right now is one of the worst periods his businesses have faced. But he framed that as the nature of the work: “Nobody promised us that we will have a sweet ride all throughout.”