Out of 100 applicants, Ibex hires two — and that is the problem

सामने साबतीना आज रात. Welcome back to another episode of thought behind things. आप लोगों को पता है कि मैं जोंक की तरह पीछे पड़ा हूं कि भाई IT services और digital services और export based services Pakistan में कैसे हम बढ़ा सकते हैं और उसी के लिए I have been trying to understand कि जो बड़े players हैं जो historically Pakistan में operate करते रहे हैं, क्या वजह है कि Pakistan में पहले जो growth region ने देखी, जो India ने देखी, जो Philippines ने देखी, वह Pakistan नहीं देख सका और recent times में क्या इसमें कोई changes आई हैं? अभी numbers बड़े interesting हैं Pakistan के अंदर. पचास लाख बच्चा जो है वह हर साल job market में आ रहा है. उसको absorb कैसे किया जाएगा? Pakistan को dollars की ज़रूरत है. उसके लिए अगर हमने दुनिया में जाकर काम करना है, global services में काम करना है तो उसके लिए हमारे पास जो बड़े institutions हैं, जो बड़ी companies हैं, वह क्या कर रही हैं और particularly क्या हमारे पास कोई, you know, India जैसी कोई data consulting, कोई Infosys type की success story potentially emerge कर सकती है? उसके लिए आज हमने दावा दी है यासिर रफ़ीक साहब who is the head of recruitment at Ibex which is the largest BPO in Pakistan. Last last year roughly इनकी $30,000,000 से ज़्यादा की export की जो receipts थी that came to Pakistan almost I believe 8,000 से ज़्यादा इनका headcount हो चुका है और यह बहुत aggressively grow कर रहे हैं. Particularly पिछले दो तीन साल के अंदर बहुत ज़्यादा growth इन्होंने देखी है और आने वाले वक्त में भी देख रहे हैं and so I wanted to understand कि how are they looking at the talent in Pakistan? What are some of the weaknesses that individual, you know, talent can actually figure out और वह उसके ऊपर काम करके अपने आप को बेहतर कर सकता है. Overall पूरी दुनिया का जो आगे industry आ रही है, वह किस तरफ जा रही है? I wanted to have a comprehensive conversation. यासिर भाई, thank you so much for being proud of this show. Thank you, Miss अमल.

So, I joined Ibex back in 2006. Back then I was studying bachelor's in computer science from KU. Somebody told me कि यार एक नई company आई है, why don't you try and apply? You can, you know, make some money on the side while you study and, you know, you will make sure that, you know, you don't become a burden on your family while you study. पैसे देने होते हैं, सारी चीज़ें, you know, semester fees and all. So, I joined Ibex back in 2006. I joined as a customer service agent. Stigma बहुत ज़्यादा था उस ज़माने में call center agent का एक stigma बना हुआ था. People were like तुम एक तरफ तो computer science के graduate बनना चाह रहे हो, दूसरी तरफ call center में जा रहे हो, what are you doing? Anyways, we started off, right? And back in the days we were when I started off, I started off with sales. We were selling phone lines six, and, at that time in 07/08, we were taking home a paycheck of, you know, 6 figures easily at that time. Really? I'm fresh graduate. Fresh grad. Even didn't complete my graduation. I was in my semester. Semesters चल रहे थे and like, कि चलो try करते and fresh graduate, you are taking home sex triggers easily. Sales की job थी, we were enjoying and everything and then once the education sort of finished, I sort of realized कि यार maybe that's not my calling. Maybe computer science is not my calling. Maybe what I'm doing right now, I'm enjoying myself and I'm making good money. Why don't I make a career out of this? So I moved along. इसी company में grow होते गए and then, you know, having a good mentor is is just a blessing. And I had a really great mentor, father श्रफ़. He took me under his wing and he sort of groomed me. Initially, in the first couple of years, you know, we're just you're doing your own stuff. You're not worried about anything. He came back. He's like, you know, why don't you become a supervisor? Why don't you have a team that sort of report him to you, and we'll help you grow? And I was like, no. I don't wanna be responsible for anybody else. I'm good where I am. But he's like, do this, and trust me. You know, if you wanna grow, you'll have to manage your team. And we started from there, and now I'm here. So for the longest time, I was in operations. I was looking after everything. And, recently, like, three years back, one of my predecessors, they they left the company and the country head, he came to me and he said, k, you know what? We think you'd be the right fit for the role. And imagine that I have never done mock recruitment at all. And he said, you know, you're you're gonna do recruitment. What we have seen over the years makes us believe that, you know, you're the right candidate for the job. And, you know, lo behold

There you are. So for those who don't know, what is I... Ibex? What do they do? And particularly in the context of BPO. Right? So BPO was huge back in the day. आजकल it's all about AI, and it's all about a bunch of other things, cryptocurrencies, blockchain. But, I mean, BPO and a BPO company having 8,500 people, that's that's crazy. You you see those numbers in in sort of blue collar work and factories, but you don't see that in, like, white collar, good, well paying jobs. So what's the company and what do you guys do?

So, basically, you know, you you hit it on the head. It's a BPO. It's a business process outsourcing unit. So, essentially, what we do is, for instance, you are the jazz of the world. You're the, you know, you're the, you know, big giants of the world and, you know, your main core business is telecommunication. There's customer service, there's HR, there's payroll, there's IT services. Could be many number of sort of services that you provide to run that. जो भी standard services हैं. Month on month चलते रहना operation तो चलती वह essentially that's where BPOs come in. They take on that responsibility. There's like, we'll do your customer service for you. We'll do your payroll. We'll even do your IT, tech, whatever you need. And that's happening globally. So if you talk about global scale, right, BPO makes up for around, you know, two hundred and fifty, two hundred and sixty billion, sort of annual revenue. And, essentially, they do all kinds of services from end to end. If your core so, for instance, you you do podcasts. Right? Your core business is podcast. You need somebody who could sort of edit the blogs x y c. You you reach out to a BPO. They'll say, that's fine. We'll do it. We'll do it for a reduced cost. We'll do it at a better quality rate, etcetera. So that's essentially what BPOs do. Now, the challenge with Pakistan is Pakistan in Pakistan, I think Ibex is the biggest BPO. We don't have too many, sort of counterparts, and I think that's one of the things that needs to change. We wanna make sure that, जैसे India ने grow किया, since the nineties, they invested really heavily in their BPO sector and now they the BPO sector almost makes up of 200, 250,000,000,000 in their GDP, on an annual basis and we are nowhere near that number. अगर Philippines की बात की जाए that's, you know, nowhere near the size as Pakistan is, they make around 40,000,000,000 in a year in just BPO sectors. They have 1,600,000 employed people in the BPO sectors. And coming back to your number, we have 50, you know, 50 lakh people entering the job market. Out of those, five lakhs are purely that have had some bachelor's degree, either two year bachelor's or four year bachelor's. Right? So they have degrees, and they are entering the job market. They don't have jobs available for them and they're just looking for, you know, the the traditional job types. And this is where BPOs come in, they take you in, they groom you and they they give you a job. So, yeah. Makes sense.

थोड़ा सा अगर मैं just want to start off and I want to go more into BPO themselves and and and the scale right now but Sure. मुझे पता है कि बहुत सारे लोग ना immediately यह thought रखेंगे क्योंकि सुनने में बड़ा आ रहा है कि जी अगर BPO redundant task को scale के ऊपर चलाकर cost reduce करता है तो the same thing AI is hoping to do, right? कि सबसे जो जो पहली चीज़ उसने hit करनी है वह redundant tasks हैं और यह हम sun भी रहे हैं कि जी chat agents, customer service agents and chat bots and so on and so forth. How do you see the AI

approaching the industry and जो बड़ी आवाज़ें आ रही हैं कि जी BPO तो completely devastate हो जाएगी, तबाह हो जाएगी, यह तो कुछ बचेगा ही नहीं. How would you respond to that? So I think chatbots have been there for a while. It's not something new, right? They've been in the market for ages as well And I think it's a two part answer. First, k, it's not something new. AI on bits and pieces were already there. People were training chatbots. That was already there. So that that aspect is gonna be there. You're gonna have some sort of AI keep on sort of progressing, moving on. But basically, BPOs are not just handling customer service jobs. So there's data dissection and there's a lot of things that they do. As I mentioned, IT services हो गया, tech services हो गई. A lot of things that you need they are a part of it, right? So if we talk about just the biggest sort of things that we generally do is customer service. But customer service may be levels होते हैं, right? There is tier one that's just basic customer service. Customer ने call की, पुछा कि यार मेरा item कहां है? मुझे बता दो. That's probably something that AI would be able to do. But then there's tier two, tier three where customer wants a different solution, there's different nuances that are involved, आपकी system limitations हैं. AI sort of gets bogged down there, right? So, if you look at the trajectory of things, it's not gonna happen in the next two, three, four years. It's gonna take time. Chatbots have been there for a while and they still haven't been where we wanted to be. So we we don't foresee this sort of taking over the globe in the next two years. It's it's gonna take time. AI is doing good work. We, as a company, are also invested in AI. We're doing a lot of chatbots and all of that sin so that, you know, we could reduce the cost for our clients. But it's it's not something that's gonna hope happen overnight. It's gonna take time. And I also feel like I mean Dubai में ना मुझे बड़ी दफा वहां पर काफी वह वही हो गया कि जैसे आप करीम है या x y z companies हैं तो वह उन्होंने पहली first line पर कोई chatbot डाल दिया है या उन्होंने कोई संगा डाल दिया है. Honestly 10,

आठ में से दस दफाना जब मुझे मसला होता है तो I am always like next next next next next give क्योंकि me a I think I don't know maybe and and the chatbot very well might just solve my problem but I think वह एक trust factor है कि you know I need a human to speak to me even though the problem will be resolved. But I need that sort of an intimate experience of that person telling me कि ok sir, I'm sorry this happened. We're sorting it out for you. तो I do understand कि कहीं ना कहीं I think there is a lot of fear mongering overall in the AI space where people are like everything is going to be replaced. AI is a tool great but you'll still need people somewhere in the background

doing a lot of things. Maybe the nature of job might might change. Absolutely. And and I think, whenever you are on a call with somebody, right, if you feel somebody is just sympathizing, you won't feel the same fey. But if you know there's somebody across, you know, in front of you and they're empathizing with what you're going through, you're more likely to sort of take that answer. So I could put 10 chatbots and I can give the same answers. But if you don't feel the same way, yeah, he's just repeating whatever is told to them. I need to talk to a human being. And if the same thing is told to you by human being who sort of brings in their you know emotional connection. Emotional connection. Yeah and then you are like अच्छा maybe that's how it is. वह chatbot काफी दबाना वह repeat भी करता रहता है तो वह बड़ा frustrate actually it's more frustrating कि यार give me a non scripted answer just connect with me on a human. And that's why I said कि level one probably will be taken over by chatbots and AI and all of that but the moment you hit level two, level three it's still gonna need human intervention

and it's not going away anytime soon. Makes sense. One of the biggest push जो BPO industry में आया था and it's been a while दस पंद्रह साल से वह आया था जब आपका tech sector आया ना तो उसमें data annotation हो गई. उसमें even कि यार वह जो आपकी होती हैं Facebook and all of these were doing कि जी अगर आपने कहा है कि कोई गलत चीज़ upload हुई हुई है, image कहीं report हो रही है तो उसके पीछे you know you had like tens of thousands of people's team and that was mostly what was going to Philippines and other places. Pakistan for some weird reason was not able to you know customer service was definitely huge at least शायद एक singular scale पर now but you know there were a lot of sort of mom and shop, pop shops जो कि खुली हुई थी पचास से लेकर ढाई सौ बंदे की और वह कोई ना कोई किसी ना किसी company के लिए कोई digital marketing कोई customer service कर रहे थे. But we were never able to be a part of that boom cycle कि you know data annotation, data management के ऊपर बहुत technical काम नहीं है, data engineering की बात नहीं करा. Why do you think हम उन वाली BPO services में grow नहीं कर सके? अच्छा I think one of the reasons was there is always a stigma associated with Pakistan. Whenever you sort of try and divert work,

एक यह बात होती है especially in, you know, US companies के अच्छा Pakistan जा रहे हैं. The image that they have of Pakistan is completely different. I'll I'll, so due to confidentially I'm not going to name my clients but I'll give you an example. One of our clients sort of came in from US, and when he's, sort of was here, he looked at our facility, and he was just amazed. He was like, I thought you guys were probably, you know, moving around in camels.

And

I was like, what? You thought we were roaming around in camels? You're like, yeah. That's what what I thought. Your my perception's completely changed. And and I think people living in US, Canada, especially big companies, they didn't even see Pakistan as an option. So one of the, actually, I'll tell you what. One of the biggest growth cycles that we have seen is due to pandemic. So pandemic was a boom for us. Basically, what happened was nobody anywhere was able to hire anybody and sort of big companies. So, Ibex is in seven countries across the globe. Right. And we're sort of, you know, competing with the big name players from India, from Philippines, from Malaysia, from US across the globe. What's the total headcount for Ibex Global? Close to 27,000. Okay. Yeah. So so we were working with, you know, different sort of, you know, companies across the globe. And in our different geos, we were not able to hire due to pandemic. So our sort of company, you know, sort of directors, they said that, you know, why don't you try and, you know, see how we could sort of do work out of Pakistan? क्योंकि आप काम Philippines में कर रहे हो, कहीं भी कर रहे हो. Let's come to Pakistan. Let's see. You have your season coming up. So, US में generally यह होता है कि during the holiday season they need to expand their workforce and then right out of the season they just reduce their workforce. Like, seasonal काम है, तुम्हें दो सौ, ढाई सौ seats चाहिए. Why don't you do that? Why don't you try Pakistan? Like, fair enough. We are in a bind. We need our customers, you know, questions to be answered. We'll ok Pakistan but only for the season. Right. Great. So they came in and and I'm talking about the biggest retail giant in the world. They came in, they said, ok, we'll work with you. Those seats लेकर आ जाओ, we'll work. Now, we are competing against BPO giants from across the globe. So, that retail giant would never put all their eggs in one basket, so they'll have different giants working for them. And, what we did was, even with those 200 seats, we were number one in in customer satisfaction scores. And they're like, what are you talking about? Out of Pakistan, we are getting this kind of service. Like, yes, this is out of Pakistan. And then what they said was, okay, we're not gonna shut you down, but we are going to monitor you. We are going to monitor you for an year. It could be that you put your best sort of people forward and it's just a fluke. So we'll see you for an entire year. Like, fair enough, give us a shot. So, एक साल और चला, they kind of realized that we are not going away anywhere. So they said कि ok, we'll give you a little more seats and a little more seats and a little more seats. Four years from now, we make up of 35 to 40% of their entire workforce. So that's a huge achievement for us कि Pakistan की एक कम Pakistan के अंदर बैठकर हम लोग US की clientele को service कर रहे हैं. And that was just is that just one client? Is that the that's where most of the growth is coming या यह same pattern आपने बाकी जगहों पर दिया Oh, is is, so I am just talking about one client right now. Same thing happened with another client that was one of the biggest finance companies in the world and they said the same thing क्योंकि finance में you need human interaction. You can't keep everything too sort of automated answering machines, right? Same thing happened with them, same thing because they couldn't hire they came to Pakistan and that's why, you know, out of Pakistan. If I talk about our numbers pre COVID, pre COVID I would say we were around three hundred, three and a half thousand, four thousand. After COVID we are around eighty five hundred. So in just those four years we have doubled our size completely. तो COVID has been a boom for us. Interesting.

Do you see the the पहले तो do you see yourself growing 80 beyond 8,500 at this point in time जो globally demand आ रही है? And then overall अगर मैं आपसे पूछूं कि दुनिया में BPO को आप किस तरह से देख रहे हैं? I mean you mentioned कि ठीक है we don't have we're not threatened by AI as much as people choose to believe but still अगर मैं macro पर पूछूं आपको future of BPO क्या नज़र आ रहा है? So, first to answer your question, do you think KA we are growing?

Yes we are. So, the challenge is if you talk about businessman, they always focus on one thing, right? Where can they save, you know, a buck for, you know, for their own profit? So if you compare India, Philippines, Pakistan, essentially, we are 30% less than Philippines in India. So the cost margins, they they they make better profits from there, right? So cost is better. Quality of services there. Right now, the challenge that I have is I need to hire a lot of people, and I don't have the manpower that's ready to sort of come in and work for us. So the reason is that the kind of people that we need to hire, they need to have good English, like, sort of linguistic skills, right? And unfortunately, we have the biggest English speaking population. But when it comes to dong to the natives, that's not the case. तो वह that's one of the challenges. But we are growing massively. हम लोगों का तकरीबन 8,500 का headcount है but hopefully by the end of the year we're going to be touching 10,000 and then onwards as well because consistently our clients whenever we tell them this success story, they're moving the business away from different geos to Pakistan. They're like, Pakistan is a viable option. Let's go and put our headcount there. We're gonna save 30% straight off the gate and we're gonna get better quality. Makes sense. India ने

आपने थोड़ी देर पहले mention भी किया कि यह ढाई सौ billion dollars उनका GDP में सिर्फ BPO का क्यों बोले? Export अगर निकालें तो I think जो overall BPO plus IT services है वह 250,000,000,000 तो सिर्फ export की मदद में वह लेकर आते हैं. Why do you think Pakistan उसको नहीं कर सका? बड़े basics से numbers हैं ना. उनकी economy उनका population का size जो है वह roughly I believe हमारे से कोई six times ज़्यादा है. उनकी economy का size हमसे कोई तकरीबन seven times ज़्यादा है. तो what went wrong कि हमारा उनका IT services sector जो है वह हमसे कोई तकरीबन सौ गुना जाता है, right? Like what's what happened there जिसकी वजह से यह gap इतना ज़्यादा widen हो गया? What did they do? And where did we fail? अच्छा I think मुझे

reality में यही लगता है कि pre COVID I think one of the challenges was the stigma was there कि Pakistan is not really a viable option. We shouldn't go to Pakistan. Pakistan की ही challenges हैं, x y z whatever what not. And I think after COVID a lot of companies sort of realized कि it's a viable option. थोड़ा सा लोगों ने काम देखा, work देखा and now it's it's sort of changing. अच्छा थोड़ा हमारा if you compare India versus Pakistan, we sort of implemented almost the same strategy but I think due to political turmoil, वह सारी चीज़ें, वह एक consistency हमारे पास build up नहीं हो पाई. Different sort of governments come in. They have their own sort of policies and everything. India में जो एक चीज़ बहुत अच्छी रही ना, उनकी एक policy 91 से implement हुई. They just carried it through. Whoever came in, they just tore the line and said, we're gonna do the same thing and we're gonna keep progressing. What was that policy? I think they they really invested in their BPO and IT industry. They, they invested heavily in linguistics as well. One of their companies they ensured that you know they realize कि a lot of people they find Indian docile and they they wanna see you know BPOs के अंदर that's where they get the most business, right? So उन्होंने अपनी linguistics पर बड़ा काम किया, अपनी universities पर काम किया, ITU, BP sector पर काम किया and they just kept on increasing those universities and they kept on plugging in those numbers and जितने भी US की companies थी it was easy access to them. Ease of doing business in India was much better than ease of doing business in Pakistan. So, एक तो pre covid ये चीज़ें रहीं. फिर उसके बाद now we are slowly starting to see an uptick in business out of Pakistan. We are seeing companies sort of build up, grow, sort of work with big giants in the world. So, ऐसा नहीं है कि काम नहीं हो रहा, काम हो रहा है लेकिन it's not as fast paced as in in India and

Do you think it's it was also the dollar situation where for some reason Pakistan had this obsession with keeping the dollar at a particular level whereas जो 91 के अंदर एक major जुमन मोहन सिंह का reform था was actually letting go of the dollar, right? So they were they had the same boom bust continuous cycle और वह यही था कि जो obsession with the dollar until the point कि वह finally crash किया और 50% value lose किया and then eventually they let the market decide the dollar And then the market allowed actually export based businesses to be more sustainable. क्योंकि लोगों को यह realize नहीं होता कि while you can control the dollar, it's not sustainable. क्योंकि at the end of the day आपकी export businesses की viability कम होती है. So what I see now today in Pakistan is जहां पर आज से शायद दस साल पहले every young kid who was graduating wanted to be a part of a property dealing you know society company type sort of a thing. आज मैं देख रहा हूं नौजवान हर कोई कह रहे कि यार कोई मुझे बताओ कोई global business, कोई मैं Amazon का काम कर लूं, कोई मैं इधर उधर का काम कर लूं. कोई ऐसी job बताओ जिसमें जो company है ना वह किसी भाई के साथ काम कर रही है क्योंकि फिर that's the only healthy company. Local companies जो local economy में they're directly connected to the the volatility of the local economics and therefore now over the last two years yes things have been tough for the economy at large but then while that has happened as the economy is now become more export focused अब वह conducive हुआ है for the first time for export based you

know services companies to begin to grow. Do you think that you've seen that as well? I think, I think that's the case. So वही वाली बात है India they realize कि in order for us to move a couple of steps forward we need to take a couple of steps back first, right? They let go of the dollar and decide. The short term pain ever short term. Yeah. And they they saw that gain, right? And this is that really help them sort of recover. They it's set up a launching pad for them to sort of leap forward and that's what they're seeing. They're now reaping the benefits of that pain that the nineties sort of, you know, era took. And I think similarly हमारा इतना बड़ा youth bulge है, we have 60% population of youth and these guys they all talk about यार मुझे Amazon में काम करवा दो, मुझे यह करवा दो, वह करवा दो. All we need to do is have sustainable practices, understand what the market is going through and not just you know follow every fat that comes into play. अभी beach में बड़ा यह हुआ था कि बस Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, everything is Amazon. Now Amazon थोड़ा die down हो गया है. अब it's the next step. Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin, crypto, crypto, crypto. So we have to have sustainable measures that we could take. The reason that I'm really focused on ensuring that, you know, we we sort of build and we bring in more BPO companies is because it's an entire ecosystem. It does not require for you to be trained for like four years for a specialized degree. हमारे यहां जो है एक one of the biggest challenges is that there are just two professions in Pakistan. Either you become a doctor or you become an engineer. There's no other profession. And I think, considering the dynamic global economy and the global job market, I think as long as we sort of provide, the, you know, you know, the launching platform for these guys to sort of work on different sort of unconventional, jobs,

we we will not be able to sustain the kind of people that are coming in, you know, the job market. Makes sense. Do do you guys require a degree for for getting a job? Or can, like, a kid who's just graduated high school but is really passionate about

I don't know about that. So, generally, we don't require a degree for for anybody to work for us. At at the very minimum, we want them to ensure that, you know, their HSC or SSC pass हो ताकि they understand basic maths, everything is there but graduation we don't. So a lot of our you know current employees they graduated while working for Ibex. So what they do is they work nights क्योंकि ज़्यादातर काम रात में होता है क्योंकि US की day time होती है and then they go on in the day time and sort of continue their education. So that's that's the advantage that students have and that's what the advantage I gained as well, right? Seven to eight semester था इतनी ज़्यादा problems नहीं थी I was like ok रात में काम कर लूंगा दिन में दो तीन ही classes हैं I'll go get those classes तो

मुझे that's the यह लगता है कि जो exposure बच्चों को मिलेगा ना yes I mean आप उसको कह लें comfort में जो बंदा comfort है बैठा ना वह कह रहा है यार देखो यह तो फ़ायदा job है यार जो बंदा jobless बैठा हुआ है उसके लिए वह job बेहतरीन है. But even beyond that I think कि जो exposure आपको मिलता है from actually dealing with customers and I never really truly appreciated that until this one time this one time क्या actually my wife had an e commerce business and I was running her operation. Was the VPO. Ok. And so I had to deal with the orders. I'll I had to make sure कि जी को कोई DM आता है तो you know thank you so much for reaching out you know let me sort that for you and people get upset people get really upset when things are up and down and to be very honest I mean I have a public facing person वह एक बड़ा वह होता है कि a lot of times उनको पता भी नहीं होता मैं कभी कहता है यार मैं कामरान बात कर रहा हूं from the company's name because अगर आप जाकर public facing वाला नाम डाल दो तो फिर उसके अलग चार पांगे खुल जाती हैं. So personally वह एक बड़ा जैसे कहते हैं ना enlightening experience था because while उस business के और बहुत सारे aspects हैं इसने मुझे बहुत कुछ सिखाया customer से interact करके I think at the heart and core of every business is the customer, right? If you are able to understand how the customer works, how you can satisfy the customer, मुश्किल मुश्किल और यह अब भी मेरे साथ होता है you know I'm I'm building this new business तो मेरी team में बच्चे hire किए, बड़े smart बच्चे हैं, सारा कुछ है. But the way that if I if I plug myself in in any situation, it takes me three minutes to diffuse the situation, get the customer. वह customer चीख रहा होगा. वह कहेगा, आपको मैं गाड़ी ना दूंगा, FIR कटाऊंगा. उसको दो minute में वापस लेकर आना और कहे और to flip that customer to say कि यार sir आप king हैं. It's an art and the minute you figure that out, building any business I feel like becomes super easy. So for a lot of these students, I think it's a great stepping stone not just in terms of the global understanding that they get कि यार हम global companies का काम कर रहे हैं, global business किस तरह काम करते हैं, उसकी क्या requirements हैं, but also really the insight around customers. I'd be curious to know कि जो आपके यह, you know, you've been around for twenty three years, you've hired a ton of people. Do they stick with you or do they end up going to different careers and, you know, how have your alumni performed over time? Sure. I think to start off with, you're absolutely right. I think nobody calls

to say, you know what मुसंबिल, great job. Your BPO business or your e commerce business is doing great. Yeah. They only call when something has gone wrong and they wanna bash somebody to to make sure that, you know, they get what they want. So understanding that portion, imagine taking this call day in, day out. Now when you're trying to resolve this, you know, sort of problem that's in front of you, every call, it gives you unique perspective, right? And that sort of helps you develop your personality and that's why you said that, you know, learning all of this business sort of helps keep you, know, sort of growing. So I think absolutely nail on the head that customer services में बात कर लें. Essentially any communication that you do boils down to how do you address the problem that's in front of you. तो अगर if it's just you and me talking, there's a problem, how do you come to that solution? And I think when you keep addressing that problem day in, out, you become really good at it and then that's why our alumnis are really successful across the globe. So, I'll give you an example. Some of our alumnis were pilots in PIA. So, pilots का generally होता है कि they get told कि भाई आपकी training होगी दो साल के बाद. Now they are free for two years. And there was a time when we had like six or seven PIA pilots working for us. They're like, we have two years, we have nothing to do, we might as well do this. I'm like, why not? Come along. And they worked for us for two years and, they did great. And they they learned, you know, how do you sort of, diffuse a situation? How do you become better at, you know, bringing the other guy to your side? And, essentially, that is what you need in any aspect of life. You become, you know, a surgeon, you become a doctor, you become a marketeer, you become, you know, country head, whatever you may become. Right? So you need to make sure that the person in front of you, you can convert them, you can train them, and you can tell them your side of the story. And as long as you make them understand your side of story, half the battle is done. And that's what these guys do day in, day out. So some of our alumnis right now are sort of in project management. It's easier for them to make the other party understand what needs to happen. Some of them are, like, chief of staffs, etcetera. Some of them are actually working in universities as, you know, in in talent acquisition. So our alumnis, they generally fare really well. And since Ibex is sort of like an entry level job opportunity sort of provider, होता यह है कि for instance, you just graduated, right? And you come in, you have done your bachelor's in marketing, let's say, and you're not getting a job anywhere. You come in, you work for one year, sort of groom yourself. होता यह है कि, essentially, whenever you go in for an interview as a fresh graduate, you're not able to sell yourself really well. But, you know, over the period of time, learn the tricks of the trade. You you sort of get understanding of what the other person wants to listen, x y z, whatnot. And then, generally, what we see is people come in, they get their experience, they get their learning, and they they move on and do great things in their career. Or there could be people like me that kind of realize कि यार no this is my niche. I I like talking to people. I like being around, you know, difficult situations. I I'll tell you something unique about my my sort of tenure at divex. Every two three years I'd go back to my manager and I'd tell him, यार मैं bore हो चुका हूं. मुझे जो है ना, I I gotta go out. I'm gonna apply and I'm gonna do x y z. मुझे मुझे so we'll go into an OD training. So we have a lot of organizational training, right? So I'll get inspired by the training. I'm like, I gotta go out and I gotta be a trainer. And my manager would be like, what? You gotta be a trainer now? Yeah. I the guy just fascinated me, and I wanna pursue that opportunity. He's like, okay. Hold on. So let's finish this current assignment of yours. And then next, what you could do is you could go into our training department, then you can train. So, the kind of roles that I've done at IMX, I was a sales agent. I was a trainer. I was in QA. I was in back office. I was, you know, I was a travel agent on eBay as well at back in the day. And mostly operations का काम किया है. Now the country manager said कि यार, you know what? You're gonna do recruitment now. So the that's the thing that you enjoy being in a company, right, where the company does not want you to do the same thing over and over. It gives you different sort of dynamics. And, essentially, I have learned a lot of things from my day to day, and that has helped me grow. And that is what people take away. It's aluminized. They go on and do, they have successful careers in different organization and part and parcel of that is due to the fact that, you know, they've learned what really works.

Makes sense. इस वक्त BPO को globally what countries are leading it?

I think अगर globally बात की जाए ना तो I think it's the same names. India, Philippines, Malaysia is a big player now. If you talk about near near shore, Jamaica is coming into play.

Mexico, Jamaica यहां पर भी काफी सारा काम हो रहा है. What makes some of these countries so special? I mean, terms of education, in terms of skill, in terms of price point, Pakistan की तरह stand करेगा? अच्छा I think

I may be I am biased because I am पाकिस्तानी लेकिन I think कि in terms of our quality we are better. In terms of our price point we are better but the challenge is that there is more political stability in those country. जो businessman हैं वह अपना business वहां पर डालते हुए थोड़ा सा comfortable feel करता है. They don't really have a big challenge in terms of business. You know, tides are changing, people are putting more business in Pakistan as well. A lot of the bloggers that are right now putting videos on YouTube, et cetera. That sort of breaks that barrier, right? People think कि Pakistan is just very isolated and imagine our own client telling us कि भाई I thought you were riding camels. So, वह barrier slowly and gradually break हो रहा है. People are realizing कि Pakistan can do a lot of different things. So, in terms of cost, we are better. But I think political stability and sort of ease of doing business is where we still need, we we have a lot of room for improvement. Do you think we have talent तो?

I mean मुझे you know I hear this a lot from the IT industry कि यार हमारा मसला नहीं था वह actually government जो थी ना उसने stability नहीं फरहाम किया I understand. That was definitely a factor and they always say, you know, I mean we couldn't get new business because people didn't trust us. Sure, that makes sense. But what about existing business, right? Why wasn't the existing business scaling? अगर एक customer आपके पास already बैठा हुआ है और वह कह रहा क्या ठीक है सौ बंदे तो मेरे लिए कर लो but वह पांच हज़ार बंदे India में रख रहा है. कहीं ना कहीं either use it's a cost cost problem कि यार उसको ठीक है वह सौ है लेकिन वह सौ से बढ़ाना नहीं चाहता because you know cost बहुत ज़्यादा है या it's a delivery problem. It could be either of the two because अगर उसकी सौ हैं तो उसकी वही खाप है जो कि पांच हज़ार की खाप है. अगर political instability की बात की जाए. तो cost यह भी मैंने देखा कि दिरमियान में आप दो हज़ार से लेकर जो boom and so there was not a lot of margins for growth as well. By and large दो हज़ार इक्कीस बाइस के बाद that problem has solved in terms of even in The Middle East when I talk to people तो ऐसा मुझे यही कहते हैं कि यार the the average पाकिस्तानी engineer is half the price of the Indian engineer and it's not even just engineering. You know, people love the accountants in Pakistan, people love the bankers in Pakistan because they're like, it's a it's talent on sale at this point in time. The problem that everybody keeps on pointing out is the fact that baseline तो चलो कुछ ना कुछ उन्होंने कर लिया और मैं experience resources भी अगर आपको बताऊं कि पांच, आठ, दस साल का experience है. But दुनिया में अब जिस तरह काम हो रहा है और Pakistan में जिस तरह से काम हो रहा है, उसमें एक ज़मीन आसमान का फ़र्क़ है. And that lack of understanding and the nuance of कि यार दुनिया के business को हमने approach किस तरह से करना है उसमें? Professional ethic क्या है? You know, work ethic क्या है? Discipline क्या है? I feel like and not just I feel like I have been hearing this from from, you know, companies and and customers from across the region in the Middle East कि यार पाकिस्तानियों के अंदर यह चीज़ बहुत ज़्यादा lack कर रही है. उनको पता ही नहीं है. वह इस वक़्त constantly shortcuts पर बैठे हुए हैं कि यार इधर से jump किया, किसी तरह कुछ flip किया और कोई पैसे बना लिए. हर बंदा खाप देखता रहता है कोई भी कुछ achieve नहीं कर पा रहा. Right? And so in terms of talent, I want to sort of open the conversation there. How has the talent been? What are some of the weaknesses? And in terms of the soft skills, what has your experience been like?

अच्छा, fair point. When you say that there is a lack of sort of skill resource, that's true. So I'll give you an example. When we hire, out of the 100 people that apply, barely one or two actually make it through. And whenever we sort of, you know, post our ads, we clearly outline कि this job is for, you know, somebody that can speak really English really well, x y z and people still apply and people still get rejected. So, as far as the, you know, skill set is concerned, that is definitely a miss. Could be because and and when we talk about skill set we are not even talking about the hard skills like यहां पर मैं बैठकर या company बैठकर कोई यह नहीं मांग रही कि you know I want somebody that's a really you know Data scientist है या उसकी जो है ना you know Python पर बिल्कुल hands on experience हो. We're just talking about linguistics. We're just talking about English language skills, right? And imagine this in this country English is the official language and still to this date when we talk about conversions, out of 100 people that apply only one or two make it through. And the reason for that is even though we speak English, we don't really speak English really well, right? So, essentially what was happening was that out of every 100 people that we, our every two people that we hiring, we're rejecting 98 people. Now, essentially in that space what companies were doing is they're they're sort of trying to sort of add value to the individual as well. So, I'll tell you what my company was doing. So, six years, you know, six years ago we kind of realized कि यार सौ बंदा हमें apply करता है, सिर्फ दो बंदा हम लोग hire करते हैं. 98 के करीब वह बंदा है जिसको we have to say no. Can we do anything for these guys, right? And we sort of realize कि यार are there or there about they are near hires. उन लोगों के soft skills में थोड़ी सी tweak कर दी जाए, उन लेकर linguistics थोड़ी सी improve कर दी जाए तो we could probably employ these guys and employing one individual means that you are actually sort of bringing food to the table for one family, right? So, we sort of launched Ibex Learning Academy. Basically, हम लोग ने अपनी Learning Academy open की, it was free for, free for all कि you don't need to pay a single cent. All you need to do is just show up and learn your, linguistic skills, learn your soft skills, understand how you need to talk to a customer, understand how you need to behave in a certain situation, right? And critical thinking पर थोड़ा सा काम किया कि if the customer is saying that he has not received the item, what is it that you're gonna say? So, all of these trainings we sort of did and we sort of, it took us a while to sort of understand how we sort of make it work because there are a lot of language institutions that sort of train people but they need six months to sort of train somebody to give them a job, to to sort of move them from one sort of bank to another bank. So, के band की बात की जाए from 6.5 to a seven or a 7.5 they take three to six months. Now as a company we can't really invest six months on one individual और I think I I will sort of agree with what आज़ाद चाय वाला sort of said. You give them something for free, it loses its value. So initially in the early days we were giving free trainings and everything. For six month, for three months even, people would drop out. They first sort of join for a month, they drop off, they're like, yeah, but, you know, we didn't spend any money, so it's okay. No harm, no foul. So we sort of sort of we kept MacGyvering the entire module. And, eventually, what we sort of came up with was a module that was sort of three to four weeks long. It was long enough for them to sort of be interested and sort of be invested in the program, and at the same time, not drop out and sort of be plugged into the market and given a job as well. And that has been a really big success, वारफ़. So over the past six years, we have sort of taken in more than, you know, 8,500 people, close to 9,000 people that we have taken in just for ILA. And we have sort of graduated around 80%. So those 80% of the people that we graduated, we sort of give them jobs, and they're now a productive member of the society. So I think as far as skills concerned, even if people are not there, that's what we did as a company, that we sort of saw an opportunity where, yes we will invest some money, we will incur some cost but it's a low hanging fruit for us, right? Are not और यह ILA के अंदर it's free. Mean, Is can

it like gate capped in a way कि अच्छा जी application की basis के ऊपर आप define करते कि यार this person has a higher chance of success तो इसको हम रख लेते हैं या आठ हज़ार लोगों ने apply किया, आठ हज़ार लोगों को आपने यह train करना है? No, obviously. So for instance, I'll give you an example. So if we talk about IELTS का band,

let's say somebody is on an IELTS का five band and one somebody that's a six band. You'd always wanna train somebody that's a six first so that you can give them a job because the jump from five to a seven would require much more, longer period of time. So, generally, what we do is we tell them that, know, you need to work on linguistics, x y z, whatever, whatnot, and you could sort of apply back after three months where you probably have a higher chance of sort of getting in. But the goal is whoever we induct, we sort of give them a job. 80% success ratio. If we gotta maintain that, we gotta make sure that we have a strict scrutiny on who we sort of plug into this training system so that it's not just training going to waste. We are able to sort of give them a job, right? Makes sense. But in terms of, I mean, it's a four four week program. Three to four week, depends. Four to four week.

क्या आप उसमें cover कर रहे होते हैं? What are all the things that you guys cover? So, we talk about

linguistics में, English में, grammar, comprehension, vocabulary. So, essentially when we talk about customer service, right? The biggest thing is comprehension. Understanding what the guy in front of you is saying and then you sort of respond, right? So comprehension, vocabulary, उसके साथ soft skills and you know, वह कहते ना कि you could tell somebody to go to hell but the way you said it, he could look forward to the journey. So essentially that's what we teach them in those three weeks कि how do you sort of tell your side of the story? Why? If you are saying no, why you are saying no? And what are the options that the customer has? And, essentially, once they go through that training, they're better equipped to handle, the natives that they probably get on the phones. And I think the exposure is just completely unique. Imagine talking to a, you know, a a native every call. That's the kind of exposure that you generally don't get in every sort of, you know, different job that you sort of do.

और यह live trainings है सारी की सारी. Oh yeah, so we

do all in house trainings. We make sure that we give them an environment where they sort of have the best chance for success.

मतलब I am curious, why didn't you guys go for let's say an online portal? Actually we did, अच्छा. So we because essentially I

have a limitation, right? I could probably put in thirty, forty people in a class. The goal was that what if we could train the masses? So essentially what happens is एक तो हमारा internet इस तरह का है कि whenever they sort of take classes from home, somebody is attentive, somebody is not, पीछे कोई कुछ कर रहा है, कोई कुछ कर रहा है and for the first couple of years we kept trying to thinker maybe we will face success, maybe we won't but we never really sort of crack that code, right? And how do we master that from home? कुछ लोग अभी भी कर लेते हैं. Those are people that are very self reliant. तो वह recorded content है, वह देखते हैं और सोकर No, करते no, it wasn't recorded content. This was live content that we were walking everybody through. So, the challenge was internet issues, tension issues, comprehension issues. They're like थोड़ा सा भी अगर आप beach में distract हो जाते हो and the trainer wouldn't know, right? Trainer wouldn't know if you are paying attention or if you are not paying attention. But when you are in a class, trainer knows you are not paying attention. They'll call you or they'll say यार देखो if you really want to do this, do this because it's a free training. मुझे कुछ नहीं मिल रहा, तुम्हें कुछ नहीं मिल रहा. You don't wanna do this to sort of, you know, improve yourself. Don't waste your time. Don't waste somebody else's time. This is a seat that somebody else can utilize and sort of, you know, get a job for themselves four weeks from now. So don't do that. तो we we really wanna crack that code. I would have loved it. Had we been able to crack that code where we could sort of train people remotely, hasn't really happened. Who knows? Maybe in the future it might.

Makes sense. Makes sense. And and, also,

coming to the fact where you mentioned that, you know, some of the skill sets are not available. When we talk about ILA, even the government itself sort of wants to sort of work in investing in in the youth in the market. Right? So the government of Punjab, they reached out to us. They said we wanna contribute to the youth. Right? And, we've so they knew about our ILA program. Somebody told them. And, so, you know, the skills training program that the Punjab government have, one of the M and A's, and Doctor Ta, he probably reached he reached out and he said that, you know, we wanna really make sure that the youth in Punjab are skilled to sort of earn a lot of money. And whatever we could do, we wanna do that. So just let us know how we could contribute. So we told them about ILE. We told them how we sort of scale up and everything. And they they were really interested. They took the entire model. They got it approved. And now we are working with the government hopefully soon to sort of set this up so that our goal is in the next four to five years we train 5,000 people to sort of work in BPOs and sort of take home 6 figure salaries.

Makes sense. मुझे यह बताएं कि आप लोगों की retention कैसी है at this point in time particularly last couple of years when a lot of people and a lot of IT services business particularly not sure about BPO. They complaint कि यार बंदा बहुत छोड़ छोड़कर हमने साल लगाए train करने में and बंदा जो है वह छोड़कर चला गया, Dubai चला गया, बाहर चला गया. How's the retention generally in the in the BPO industry and particularly in the last two years what has it been like?

अच्छा retention for a BPO is generally always a little high. Reason being because this is an entry level job, right? Retention is higher or churn is higher? Churn, my bad. So retention when we talk about retention हमारा जो retention है after every year, year and a half we sort of, you know, start afresh. The reason being it's a entry level job and generally you kind of realize in BPOs or in customer service or in call centers, nobody's calling to sort of say, you know what, keep up the good job. We wanna make sure that you're in the seat for the next ten years. So the stress level and everything is there. And, generally, what happens is that a lot of people, they move up, or after two or three years, they move out. So, overall, if I talk about numbers, we're really happy with the numbers. In terms of churn, we like 7%, you know, churn होता है हमारा and that's understandable. That's per month. Yeah, that's per month. And it's understandable because these are entry level jobs that we provide. Once they sort of realize they they've been here for the for an year or a year and a half, they're like, you know what? I have learned enough for me to go back to my core career. Right. Some people wanna do training, some people wanna do marketing, some people wanna do supply chain. So generally हमारे alumnis you will see everywhere. I think so I generally travel abroad a lot and to this date I haven't had the pleasure of going abroad and not meeting one of our alumnis.

We always find Ibex alumnis somewhere or the other. Nice, makes sense. In terms of I mean you are you are looking after recruitment. आपको की जो hiring का process है, what does it look like? What's the strategy there in terms of what sort of people are you looking at?

So, essentially, it depends. It depends by client. So, for instance, we hire doctors. They're doctors. They're working for us. We hire somebody that's a supply chain specialist. We hire travel agent specialists as well. So it entirely depends on the kind of clients that we're getting. So for instance, Muzamel Hassan comes to me and says, you know what? I need somebody to edit my videos for me. So we'll hire that individual from the market. We'll train them, and we'll upskill them, and we'll make sure that, you know, he's supposed to help. So in terms of skill that's that's where we are at. We we sort of.

पर इसमें ज़ाहिर है वह है ना you would divide this into different verticals. जो एक customer service वाला है वह तो stand alone है. You don't need a specialized skill for that. Yeah yeah. So-so as I mentioned level one, level two, level three, right? So we have a lot of level two and level three as well. That is

IT related services. Level one is our basic customer service jobs, etcetera. Where somebody calls in and just help them with either their banks

or you know internet issues etcetera what not. So, case में for example जो level two और level three उसमें आपको actually specialist चाहिए होते हैं. What? They able to sort out their IT problems और अगर कोई medical related है तो उसके लिए आपको कोई doctors या उस तरह के लोग चाहिए होते हैं basically. Absolutely. So, we as mentioned we have doctors, we have health specialist,

you know, we have sales insurance specialist as well. हमारे यहां US की काफी clienteles आते हैं जो कि, you know, taxation और different चीज़ों के ऊपर काम कर रहे होते हैं. So we need specialist based on the clientele. लेकिन obviously major workforce is

level one customer service that we sort of do. Makes sense and in terms of your growth strategy what's the vision here?

I think ideally, what I wanna do, I would love to see is more and more BPOs sort of pop up in Pakistan. One of the challenges is that if you talk about size, we are the biggest BPO right now in Pakistan. And I think the more and more BPOs come in the more people realize that this is a sort of you know feel that they could make a career out of it. I think वह talent pool भी increase होता है ना? Absolutely. जितने ज़्यादा players आते हैं उतना ज़्यादा demand increase होती उतनी ज़्यादा automatically ecosystem create हो जाता है. Absolutely and there are players in the market but I want to make sure that the concentrics of the world, the 24 sevens of the world, the Accentures of the world, if they come here that means more and more people will sort of jump that ship and they'll realize कि यार इतनी बड़ी बड़ी companies आ रही तो that's a viable career. अभी right now we are the biggest player but there are other players as well but let's let's sort of open it up just like India did and and the talent pool will then increase. अभी तो यह है कि the challenge is there. I got to hire you know 100 people that means at 2% I I got to have a you know lead pool of almost 20,000 to be able to hire 200 people. Right.

यह जो आप trainings करवा रहे होते हैं talent को, मैं इसको बार बार bring up कर रहा हूं because Pakistan में I feel like the point hasn't been driven home yet properly and it is not just about BPO, right? This this is a soft skill problem which is which I I interact with freelancers every day. I interact with agency owners every day. जो एक चीज़ पाक्षतानियों को अभी तक रोक रही है ना growth से वह यही है कि यह तो communication skills का मसला है. So client से बात हो रही है, ना उसकी बात समझ आ रही है, ना अपनी बात समझा पा रहे हैं या फिर you know work ethic का मसला है कहीं ना कहीं और यह मैं honest to god I've I've the stories I've heard is just fascinating कि यार Middle East में अच्छी well paying $3,000 job बच्चा interview में आता है बनियान पहन के बिस्तर में लेटा मैं. बैठा हुआ है कुर्सी पर पीछे शर्वार लटकी हुई है, नाडा लटक रहा है. And and this is this is these are real examples that I have heard from people in the Middle East and they said, you know, and and यह पाकिस्तानी लोग थे जिन्होंने कहा हमने convince कि अपनी companies को कि Pakistan से hire करें and then the HR had to have these interviews and you just like यार यह तो basics हैं. इसमें मैं उस बच्चे को मतलब मैं blame कर सकता हूं अगर मैं वह करूं लेकिन first clearly nobody advised the child कि यार भाई यह नहीं करनी है हरकतें. Right? So in terms of the work ethic, in terms of the professional commitment for work कि work work है. शुगल मेला अपनी जगह कर लेना, काम करो यार. पैसे कमाने के लिए काम करो, पैसे कमाओ और फिर पैसे से जो ही ऐसी करनी है कर लो. Considering the scale of people that you're hiring and I've hired I mean मैंने maximum अपनी life में शायद मेरा ख्याल पैंतीस चालीस लोग hire किए होंगे on and off अपनी company के लिए. I think talent acquisition is one of the hardest things that I've ever had to do in Pakistan because editor की job डालो तो आपको जो है ना वह मतलब इस्लामाबाद में कह रहा कि इस्लामाबाद की job है. मुझे सिंध से कोई bank literally सिंध में एक bank manager apply कर रहा है. मैंने लिखा हुआ है fresh out of college entry level job है editor की. यार आप 45 year old हो, you live in सिंध, you probably have a family, you are a bank manager. Why do you think that you can do an editor job? Like, right like so I don't know what they are thinking. वह critical thinking तो बात की बात है आप application में भी तो critical thinking थोड़ी सी दिखाओ. How have you been able to hire 8,500 people and that with a with a churn rate of like six to 7%, I think the overall hiring in in in all of history must be well over a 100,000.

So I think fair point कि one of the biggest challenges के work ethics जो हैं हमारे वह बिल्कुल ही different हैं. So I'll give you an example. One of the biggest pain points that BPO sort of get is कि यार phones लेकर floor पर नहीं जाने दिए जाते हैं. अब imagine you're working for clients that sort of house customers' credit card details, their phone numbers and everything और at a click of a button you could take the screenshot of that credit card and you could sort of send that credit card flying across the globe. Now people are like, no but why aren't we allowed to keep phones on the floor? Now, when you make them understand कि देखो data security है, PCI compliance होती है, you gotta do that. They're like, no but this this feels like school. This feels like school. So I'll I'll give you an example. So imagine having a workforce of 8,500. Everybody says that I want to go on break at once. Imagine you work for a giant like, you know, a bank and you call in and nobody picks up the phone because everybody wants to take a break together. Yeah. So, वह जो work ethics हैं, that's that's that is a pain point. And while we get a lot of flack across the board कि यार यह चीज़ें आपका challenge हैं, यह आप लोगों ने school बनाया हुआ है. People don't tend to realize that's how businesses run and And that's the requirement of the business. आप उसे agree करें disagree at the end of the day that's what the business and that's not you deciding the requirement. Yeah. This is the requirement that's been given to you. Yes, this is the client requirement care. It has to be PCI compliant. You have to have 100 people taking call at a particular time so that if their customers call in, you have somebody answering for that, right? And work ethics is something that is not really, you know, engulfed in पाकिस्तानीs. We might have talent but talent needs to be groomed and molded, right? And that's one of the things that we feel like it's missing. And whenever, that's why a lot of the rejections that we do, in an interview somebody would come in and say, यार, you know what? I just don't feel like we're in an interview right now and can we reschedule this right now? And he's sitting in an interview and there there are so many examples मुसंबल that I can give you. But the thing is ideally I want to focus on the positives and as in as a country we have talent.

We want to work on that talent. I know man. I feel like we have human capital. I don't agree we have talent. There is nothing wrong with saying that by the way. एक हमारे यहां वह एक taboo भी वन गया ना कि oh my god, वह तो एक नारा था कि हमारे यहां इतना talent है हम इसको अगर वह कर लें. Countries में होता है India का भी capital था उसको उन्होंने talent में बनाया. बनाया. पहला step यह है to identify कि यार this is it's a it's a very basic problem solving. It's not even like a negative or a you know कि आप मज़ाक उड़ा रहे हो या आप उसको जो है criticize कर रहे हो. It's just मेरे लिए ना it keeps me up at night कि I find so many young kids who are unable to find jobs and who are talking about the fact कि यार life is tough, economy is getting worse and worse by the day, there is inflation, there is stagnation and while they are saying that there are companies saying we can't find talent. We are itching to grow, we can't find talent. It makes no sense to me कि बच्चा आकर मुझे कहता कि यार यार तो डेढ़ लाख की नौकरी मिलेगी 50 people on the podcast. A vast majority of them spent a lot of their time working for free. मैं तो आप आप तो working for free की भी बात नहीं कर रहे. मैं तो आपको बता रहा हूं working for free because अगर उनको job नहीं मिल रही थी ना तो they were like you know any hour spent not working is me losing my time right because you're not gaining anything. When you're working it's either you gain money or you gain experience right? So for me every hour needs to be valuable whether that is even for free I'm gaining experience or if I can get experience and money well and good. तो मेरे लिए यह जो जो conflict है जो जो dichotomy है of कि यार jobs भी हैं और joblessness भी है. How does that work out?

I think you mentioned that early in the podcast कि हमारे ना mindset एक है we want to go from zero to 100 in one jump. We don't wanna take that step one, step two, step three, step four. And I think that's where the talent sort of goes to waste. I think talent is absolutely there as long as we apply ourselves. And that's challenge that we have. People don't want to apply themselves. They are like, I have seen मुज़मिल grow from zero to 100, so I want to go to 100. Don't want to see what मुज़मिल did four, five years. Fifteen years prior, by What the was the effort that took मुज़मिल for मुज़मिल to be where he is at right now? Yeah. And I think that's the challenge and I hope and I pray that you know people come to this senses. क्योंकि if you if you know we we talk about COVID. COVID से पहले ना सारी चीज़ें easy हो रही थी. Everybody was like अच्छा education maybe pass करा दो, इन लोगों को pass करवा दो, घर से काम भी करवा दो. But companies are now going back to their default. They're like no, you're to come into work, you're to put in the hours. So, Musk fired a lot of people from Twitter. They said कि this is the kind of way I want you to work. Either you do that work or you move on. And I think they're sort of resorting back to that their default. And unless we sort of realize how we need to work, we will be left without people that can do work. और वही वाला problem आएगा जो the problem that you're stating कि people want to work but companies can't find work because their expectations and the requirements from the companies are not same. So, we need to as a, you know, country come up to that solution. And in terms of English language,

ज़ाहिर अब अगर आपने पचासी सौ से दस हज़ार और दस हज़ार से पचास हज़ार रुपए जाना है तो you are looking at the masses, right? You know, I think 3040% FSE है and then उसके बाद फिर मद्रसाह and you have an entire spectrum of kids coming from different backgrounds. Similarly आपकी जो बड़ी universities होती हैं Lums, G I K, Nast उनके अंदर वह आपके हम देखते हैं ना कि best jobs तो जो हैं वह आपकी B.A.T. की है और Philip Morris की है और you know so on and so forth. You get a maximum of 500 kids going there every year. Yeah. Right? You have a half a million people graduating. It's barely it's the tip of the iceberg. जो much of the rest of the talent and that talent again is coming at scale now, उसका जो background है उसकी जो you know and a lot of that talent also is is is first generation getting into like sort of very prolonged organized learning क्योंकि rural to urban movement भी थी तो उसके अंदर you know parents not necessarily very educated but the kids are now where जो blue collar worker था उसने अपने बच्चे को educate करा करके अब वह जाता है कि वह white collar पर जाए. वहां पर जो एक weird चीज़ मैंने देखी recent times में वह this this this thing about पाकिस्तानी is hating on English That I don't I mean मेरा computer science का background है ना तो हम तो दस बारह पंद्रह साल से जब से हम इस field के अंदर आए तो हमें यह बात पता थी कि यार communication होगी तो काम धंधा चलेगा because आपका काम global है. आपका client global है. आपने communicators के साथ globally करना है. Pakistan में आप जाकर देखें यह सिर्फ़ आपको business में नहीं नज़र आ रहा. आप YouTube पर channels खोलें. India में दस दस पंद्रह पंद्रह million subscribers वाले channels हैं fully English के अंदर. Pakistan में आप English के ऊपर एक video बनाते हैं ना नीचे comment section But for some reason I don't know, I don't know what what the reason is. I don't know if there was trauma growing up where people made fun of you for English, what it was. But यार again problem solving, logical problem solving. You want to globalize yourself, you want to earn in dollars, you want to be export focused, you want to work with international clients but the very fundamental base layer thing that you need is the communication language और and by the way यह सारी चीज़ें मैंने mentioning you also want to move out. A million people are moving out every year but English language is a problem. So आपने पहला तो सवाल probably यह होगा. You've been there for eighteen years? Eighteen years. Two thousand six से अगर लगा लो तो. तो generally in terms of the the the level of English, the level of communication, मैं भी ethic की बात नहीं कर रहा, purely communication की बात कर रहा हूं. Has that improved? Has that diminished? Has that remain the same? What has your experience been in terms of the newer talent that's now coming in? And and obviously the the the numbers have have changed as well

जो आपकी growth की वजह से आप लोगों को hire कर रहे हैं. अच्छा when when I started off उस वक्त तो the kind of hiring we used to do we were very small right? We like 50 to 200 people के beach की organization था. We would only hire people that were from abroad. So anybody that was here क्योंकि एक बार भी set करनी थी, we wanted to make sure that whoever sort of went on the call with us couldn't tell that the business was in Pakistan, right? So that was the bar then. Then we sort of grew, then we hired everybody and if if I were to compare between the let's say the time slot between thirteen till two thousand eighteen nineteen and then from that points to now. अच्छा, English language has improved, you know, in ONA level students. That has improved but the challenge is that the masses, they still haven't sort of picked up on that. So, one of the challenges that I see is that almost every school that you go in is a private school is an English language school. How is it that every English language school is not training out somebody that can speak English fluently? आपकी physics English में है, आपकी math English में है, आपकी everything is in English, right? और अगर वह बच्चा English में fluent नहीं है तो how is he even able to understand a lot of these things जो कि English language के अंदर है ना? पर तो conceptually उसके मसले होंगे. And and that's the challenge, right? So, one of the things that O and A levels do really well is, they are able to sort of articulate really well with the students, they connect, they resonate and they ensure that that level of education sets you up for success. वह अगर English पर काम करते हैं तो वह दिखता है and if I were to sort of pull out a spectrum of all the people that I hire, most of these are from OA levels. But when we talk about SSC, HSC, the language of you know English language is far below ONA levels. And that's the challenge that we have because most of the people don't go into OO level institutions, right? They go into FSC, SSC and everything is in English and still we can't speak English. And that's a stigma, call it whatever. लेकिन the challenge is if you want to earn big money,

you need to have good command over English. If you don't have it, you're not going to make good money. आप उसमें जितना रोना है ना रोलें, that's the global language. The, that's the language of business, right? So, आप उसको I mean हम तो Pakistan है यार बड़ी बड़ी countries of the world वह भी business के लिए English कर रही हैं. बिल्कुल ऐसा. You know they have to do it. मुझे यह बताइएगा. I remember I saw this documentary about India and and their BPO industry और उसमें उन्होंने पूरा वह दिखाया हुआ था कि जो जो driving force थी ना behind talent कि भाई आपका काम है कि आपने business लेकर आना है और आपका काम है कि आपने बंदा quickly उठाना है और उसको business पर लगाना है, right? जब आप सारा का सारा काम अपनी supply पर लगा देते हैं ना तो demand नहीं वन पाती. Right? तो India में मैंने देखा कि जी वहां पर चूंकि consumer की एक demand वन गई थी कि यार हमें IT industry में जाना है, BPO में जाना है, लेकिन क्या industry driven जो job requirements हैं, उसके लिए training होती है क्योंकि India में the the the quality of talent that आपने बोला ना हम OE lovers के लोग उठाते हैं. Again 1%. उसमें से वह पूली इतना छोटा है कि आप आगे जा ही नहीं सकते. आप अगर कभी compare करें ना जो पाकिस्तानी एक average job पर लगा होता है यहां पर और जो Indian average job पर लगा होता Indian more often than not बहुत masters से आया हुआ होता है. उसको सिर्फ learning and development इतनी अच्छी दे दी हुई होती है कि वह बिल्कुल let's say गांव से भी उठकर आएगा ना तो वह बहुत high value काम कर रहा है और यह again मैं I I see this in the Middle East. You know the bottom of the food chain is always gonna be पाकिस्तानी जो कि बेचारा दो चार साल की उसकी life cycle है. Drivers हैं, सारे के सारे construction workers हैं. All of that is is gonna be automated. वह already wait कर रहे हैं कि यार इनको हमने बाहर निकाल लें. Accounting का काम सारा Indian कर रहा है. Hospitality का सारा काम Indian कर रहा है क्योंकि वह बेहतरीन अंग्रेज़ी बोलता है. वह बेहतरीन तरीके से उसको इतना वह sense है कि यार हमने interact कितना करना है, customer satisfaction कितना drive करनी है कि वह सारी की सारी बिल्कुल at the tip of the white collar जहां से start हो रहा है ना वहां पर सारा Indian बैठा हुआ है और जितना भी blue collar है, जितना भी rugged बारह बारह घंटे की shiftओं वाला, you know, बिल्कुल lowest paying वह Pakistan ही बैठा हुआ है. I'm curious कि Pakistan में private sector क्या इसके ऊपर काम करता है? Do you have organizations that have come in and said listen, we'll train the talent for you and every time we'll bring in the talent, do you give us like a, you know, half a salary or something? Because we're actually, saving your time because just the sheer number the scale is too big, right? आप अगर मुझे कह रहे हैं कि यार आठ हज़ार में से 5% भी churn है that means you are hiring 400 people every month, right? So, अगर मैं चार सौ बंदा train करके आपको आपकी requirement समझकर लाकर देना शुरू कर दूं मैं उसका 10% of the salary भी उठाना शुरू कर दूं it's a good business. It is. And then I can charge the the kids who want to get jobs as well. So what does the private sector look like in terms of learning and development?

So we we work with a couple of language institutions. One of the reasons that we had to start ILA of our own was the fact that we were working with linguistic institutions and they they were just not able to crack the code. They were not able to give us the kind of people that we wanted. So, वही वाला challenge है कि even though the private institutions are there, either they are not able to understand the need of how quickly do we need that individual and we we work with multiple language institutions and we are still partnering up with a couple and they are and we incentivize them कि यार आपका कोई problem नहीं है. You can tell these guys so for a language institution they actually sort of promote that you know come learn English language with us and we will get you a job And even after that, they are not able to produce results and that's the reason we sort of took this into our own and we like, let's try and see if we could make it work and we were able to make it work because we kind of realize कि क्या करना है. लेकिन absolutely we need players like this. Imagine this is just us. There are other players in the market that are right now hiring for BPOs, for customer service, for you know even when you are Amazon assistant x y z, you need good English language skills, right? To be able to handle those customers And there is a lot of growth potential in that industry. If you have private industries that could sort of churn out this number, this would then meet the supply with the demand, which is right now not happening as rapidly or on at the scale that we want it to. And we would love for that to happen. We we work with different remote recruiters, x y z, whatever, and we sort of incentivize them कि यार, you have somebody that would be a good plug and play for us, why not? Give us that guy who can speak English really well. But I think as an incentive for private organizations that needs to happen. The government of Punjab is taking that initiative कि यार हम लोग अपने तौर पर कुछ कर लेते हैं but private sectors can do that to make money. You you said it कि even if they give us, you know, half of that workforce, you take home a good chunk of change and you can keep the cycle running. You charge people for language skills as well and you charge us for that candidate as well. Recruitment as well. That's all.

आपका जो model BPO का जो model है particularly अगर मैं within BPO भी मैं customer service की बात करूं, Pakistan में generally female workforce has found it difficult to integrate. There's a lot of cultural nuances and problems. BPO ends up providing you with a good comfortable environment. Downside यह है कि obviously night time is is you know वह भी मसला आता है for a lot of girls. Permissions के मसले होंगे, यह होगा, वह होगा. But अगर आप उसको side पर रखें तो आपके जैसी at least जो organization है. I know for a fact I, you know, the the इस level की जो MNC होती है, उनके protocols जो होते हैं, उनकी security की जो सारी की सारी चीज़ें होती हैं, they must be rock solid. लड़कियां generally जब आप देखते हैं ना मुझे growing up भी मुझे याद है कि if we had like a bunch of 10 cousins and if you had to ask me same schoolओं में गए होंगे. If you had to ask me कि अंग्रेज़ी अच्छी कौन बोलता वह सारी लड़कियां होंगी, right? In terms of empathy, girls are just authentically better at at being empathetic, right? I am curious कि आपकी workforce में कितनी ख्वाह तीन है? And have you taken any initiative? Obviously, nighttime is a problem, and that problem will will will primarily be impacting the the the husbands or the fathers or the mothers more than the actual girl herself. So have you taken any initiative to provide, you know, कि यार हम आपको security provide करेंगे? Is this a comfortable environment to to allow for girls coming in? Because otherwise वह कुछ भी नहीं कर रही. Right? हां, fair enough. Because of the access to a lack of safe environment because you actually have an opportunity जहां पर girls could really perform well. I'm curious कि how much of your workforce is women and what do you is it just standard ठीक है हमारी job है लड़का कर ले, लड़की कर ले या have you taken some initiatives to empower women to actually be a part of the workforce?

So, excellent question. So, to give you a number almost 35% of workforce are female. And I'm talking predominantly all of these are working nights. Mhmm. So that's a big number considering the fact के 35% workforce female है and they're working nights. Now, what do we do to sort of ensure that they feel safe? Anybody that sort of applies, what we do is we tell their parents कि यार, if you feel, if you don't feel safe, normally we have strict protocols that PCI compliant floors हैं, सारी चीज़ें हैं. We can't let anybody that's, you know, nobody go on the floor. But what we do especially just for girls is if their parents feel safe, we will call them in. We'll show them the entire facility. So almost entire facility has so many cameras to ensure that, you know, safety is of topmost priority. That's one. So, essentially, there there are almost, on a weekly basis, four to five parents visiting just so that they feel safe, that, you know, their their child is in a safe environment, x y z, whatnot. So they come in, they look at the facility, they're they're happy. That's the, you know Baseline. Baseline. उसके बाद होता यह है कि the physical security is there when every gate, every checkpoint is a guard to ensure that, you know, there is physical security as well. That's second step. Then the third step is we provide door to door pick and drop. So one of the major challenges that women have is when they have to leave their house, वह घर से निकलना, stop पर जाना है, stop पर कोई कुछ कह दे, कोई कुछ कर दे and then when they go back at night that's a challenge, right? So, in order to sort of counter that we provide door to door transportation. So, the challenge is the challenge generally which is there कि बाहर जाएगी, लोग क्या कहेंगे, क्या कहेंगे? आपके घर के gate पर गाड़ी आई, उसने आपको pick किया, आपको office के gate पर drop किया. So that access is safety, आपका safety है. वहां पर कर ली, physical safety in the facilities already there and then to ensure that, you know, within the facility we're safe as well. There are cameras, monitoring as well as guards on every floor. तो वह, I think, as far as safety is concerned, the standards are such कि we we have to maintain it as an MNC कि everybody feels safe. And that's why we are at 35 and the goal of the company is to keep it at even fifty fifty. So when we started off, we were very low at around like, you know, 1520%. Now we were at 35%. But the goal is in the next, you know, two, three years, we keep it right down the middle fifty fifty. Makes sense. And I think one of the things that really work well in women's, you know, in females' advantages. So, for instance, let's talk about, you know, how many d pharmacists that you probably have graduating every year in the market. Now when you talk about these, you know, females that graduate from d pharmacy, they don't really go into the job market. But they speak English really well. They can write, speak. You know, they they are an excellent resource for us. So what we did a couple of years back was we targeted these female and we told them that, you know, we have excellent environment. Have your parents come in and see this environment and see if this is something that you want to do. And that is, that was one of the success areas for us and we were able to tell them that, you know, even though you work in d pharmacy, you're not working anywhere right now. Come work for us. It's a safe environment. You get door and door to door pickup. Safety is there. You get a healthy paycheck. You speak English really well, you take home 6 figures. What is it that you, you know, you get financial independence. You are not a burden on your parents. You you make money for yourself and, you know, you can run your own business six months from now. If Or you wanna go abroad as well, you save up and you do that. So in terms of female, I I think that's where we're most heavily sort of focused on. We wanna make sure that we give as many female an opportunity to sort of work because in small BPOs and small sort of, you know, companies, that kind of level of scrutiny is not there. So we know we can provide that. That's why we're really heavily focused on ensuring that, you know, we get more and more females in our through those doors. Makes sense. I'm gonna go towards wrapping up but

just to build context, Pakistan में मैं बार बार यह numbers फेंकता हूं, मैं फेंकता रहूंगा जब तक लोग उसको internalize ना कर लें. पचास लाख लोग अट्ठारह साल की उम्र को पहुंच रहे हैं. पच्चीस लाख उसमें से school high school graduate करते हैं. पांच लाख उसमें से university जाते हैं. जब आप HEC का data निकालकर देखते हैं सारा website पर available है तो आपको पता लगता है कि vast majority of the those going to universities actually end up doing natural sciences. So, physics पढ़ रहे हैं, biology पढ़ रहे हैं. Not really knowing कि इसके real world impact क्या है? I mean, you're not going into research. Yeah. जब आप जाते के कह रहे हैं कि यार डेढ़ दो लाख बच्चा जो है वह basic science पढ़ रहा है तो उसकी applicability किधर होगी? Right? So there is a huge mismatch between और और यह by the way यह बच्चे वह नहीं हैं जो कि you know Stanford में जो बच्चा जा रहा है ना उसको ताकि हमें अच्छी job मिल जाए. वह bachelor's करते हैं, job नहीं मिलती. वह कहते यार चलो job मिलेगी जब हम masters करेंगे. यार मैंने तो जब देखा है कि जब अगर आप if you are at the right person for the right job at the right time तो आपको bachelor's ना भी हो तब भी आपकी job लग जाती है और मैंने यह भी देखा है कि आप PhD भी करके बैठ जाएं तो आपको नौकरी नहीं मिलेगी अगर आपने एक random चीज़ उठाकर कर ली है जिसकी कोई demand ही नहीं है. Unfortunately, Pakistan में जो हमारी पुरानी generations हैं, because people don't look at data, people go with anecdotal experience more often than not. तो वह, you know, हर खानदान में कोई एक doctor अगर मशहूर था तो पूरे खानदान के तीस बच्चे अगर जो है ना doctor वन जाएंगे तो demand and supply out हो जाएगी, right? Yes sir. And so we are already seeing that where we don't have industrialization but we have too many engineers. We don't have any research but we have a lot of natural sciences people. बड़ी मज़े मज़े की मुझे चीज़ें नज़र आई. आपकी agriculture is your I don't know 3040% of your GDP or even more. Less than 1% of graduates graduate in agriculture, right? This is a core industry. You would imagine इसके ऊपर research and development हो रही है और उस पर लोग पढ़ रहे हैं और किसान का बच्चा agriculture पढ़कर वापस अपने farm को बेहतर कर रहा है. वहां पर कोई वह नहीं है. So, यह जो traditional careers हैं, जो traditional jobs हैं और the lack thereof to be very honest, what are your thoughts about that कि हमारे यहां जो है ना वह एक अजीब सा miss mismatch है कि in terms of even our degrees we choose random degrees based on I don't know arbitrary random perceptions of what might give us success. In terms of jobs, we're chasing something that doesn't exist and to be very honest in the age of AI, a lot of work is actually not even was not even born a couple of years ago. Right? Like we did not did not even exist a couple of years ago, was born really this year. And so what would your thoughts be for a lot of young kids getting into their careers right now, looking at jobs and thinking कि यार you know वह चाचू ने जो system follow किया था ना हम भी वही करेंगे.

I think to give you a little context one of the one of the most successful managers that we had you know at least working for me she was a you know PhD in biology And I asked her, did you do PhD in biology? And and for the love of everything, she she couldn't tell me exactly why. But she did her PhD and she was such an amazing talent. And I think one of the challenges was nobody probably told her where her skill would be, you know, best utilized. And right now she's she's doing amazing. She's in केंद्रा. She's a chief of staff and everything, and she's doing amazing. And that's the challenge. We we don't know what we want. I started off, you know, I for the longest time all I wanted to do was be a software engineer. I didn't even know what software engineering was when I wanted to be a software engineer and just that was it. And the moment I started working here, I kind of realized, yeah, I enjoy doing what I'm doing right now. And I enjoy this unconventional job that is not the norm, that is not a doctor or an engineer. And that's that's where we we need to understand that we have to break that stigma. We have to take that step forward. We have to learn, and we have to unlearn the previous sort of, you know, complications that we have set for ourselves that, you know, we can only be successful if you're called a doctor or an engineer. And that's where the future is. You gotta go in and you gotta apply yourself and be be something that the next five year is asking from you and not what has happened in the past. I think on that note, what I'd say is, let's go on and let's take on the new roles that are in the market and let's not just be bogged down by the conventional norms and let's do things differently.

Makes sense. And to wrap it up, what's the what's the vision for Ibex over the next five years? And tied to that question, how do you see Pakistan in twenty fifty, twenty five years from now? Knowing what you know now, seeing what you've been seeing over the last many many years? I think we we we are progressing in the right direction. As far as Ibex is concerned,

the growth has been tremendous in the last four years, and I don't see that stopping. From four to 8,000, it took us four years. But what I expect is that in the next two years, that's gonna double again, and then it's gonna double again. The reason is now people are realizing that there is talent pool available at a reduced cost, and businesses would always choose that, you know, path where they could save money and get better services. So that's there for Ibex. Ibex will need people to work for them and that that sort of ecosystem needs to be developed. We're working with the government to do that. Hopefully, that flourishes and, you know, we could give more and more job to people. As far as Pakistan's concern for 2050, I just hope that we have learned a lesson. We don't tinker too much with what has happened in the past and we just focus on what is need in the future. We need to understand our work ethics. We need to understand what is the global expectancy from us as a employee. And I think as long as we deliver on that front, the talent is there. We just need to apply it and we need to understand that there are no shortcuts. As long as we do that, we are set. So you're particularly bullish on Pakistan for 2050 then? Oh, absolutely. So I'll tell you why. So I've recently been to Canada, US and what I could tell you is that these places are already, you know, filled with immigrate immigrants and if somebody, you know, from Pakistan wants to go there, it's not easy. So unless we sort of develop, sort of depend on ourselves and we try and develop our own sort of country, we we have nowhere to go. So I have to be bullish on Pakistan and unless we sort of develop our country,

we have nowhere to go. Makes sense. Yeah sir, thank you so much for coming in and sharing all that insight. Thank you मुज़मूल. Thank you for having me. And for all of you guys, thank you so much for watching. Let me know in the comment section below what are your thoughts on Pakistan's job market? Where does the opportunity lie? Particularly मुझे मालूम है. देखें अगर मैं for example BPO की बात कर रहा हूं तो इसका मतलब कताई यह नहीं है कि आप data science की job छोड़े और BPO पर आ जाएं. Pakistan में एक मसला यह भी होता है कि we do not truly understand how different segments of the society work, how there are many many different people and they have their own set of requirements. उनके अपना IQ होता है, IQ होता है, उनका temperament होता है. हर बंदा एक चीज़ पर नहीं कर सकता. अगर एक नारा लगता है Amazon का तो दस लाख लोग Amazon नहीं कर सकते. उसमें से कुछ लोग हैं वह Amazon कर लेंगे, कुछ लोग हैं वह कुछ और करेंगे. ज़हर एक economy है उसके अंदर हर किसंग का काम होना है. You know, something as simple as कि यार textile factory के अंदर someone who is very unskilled or uneducated can actually quickly get a job, you know, and make clothes to, you know, comparatively higher level, higher level, higher level, higher level और जितना ज़्यादा आप higher level जाते रहेंगे, उतनी ज़्यादा volume कम होती रहेगी. So even if आप अगर एक ऐसी industry में हैं जिसमें आपको लगता है कि यार नहीं, you know, BPO तो पुराने वक्त का काम है, आने वाले वक्त में कुछ और होगा तो again for a certain segment that might hold true. For a vast majority of people in the absence of quality opportunities I think BPO has a great future. You might see a a switch of what the nature of work might look like. But I think the future of Pakistan 100% is in the export of services. And in that context it's very very important to understand कि जो companies हैं जो कि export को ना सिर्फ कर रही हैं बल्कि champion कर चुकी हैं Ibex, TRG, Affinity, are are those guys still with you or have you guys spun off into? It's a different sort of company but Ibex is core in customer service BPO

और Affinity is mostly into IT,

AI, etcetera. Makes sense. So, these companies have been around and they have a wealth of experience. जिस experience से चाहे आप उधर काम करें उससे सीख सकते हैं, चाहे आप उनको study करें उससे सीख सकते हैं. But nonetheless, this is अमन्याल संजय दी for watching Thought Behind Things. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.