Thought Behind Things · Apr 19, 2024 · 1:07:29
Pakistan's exports lose at the shelf, not the field
MacPac Films managing director Ehtesham Maqbool Elahi on a forty-year packaging journey, surviving a fire that wiped out thirty years of work, the patent that killed bioplastic, and why Pakistani exports keep losing on the shelf instead of the field.
with Ehtesham Maqbool Elahi
16 min read
A special episode, and why packaging earned one
The episode opens with Muzamil flagging that this is a special drop while season five of Thought Behind Things sits paused for a redesign. He has decided that whenever a Friday conversation is worth sharing, he will share it, and the one in front of him qualifies. The guest is Ehtesham Maqbool Elahi, managing director of MacPac Films, and the trigger for the conversation sits in Muzamil’s own recent reporting: Pakistan, he has been arguing, is being forced by the dollar into an inherently globalised, export-led economy, and the smartest young Pakistani keeps looking for a “sexy” business idea — cars, cell phones, aircraft — instead of the boring industries that are quietly carrying the country.
Packaging, in Muzamil’s framing, is exactly that kind of industry. “You have probably used many things in your life that were made by MacPac Films, and you don’t even know about them,” he tells the audience. He met Ehtesham recently, asked him what he did, was intrigued enough by the answer to ask for a factory visit, and was struck by the scale. The invitation to the studio followed.
Muzamil also lays out the personal context that pushed him to book the conversation. Having recently moved to Dubai, he kept noticing that products that are cheap and ordinary inside Pakistan are expensive abroad — and that the few Pakistani products on the shelf were being held back by their own packaging. His Himalayan salt example is the one he keeps coming back to: the Pakistani option was on the shelf, but he could not bring himself to buy it because the packaging was so bad. The thesis of the episode is set right there. The problem is not the product. The problem is the wrap.
A father, a factory, and a delayed phone call from Germany
Ehtesham’s opening answer is a family-history answer. His father came out of the pharmaceutical sector, where he had spent years manufacturing products in other people’s factories, and decided to switch to pharmaceutical packaging — aluminium blister packs, paper boxes, and eventually cellophane imported from Europe. Cellophane, Ehtesham explains, was a paper-and-tree-based film, made from cellulose, dissolvable in water. As global demand outpaced what trees could supply, Europe invented a polypropylene-based replacement called BOPP film in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In 1984 his father got a call from German suppliers. A line had become available because a customer had backed out, and they wanted to know if he would take it. He turned it down — his first son was about to be born and he could not travel. A year later the same suppliers called again. The line was still unsold. He still could not come, because that son was about to turn one. The suppliers waited. Right after the first birthday, his father flew to Germany, and MacPac became the first BOPP film manufacturer in Pakistan.
That son on the phone is Ehtesham. He frames the story as a small piece of family lore, but it is the origin of an entire industry inside Pakistan. “It is now a multi-billion-dollar industry,” he says, “and Alhamdulillah we’ve been part of nurturing it and taking it forward, and that’s what my father was known for.”
What a packaging line actually is
Muzamil pushes for the mechanics. What does a “line” mean here, and how customisable is it for different customers? Ehtesham walks through the physical reality of the plant Muzamil had walked through days earlier. A line is a chain of machines two or three hundred metres long. Plastic resin pellets go in at one end, and several metres-wide rolls of film come out at the other. Those rolls move to a converter, who prints them, and then they end up wrapping biscuits, chips, candies, betel nut, textile socks, and a thousand other everyday products. A coating of “9.9 percent purity aluminium” gives the film its preservation properties.
Customisation, he says, is real but happens at sensible volumes. Ten units of anything is not viable. Ten thousand units of Himalayan salt pouches is. Different companies negotiate different minimum order quantities. Startups that aren’t yet exporting can use unprinted film with a sticker, but the moment a brand decides to compete in an export market, the rules change. “For export markets you have to place yourself with global competition,” he says. “You must invest in packaging for all the products you’re trying to export.”
That line is the hinge of the entire conversation. Muzamil has been arguing that Pakistan must value-add its agricultural produce and ship it out. Ehtesham is telling him, in technical detail, that the value addition is not optional, and that the country already has world-class capability for it sitting inside facilities like his.
October 30, 2007 — the fire
The hardest part of the conversation is the one Ehtesham did not arrive prepared to give. MacPac went public in 2001 to raise growth capital. Ehtesham joined operations in May 2007. By October of the same year, the company had its first positive EPS quarter since listing — a turnaround he describes with a kind of quiet pride, including a zero-working-capital workaround he engineered by using sister concerns and friends and family to purchase raw materials so the plant could keep running.
On the day they announced those results — October 30, 2007 — half the factory burned down.
He got the call at 2:15 in the morning from his GM production. His father was at the K Show in Germany, the biggest plastics trade fair in the world, which Ehtesham now says was a piece of luck. “I don’t think he could have handled it. Thirty years of his hard work — in the next thirty hours I watched it burn down.”
The details he gives are precise and small. The firefighters who arrived asked who would pay for the diesel before they would start. The ones who did start were smoking cigarettes as they walked into the burning building. The local police asked him whether they could escort him out as a director — not whether they could help. He spent thirty-six unslept hours on site, came home black and dark enough that his mother struggled to look at him, and then, once the main film plant turned out to have been saved while the auxiliaries were gone, asked his team a single question: now what?
“They told me, sir, we will do it again, and we will do it better. That gave me a new life.”
Two years of being out of operation followed. He used that time for something almost no one in his shoes would have used it for. With nothing to sell and nothing to buy, he started the company’s digital transformation — its first ERP implementation. That work eventually carried MacPac all the way to a January 2024 SAP S/4HANA go-live, which he flags as a milestone he is still close to.
Public listing, family business, and the word “exponergy”
Muzamil presses on a structural question that recurs across his interviews with Pakistani founders: why are there so few publicly listed companies in Pakistan, and what does life on the exchange actually feel like? Ehtesham is direct. He resisted the listing at the time — he was young, he was studying, and he saw equity as expensive currency to part with for a small ocean of capital. With hindsight, he is unequivocal in the other direction. The SECP framework, he says, is genuinely useful. It forces structure. It opens the door to growth capital through follow-on offerings and rights issues. It creates the system that a scaling company needs anyway. And in his view, the costs are mostly cultural rather than financial. “We are a shy economy. We are not extroverts. We don’t want to share how much we are making.”
The deeper unlock he describes is the move from family business to professional company. MacPac, he insists, is not a family business in operating terms, even though the family holds majority shareholding. The CEO runs the company. Ehtesham, after fifteen years of doing everything by hand, says he is now “zero involved” at the micro level in daily decision-making — and is proud of it.
He gives the architecture a name borrowed from an internal team member, an IBA graduate named Hassan: exponergy. The combination of experience and energy. Older generations have the experience; the youth have the energy; the magic is in fusing the two through communication rather than defensiveness. He extends the point into a wider piece of advice to the youth listening: stop telling your elders they don’t understand, and to the elders, stop refusing to give the youth authority and freedom. “Allah has guided me and my father supported me,” he says of his own arc — but the structural piece, in his telling, is the willingness to professionalise.
He returns to a line his father gave him when he first took a managerial position: every decision you make, imagine it is being made on behalf of a widow somewhere who holds five hundred shares and has no other source of income. MacPac, he says, has received both kinds of letters over the years — the ones from shareholders who funded a daughter’s wedding from share gains, and the ones from shareholders whose savings were wiped out. That, he says, is what minority responsibility actually feels like in practice.
Pakistan does not need more cars — it needs better packaging on what it already grows
Muzamil reframes the conversation back to the macro pitch. For young Pakistanis staring down joblessness and a currency in free float, what does Ehtesham, sitting in the middle of the supply chain, actually see? The answer is unambiguous. “Huge. Amazing,” he says. “There’s so much potential. We shouldn’t let the challenges in our economy and around us and what we see on conventional media bring us down.”
He then makes the part of the case that gives the episode its sharpest takeaway. The export opportunity is sitting inside what Pakistan already produces and currently wastes. Rice bran, which most processors burn or feed to animals, can be pressed into oil and exported by the millions of tons. Chicken feet, which are exported raw to China or dropped into soup at home, can be pickled and packaged for the lollipop-style market they have become there. Potatoes can be dehydrated into powder for mashed-potato product. Mangoes — “the kind we have” — should be reaching foreign shelves in a state that does them justice. Moringa leaves and Himalayan salt sit inside a niche but very large global super-food market with high value-add margins. He sums it up as a single line: “Our waste is the world’s gold.”
The choke point in all of it is the wrap. Pakistan’s packaging facilities, he insists, are already world-class — European and American grade machinery, capable of the highest end of finish. The bottleneck is talent and, more often, the exporter’s decision to underinvest in the packaging layer at all. The line he wants young exporters to internalise is simple. Pick a product. Package it at premium level. Reach customers through Alibaba, Amazon, or your own e-commerce site. Find a coach or a mentor. Stay consistent. The path is unsexy and it works.
He also pushes back on the default of looking only at the US, Canada, and the UK. China alone, he points out, has over 1.5 billion people, and many of the products Pakistan already produces — chillies, chicken feet, salt under their own licensing regime — have real demand there. “Think out of the box. Decide your niche and your passion. Work on it patiently. Be consistent. The fruit will come.”
What packaging is actually for
When Muzamil asks Ehtesham to explain why packaging matters beyond marketing, the answer is structured and worth pausing on. Globally, more than 30 percent of the food we produce is still wasted, and bad packaging is one of the main drivers. Ehtesham gives three purposes for a package, in order. The first is preservation — shelf life, whether that is days for milk or months for biscuits. The second is labelling — allergen information, recycling information, ingredients, recyclability codes. The third, and only the third, is marketing — the visual layer that has to look good enough on the shelf to earn the first sale, and the physical engineering of an easy-peel opening so a child can get to the snack without tearing the bag with their teeth.
“First time, the product sells through the packaging,” he says. After that the product itself has to earn the repeat purchase. But the first sale is engineered through the wrap.
The bioplastic that a patent killed
The longest single technical detour in the episode is on sustainability. Muzamil asks the obvious question. Plastic is non-biodegradable, it ends up in landfills, it ends up in the ocean, and the world has decided it is the problem. How does Ehtesham see the industry from inside?
Ehtesham, who describes himself as a diver who has watched a decade of damage on reefs and as a father worried about the world his children will live in, gives an answer that splits the moral question from the material one. Plastic, he says, does not litter itself. It has no movement of its own. Human behaviour — disposal habits, sorting at source, road-side throwing, ocean dumping — is the live variable. MacPac, he says, makes only PP-range, 100 percent recyclable film, marked with the recycling number five. It runs a sister concern that lifts trash from collection systems and scavengers and converts it into eco-bricks and eco-tiles. Material that has no second life is not made in the first place.
Then he tells the story of the bioplastic that almost replaced everything. The product was polylactic acid, or PLA, made from corn and sugar rather than petrochemicals, mostly sourced out of Brazil. A look-alike film called BOPLA could be run on the same machinery. MacPac was about to commit to it. Then a single global entity patented the PLA process. Prices jumped from roughly $1 to roughly $4. Corn and sugar prices started moving in the world — corn is a major cattle feed, so American beef prices started rising in turn — and the food-security blowback turned what had looked like a clean solution into a non-starter. “Such an amazing product the world had built,” Ehtesham says. “And it was killed.”
He is also direct about the paper alternative. If seven billion people moved off plastic and onto paper tomorrow, the climate cost would be worse, not better. Paper requires more water and more energy than plastic, and the world — Pakistan especially — is already water-scarce. The path he advocates is mono-material design: PP-on-PP, PE-on-PE, no mixed structures. Europe is already moving toward extra taxes on non-compliant imports, and the US has its own rules. The exporter who designs around mono materials wins on shelf acceptance and avoids border penalties at the same time.
Consumption, contamination, and the West’s problem versus ours
Muzamil makes a point Ehtesham clearly likes. The “plastic is the problem” framing is, in large part, a developed-world problem. A household in Dubai or the US consumes vastly more plastic than a household in Pakistan because everything there is overwrapped — a single small product sealed inside fifty layers of film. Pakistan is at roughly seven kilograms of plastic per capita against forty to fifty in the West. The intervention that matters in Pakistan is not abolition. It is behaviour and disposal.
Ehtesham extends the point. Pakistan’s essential categories — flour, rice, lentils, spices — are still largely sold unpackaged. The right move is to expand packaging into the essentials that need it for food safety, while reducing packaging on the categories that do not. Loose milk, he reminds Muzamil, is routinely adulterated in the supply chain. Sealed milk is not. Packaging, used correctly, is a tool of survival. Used as overwrap on a child’s toy, it is waste. The case is calibration, not retreat.
The energy bill that equals another country’s total cost
By the end of the conversation, Muzamil pushes Ehtesham on MacPac’s own next chapter. Is the company going to ride this thesis itself? Ehtesham confirms it already is. MacPac has recently spun up a wholly owned UAE subsidiary, MacPac Middle East, and is exporting into Europe and North America. But he is honest about the limit. The labour-arbitrage story most people tell about Pakistani manufacturing does not apply to a capital-intensive flexible-packaging plant. The arbitrage that does matter, and the one that runs the wrong way, is energy.
Muzamil offers a number from his own life. As a residential customer in the UAE he pays 29 rupees a unit. In Islamabad he pays 65. A two-to-three-times difference flows straight into the unit economics of any product Pakistan tries to export. Ehtesham gives the line that lands hardest in the entire episode. “Our energy cost alone equals some countries’ total processing cost.”
His prescription is structural. Pakistan has the installed generation capacity already — what is broken is distribution and the non-utilisation charges currently being passed to industry. Pass those costs through to export industry instead, he argues, and the country could do far more. And in the longer arc, he is willing to name the unfashionable option directly: nuclear. The US runs on it. Pakistan has the technology. Cheap nuclear-derived power for the population and for industry would change the country’s competitive position in a way that gas exploration alone will not.
MacPac itself, he notes, runs on 100 percent captive power — about six megawatts, historically gas-based, and now adding a megawatt of solar from March, with more to come.
Muzamil’s closing pitch
Muzamil closes by thanking Ehtesham and turning back to camera with the line he wants the audience to leave with. There is, he says, an army of young Pakistanis already drop-shipping Chinese products into global markets through Amazon — applying packaging, branding, and distribution skills to other people’s goods. He wants them to apply the same skill set to Pakistani products instead. Find a local product the world will accept on quality but cannot yet find on a shelf. Wrap it properly. Get it to a warehouse. Earn dollars.
The thesis of the episode, by the end, is a single sentence. Pakistan does not lose its exports in the field. It loses them at the shelf. And the wrap that decides the outcome is a more boring, more solvable, and more lucrative problem than almost anyone in the country is currently treating it as.
Full transcript
शामला ख़बदीना उज़रात. Welcome back to a special episode of thought behind things. जैसा कि आपको पता है thought behind things का season five इस वक़्त paused है. हम उसके ऊपर काम कर रहे हैं. हम उसको थोड़ा सा redesign कर रहे हैं. So it's gonna look very very different. But it's gonna come out maybe in three, four or five months. तब तक Fridays को specifically अगर मुझे कोई interesting conversation मिलती है जैसे कि आज की है तो I'm going to share them with you as special episodes. आज की हमारी guest हैं ऐतिशाम मुकबूल इलाही साहब who is the managing director of MacPac films. यह वाली conversation इस वजह से important है because अगर आपने recently मेरी economics वाली दिल की बात episodes देखी हों तो उसमें मैंने आपको बताया था कि Pakistan की economy अब inherently globalize होगी, export based होगी. जो dollar की pricing है it will make it conducive to manufacture in Pakistan for local needs as well as exports और साथ ही मैंने आपको बताया था कि हमारा जो smartest आदमी है वह unfortunately कोई sexy किस्म का business idea ढूंढता रहता है. वह कहता है यार मुझे गाड़ी की manufacturing में घुसना है या मैंने cell phones बनाने हैं या जहाज़ बनाने हैं यह film इस्तेमाल कर रहा है and majority of that is coming from MacPac films. आपने probably अपनी ज़िंदगी में बहुत सारी चीज़ें इस्तेमाल की होंगी जो कि MacPac films की बनाई हुई हैं लेकिन आपको पता भी नहीं उनके बारे में and that's why it's very very interesting कि more often than not some of the most interesting business ideas are the ones जो कि आपके सामने होते हैं लेकिन हम उसको seriously लेते नहीं हैं. इस podcast में we talk about their journey, we talk about how they were able to set it up, how they were able to scale it to a point that they became a public listed company. इसी के साथ साथ आने वाले दिनों में उनके growth के क्या plans हैं और वह export market को particularly कैसे देख रहे हैं? इत्साम साहब के साथ मेरी recently मुलाक़ात हुई and I asked him what he does. It was very interesting जिस business में वह थे and I asked him कि मुझे वह अपनी factory का visit दें which he was gracious enough to invite me to. I saw the facility. It's phenomenal the scale at which they're doing this in Pakistan and so I invited him on the podcast. तो मैंने सोचा कि उनसे detail में बात की जाए podcast के ऊपर और आपसे share किया जाए कि उनकी learnings क्या है business करते हुए Pakistan में particularly in the turbulent times जो economics के हम देख रहे हैं. What is his outlook and how does he see the business landscape in Pakistan? This is ईश्तेशाम मकबूल इलाही on TBT इस्लामाबाद studio. इतिशांभाई, how are you? अलहाम दुल्ला मज़हम्मद. How are you doing? Great great. Thank you for coming in. Thank you for having me. Your your factory was incredible. I love what you guys have built. Thank you. मैं थोड़ा सा context just to, just for the audience as well why I wanna, wanted to have this conversation. I've been a, you know, I've I've been speaking a lot about Pakistan becoming an export country. मैं ख़ुद recently I moved to Dubai and वहां पर जो है वह, you know, दिल बड़ा दुखता है कि बहुत ordinary ordinary चीज़ें जो Pakistan में available हैं at a very low cost, वह Dubai में बहुत expensive पड़़ी हुई हैं different countries की, Pakistan की नहीं होती. जो होती भी हैं particularly उसमें अगर मैं Himalayan salt की बात करूं जो कि मेरा personal experience था तो जो Pakistan से आ रही थी चीज़ वह लेने का delay नहीं कर रहा था क्योंकि उसकी packaging इतनी बुरी थी. And so I saw a lot of potential there and while a lot of people are focused on कि हमने product क्या उठानी है? I feel like one of the major things that we miss is packaging. You know कि उसको world class level पर package करना not just for the visuals but also for preservation and all of that. So first of all thank you for coming in.
थोड़ा सा मुझे बताएं for the audience as well on holistic level. What do you guys do? Thank you for having me and and you touch very sensitive area for the export market. That's really close to my heart. I would love the country to be globally present and with great products and we have a lot of potential which you touched and I'll get back to that so basically we started off as a family business my father is is was the founder of packaging materials in Pakistan and if you allow I'll share that journey so he was basically from the pharmaceutical sector and he used to create pharmaceutical products in multiple factories and he used that was his his bread and butter one day he decided he wanted to get out of the pharmaceutical sector and he because he knew the sector he got into pharmaceutical packaging. Ok, so दवाइयों को पत्तों में डालना, boxes में डालना? Yeah, from let's say the aluminum का blister packaging से लेकर और उस वक़्त ज़्यादा paper होता था फिर जो main चीज़ उन्होंने मंगवाई बाहर से Europe से और वह लेकर आते थे was a cellophane. Right. Cellophane was was based out of paper and trees, cellulose उसमें से निकलता है, cellophane था. Cellophane क्या होता है? Cellophane जो है वह similar होता है जो आज हमें नज़र आ रही है चीज़. अगर for example आपने Quality Street अगर आपने खाया है और आप उसको अपनी ज़बान पर रखे वह मुंह में घुल जाता है. Right. ठीक है? It's dissolvable because it's out of cellulose. पानी में भी soluble होता है. Right. तो खैर as the global demand was increasing it was not possible for the world to catch up with paper based products and give that demand to the world. So दुनिया, Europe specially created a product called BOPP. Ok. This was late seventies, early eighties. So because my father was traveling a lot for this business, he was approached, surprisingly, in 1984, and he was called by the Germans suppliers, Mr. Makbul, we have an available line which a customer backed out of. So, do you want to take this because you're interested in business? He's like, Listen, no-no-no, I can't come right now. I'm just having a baby and I'm having a boy. It's going to be my first boy so I can't come right now. So, end of conversation. He started trading in that product. 1985 he got a call again from the same company mister मकबूल you know I called you last year you said I am having a boy I am assuming that boy is already here and well and then now would you like to take that plant it's still not sold Oh no, mister XYZ. I still cannot come. It's his first birthday. But I promise you right after the first birthday, I'll come. So my father was kind enough. He stayed back on my first birthday. He went there after that and we got into manufacturing of the same product for the first time in Pakistan. It's called BOPP film. It's basically used in all in our daily lives in the biscuits, chips, candies, betel nut and and textile socks. Just to just to 9.9% purity का aluminum लगा हुआ होता है, coating होती है और वह product की shelf life preserve करता है. और यह सारा Pakistan है बंद रहा होता Pakistan में बंद रहा होता and our father was the first one to bring this into Pakistan and now it's a huge industry, multi billion dollar industry and अलहम्दुर अल्लाह we've been part of nurturing and taking that industry forward and that's what my father was known for. Interesting. You mentioned you know there's a line available
that a customer backed out from.
What do you mean by that line? So for example that line is that machinery we're talking about. So it's a big machinery. It takes you've seen it. It's like a sets of machinery जिसमें एक तरफ से बची शुरू होगी और revise से सारी है. एक तरफ से दाना डालते हैं, दाना डालते वह multiple process है. आप वह दो सौ, तीन सौ meter की length होती है और उसका आप width में भी multiple meters जो बनाते तो आपने देखा था कि वह plastic पर rolls वन जाते हैं. Right. फिर वह rolls usually एक printer के पास जाते हैं जिसको हम converter कहते हैं. वह उसको print करता है या छापता है और वह हिमालियन salt या किसी cocoa जैसा product या किसी और product का को वह ready कर देता है या textile में socks से लेकर और
everything it's used in. How complicated is it to repurpose that machine? I'm assuming there's a cost associated to it. Reapurse the product? So for example जब एक एक average customer जाता है वह आपको बताता वह कहता है यार मुझे यह product बनानी है और मेरी यह specifications है. Right? So you have to customize your machinery specification according to that person's needs. उसमें अगर आप कह रहे कि मेरी दस बनानी है तो अब आप दस दिन लगाकर आपने उसको repurpose किया और फिर आपने दस बनाई तो वह cost नहीं justify होती. So how difficult is it to customize and and उसमें फिर वह MOQs का क्या पूरा फलसफा होता है? So every product is customized in the sense for example every brand owner, every packaging product
requires that packaging but जो हमारे end पर because we have different verticals so जो main vertical है जहां film बनती है MacPag films पर वहां पर customization certain categories की होती है फिर sizes होते हैं इसमें. वह जो sizes होते हैं वह फिर उस तरह एक converter के पास जाते हैं. वह उसको print के लिए हर brand की अपनी customization होती है. दस बीस नहीं हो सकते लेकिन दस हज़ार units, बीस हज़ार units हो सकते हैं. For example, कहते मुझे दस हज़ार हिमालियन salt के pouches चाहिए तो वह possible होता है. Different companies के different MOQs होते हैं. Generally, it's workable. Otherwise, a lot of new startups which are not exporting in Pakistan can have unprinted ones and then they can put a sticker. But for export markets, you have to place yourself with global competition. So, must invest in packaging for all the products you're trying to export. All the youth is trying agri based products Pakistan can do, must do for the revival of the agricultural sector, for the revival of the economy. We must value add in our produce and we might we must package it at a premium level and then export. You did mention in your opening remarks that शायद Pakistan में होती नहीं packaging अच्छी. Pakistan में जो packaging की facilities और investments है ना they are world class. From European to American to high end. So capability, machinery की. अच्छा machinery से ज़्यादा talent की. We develop that talent and we have good talent also. As the industry is growing, there are challenges but every big industry including MacPac nurtures their talent, creates their pipeline, trains them and take it forward. So, exports already industry कर रही है MACPAG, Alhamdulillah, Middle East, we recently stepped into Europe, we recently Alhamdulillah started exporting into North America. So, we've got a footprint around the globe also and in '24 the company will see very exciting areas that we'll enter hopefully inshallah but
industry is world class. अभी जो downturn आया था economic उस पर आप लोगों को impact पड़ा जो raw material considering कि my understanding is aluminum तो Pakistan से नहीं कानों से तो नहीं निकल रहा वह कहीं ना कहीं से आ रहा होगा या plastic का raw material होगा. For industries, how does that impact? So इसका जो major plastic raw material होता है which is the PP resin, it's not made in Pakistan. Right. Some people were trying to create it a few years ago but policies, petrochemical
policies पर काम हो रहा था but वह रुक गया. तो वह raisin सारा ज़्यादातर Middle East से आता है and then उसके कुछ मिर्च मसाले जाफ़रान जो important चीज़ें और हैं वह Europe और America सब जगह से आती हैं. इसकी जो aluminum वाला area आपने touch किया वह wires भी Pakistan में नहीं बनती हैं, वह भी बाहर से आती हैं purity वाली. तो ज़्यादातर consumables इसके बाहर से हैं, machinery भी बाहर से हैं because unfortunately we're not a capital goods manufacturer in the country so we import that but then the talent and the technology is available. Value addition के basically? Value addition होता है and import substitution पूरा है ना. We don't need to import these things and then these things have to be localized so that जो आपने challenge बताया import के challenge आया या economic banking वाला challenge आया because we were all associated with let's say the pharma industry we serve the textile industry which is exporting we are serving the critical food industry आटा, चावल, दाल के साथ भी हम associated हैं. Thus, the government was kind enough to allow us to continue operations. Right. And everybody who managed well, Alhamdulillah MacPak was, I can say proudly the only company in the sector which did not stop a day for shortage of materials. Our team led by the CEO really manage things really well, alhamdulillah. So yeah, Allah has been kind but our placement and our niche is such that we are essential for the modern lifestyle. Interesting. You guys are are a publicly
listed company. Right?
यह कब हुआ? कैसे हुआ? उसके पीछे thought process कैसा था? तो उसकी तो thought process थी mainly उस वक्त की expansion और capital needs थी. We were scaling up. We we first from from from the journey my father started from 1980s, let's say,1985 until1993 was one company name with a few partners. And then1993, three friends and three partners started this company called MacPac Films. So until then also we were a monopoly in the sector. Later on competition came in and the industry grew. In early 2000-two thousand and one, the company decided to expand to up to five times its size and we needed growth capital. That's how we got listed and we got the growth capital from there. I started that journey from May 2007 till October 30. The company had their first gross profit quarter ever since it was listed. Positive EPS first time. We tried to create an out of the box solution. We had zero working capital. So we used our other companies and our friends and family to create a system that they could purchase materials for us and we did toll manufacturing for them because we had no money to buy our own products and we started making those products and we sold it to our customers and we got up to 70% capacity utilization for the first time in five years in those six months. Unfortunately-
And that was driven by largely you?
So the idea was mine. I was supported by my father obviously but yes, I was the face of the sales, I was the face of the purchasing and supply chains, I was the face of the banks, I had to restructure that because we were delayed in our loans at that time. So yes I was trying to be everywhere and Allah guided me and my father supported me and my family supported me. My mother was alive at that time, she was our backbone. But that was a tough journey. But while we were there and excited, the day we announced those results, unfortunately 10/30/2007 we had a major fire incident. अच्छा. So that fire incident if you've seen when you saw the factory, half of it was steel fabrication, half of it was shell fabrication. So that half of the factory was burned down. And when that call came at 02:15 in the morning to me, my GM production at that time called, sir, यह आग लग गई है. And my father at that time was at the biggest plastic show in Germany called the K-show. So he was there luckily I'd say because I don't think वह handle कर पाते. तीस साल की मेहनत उनकी थी. तो मैं summarize यह करता हूं कि मैंने उस वक़्त अगले तीस घंटे में तीस साल की उनकी मेहनत को जलकर down होते हुए देखा कि वह हम हमारे बहुत सारे sub processes और factory जो है वह जल गई थी in the next thirty hours. So that was my first and biggest crisis that I I could I could I could I had to manage and my focus was all human safety और जो अंदर जाकर भी कुछ पचाना चाहते थे हम उनको सख्ती से बोलते थे. अंदर किसी ने नहीं जाना है. Let the professionals help it. But हमारा system आपको अंदाज़ है professionals ऐसे हुए. But were there professionals there like? Professionals professional, you you you मेरे रोंगठे खड़े हो जाएंगे बात करते हुए. Professionals ऐसे थे कि मैं forty five minutes में पहुंचा शहर से तो forty five minutes में वह भी पहुंचे और उन्होंने हम सब लोगों को बोला हम यहां आ तो गए हैं साहब. यह बताओ यहां तक कहाने की diesel के पैसे कौन देगा? That was the first question. I cannot quote कहां से थे वह? But वह fire extinguisher वालों ने यह पुछा. मैंने कहा अल्लाह के बंदे उसको काही भी बचाओ फिर जो कौगे मिलेगा. हां. और वह in that process में देख रहा हूं जो भी जा रहे हैं वह cigarette मुंह में है और आग बुझाने जा रहे हैं. So it was really a different life altering experience for me. Yeah. But my focus was कि इंसान को कोई ख़राश ना आए और बाहर हमारे पास media भी पहुंच गया था because it was the biggest fire of that time until the December 27 incident happened. Right. That was the biggest fire of that time. तो मैं और police में mass भी थी. तो I asked them my my GMs and other people कि भाई यह इनको बोलो ना कोई मदद करें. हां. बोला sir यह मदद करने के लिए नहीं है. इसलिए है कि यहां किसी को नुकसान हो और यह आपको as director लेकर जाएं. तो I want Also this this would have just destroyed the So yes The capital investment. We so the main machinery अलहम्दुर अल्लाह got saved which was the fin plant. Right. And all the auxiliary equipment was gone. So yes, we then we started that from our own resources. Our sister concerned helped us to bring back the machinery. We rebuild the factory. I asked the first thing जब आग बुझी ना 36 I was there unslept on that location और अल्लाह का शुकार लोग सब किसी को ख़राश नहीं आए but we were all black and dark and when my mother saw me later she was, it was tough for her to see. Anyways तो वह मैंने पुछा अपने लोगों से, अब करना क्या है? तो उन्होंने मुझे बोला sir हम दुबारा करेंगे और बेहतर करेंगे. तो that gave me a new life. I'm like बस ऐसे ही करेंगे. तो अल्लाह का शुक्र है. उसके बाद एक journey start हुआ. We started I mean मेरे पास time था because business ख़त्म हो गया था उस वक़्त. दो साल out of operations थे. तो I started दो साल out of operations. These things take time. अगर आप machine लगाएंगे तो दो ढाई साल में लगती है let's say. होती है पर छह महीने में लगती है. So there's a long process. It's big big plans like as you've seen. उस वक्त मैंने अपना digital transformation journey start किया कि फिर मेरे पास time था कि मैं अब करूं क्या? बेचने को कुछ नहीं है, खरीदने को कुछ नहीं है. तो फिर मैंने company में ERP implementation शुरू किया first time and that was the first time we did it and अलम्दुलिल्ला just recently in January we went January 4 को sap s for hannah live अलम्दुलिल्ला so अल्लाह का शुक्र है अल्लाह ने यहाँ तक पहुंचाया but in between has been obviously a long journey आज the company is professionally run the CEO runs the company we have a very nice team very experienced and very energetic youth and very experienced people. So we term a word called exponergy. And one suggestion if I, if you allow and I can tell the youth if they're listening here, हम अक्सर जो youth होती हैं ना वह बड़ों को बोलते हैं कि आपको तो नहीं पता कि मैं क्या बात कर रहा हूं या आप छोड़े ना आपको यह समझ नहीं आएगी और even for elders if someone is listening हम अपनी youth को chance नहीं दे रहे होते. हम अपनी youth को freedom नहीं दे रहे होते, authority नहीं दे रहे होते. So we created a term internally. I have a ex IBF graduate, हसन. He created this term called explanergy. Then we later use it in our annual report. So experience और energy का जो combination होता है ना, अगर आप तजुर्बे को और youth की energy को मिला लें तो जब आप magic कर सकते हैं ना वह किसी भी company को transformation चाहिए या family business को बड़ा होना है या listed company को बड़ा होना है. So you really need to create those synergies और वह communication से आता है और एक दूसरे के की different unique चीज़ों को समझकर और उसके उसको synergize करने से आता है, defensive होने से नहीं आता. हां, there is certain level of collaboration that's required. हां, almost. जो I feel like Pakistan में हमारे यहां बहुत हम पीछे इस चीज़ को.
I think जो core जिसको मैं कहूंगा जहां हम miss करते हैं वह trust है and within that breath I want to talk about two things. First, you're you're one of the very few publicly listed companies in Pakistan. For some weird reason structurally अगर मैं आपसे पूछूं, how has that experience been so far? Has it ever been कि at some point you'll be like यार यह this is the amount of headache that's required ना ही होते कभी. And alternatively why do you think a lot of people shy away like we don't have that stock market culture आप job पर शाद नहीं है, क्यों restaurant खोल रहे हैं? You should be investing that into someone else's business and that person is Who doing it successfully. Who is doing it successfully. Help them grow and so thereby you know take a chunk of their success. Definitely. That's just basic optimization of any sort of, let's say, capitalist economy. Pakistan में unfortunately we haven't been there yet.
Why do you think that's? So there there are multiple reasons. When you ask me my view, so I'm really happy with the structure we have and we keep on evolving and improving and I will get to that. But yes, when it was happening and without lack of experience and I was studying then, I did tell my father why are we doing this? Why are we going listed? Because the main reason was that why are we giving equity for such a small ocean और such equity देना ना बहुत expensive होता है. तो आप stake दे रहे हैं, आप किसी को shareholding दे रहे हैं, उसको say दे रहे हैं, आपको एक बिल्कुल one share का भी जो हिसाब देना हां. पड़ा हुआ एक तो हिसाब है वह मैं आपको बताता मेरे वाले ने मुझे एक बात समझाई थी. Expense क्यों बड़ा medical का? और अगर यह इतने unfit हैं तो आप इनको उदय से हटा दें. Mhmm. Because they don't know the legacy or the blood and sweat someone has put in the company. वह उसका हक्या, no problem. Secondly जो है अब and what it's really helped us do is structure the the the guidelines it gives you, the the system SSCP gives you is really good in Pakistan. अच्छा. सही है? And and they don't वह फ़जूर में किसी को तंग नहीं करते हैं. तो अगर किसी को लोगों को जो discourage होते इसमें आने में, first I think it helps you structure yourselves and get ready for scaling up. If you need growth capital, you can always go back for a second public public offering or a right share and you'll get a framework in order to function and grow. So, if you're transparent, if you're doing things with value and giving tax fully, if you don't have anything to hide, then share. Then you share everything you're doing, you disclose everything you're doing, you create the right systems, the right committees, you become larger. People will want to work for you if you have the right ecosystem. So creating job employment in our society and accepting people for in such infrastructure is also very important. So I feel we are serving a cause that we provide good equal employee opportunities being listed in my view hardly has its disadvantages there are more advantages to it than disadvantages so maybe people not wanting to disclose. Are shy economy. We are not extroverts. We don't want to share. हम कितना कमा रहे हैं? क्या कर रहे हैं या क्या potential है? तो we were we were the first listed companies. So yes, transparency है. लोगों को नज़र आता है कि अगर इतनी possibilities हैं या इतनी gains हो सकते हैं तो और लोग आए हैं बाद में but that's fine उनकी अपनी journey है, उनकी अपनी growth है, हमारी अपनी journey है. आप आप evolve करते रहें के साथ, आप change करते रहें वक़्त के साथ, आप अपने client की needs समझते रहें आप जिस भी sector में हैं तो आप survive करेंगे. Risk अल्लाह ने लिखा हुआ है कोई किसी का risk नहीं लेकर जा सकता. तो it was always amazing हमारा एक बहुत बड़ा अच्छा group है वह आया pet film बनाने में. तो उन्होंने मुझसे पुछा कि भाई वह यह फलाना growth आ रही है तो आप क्या करोगे? तो मैं हमेशा बोलता रहता यार I very excited. तो वह कहते हैं तो मजीब आदमी हो, why are you excited? मैंने कहा क्योंकि now I can improve on things which I was earlier comfortable with. So my people will also go out of the comfort zone. And every five years such things happen and now is again we're in that stage where some companies are growing at scale and we have a different unique strategy which we'll disclose ahead. So that really helps us change and improve the areas which we were otherwise complacent with or comfortable with. And eventually, it's survival of the fittest. In my business philosophy, it really doesn't matter how big you are today. What really matters is how fast you are. COVID has shown us that everybody needs to change. For example, people pivot from a mass transit company to a eQuickCommerce company. Whether they survive later is a different story. But Nokia couldn't survive because they didn't evolve or accept Android as a platform. They were using Symbian. So they did not evolve and then that became Basically arrogance जो है ना वह वह ले ले डूबती है. मुंह. आज ही ज़रूरी है. अगर मैं structure की एक और सवाल करूं I
have a lot of friends in Karachi, legacy businessman. I'm glad. नेमन. उनका जब मैं देखता हूं ना कि the way that they have a very certain culture of how they do business. और उसमें बहुत सारे exports में textile के अंदर. मैं तो हमेशा उनसे सुनता हूं. एक मेरे दोस्त से बात हुई recently तो उन्होंने मुझे बोला कि हमारा जो है वह, you know, the the the parents are getting old and so now they're distributing all of the factories to different, you know, cousins and sons. Cousins partnerships होंगी. हां. Cousins partnership भी होती हैं. तो मैंने अच्छा उसने मुझे बोला था कि दस factories थी एक जो है वह तौलिया कर रही थी एक T shirt कर रही थी एक एक कर रही थी तो एक इस cousin को मिल गई एक इस करूं? मेरा अच्छा यह बड़ा logical अगर आप global उसको देखें ना तो यह यही हो रहा है और आपको नज़र आता है कि यह हुआ तो Growth आएगी. Growth आएगी. Right? Pakistan में unfortunately अभी भी जिसको हम कहते हैं सेठिया या यह कहते हैं आपने early on mention किया आपने कहा हमने एक professional को CEO बना दिया. He is he is the man behind us. There is a certain level of lack of trust as a society जो हर aspect में आता है इसमें भी आता कि यार हमारे उससे हाथों से कैसे निकल सकती है? We have to be जो उस context में how do you, first of all I want for those people who might be listening. You know, what's your experience been when you began to trust and delegate
and allowing for that to help you grow? How has your experience been? So I'm amazed you asked this. I wasn't ready for this but it's a complete different science and Allah हमें आगे भी successful रखकर हम इस transitions में successful रहे हैं Allah के अख़ुम से. We're five siblings, three brothers, two sisters. So family business is a science on its own. Pakistan has started talking about it. Pakistan's IB is helping with it, Lums is helping with it. There are courses people must go to, multi generation must go to, fathers, founders, chachas, cousins partnerships हैं, cousins जाएं, siblings हैं, siblings जाएं. अगर आपको अपना पर्दा कोई रखना है तो आप customize courses लें. ज़्यादातर जो आप बात करें यह billionaire families होती हैं और एक एक challenge आता है कि जो SET होता है या जो business के leaders होते हैं वह micromanage करते हैं. एक trust issues होते हैं. दूसरा शायद वह documented काम नहीं कर रहा हो. वह for example अगर वह कचरा या कोई और चीज़ undocumented बेच रहा है और वह avoid कर रहा है tax को उस area में तो वह उस पर trust नहीं करेगा, cash आ जाएगा. कुछ लोग हमारी unfortunately undocumented sales एक percentage पर करते हैं. तो जहां पर यह चीज़ें अगर लोग सोचेंगे ना कि हम जब इससे निकलेंगे बाहर, एक तो documented से निकलेंगे तो सब transparent हो जाएगा, systemize हो जाएगा. उसमें trust का challenge ही नहीं आएगा. Business management का काम है कि वह controls बनाए, systems बनाएं और उसको monitor करें. वह जब भी sustainable होगा आगे एक वह relay का batten जो है वह एक बंदा दूसरे से लेकर जाएगा. अगर family में कोई capable है तो family वाला ले जाए. अगर आपके पास enough manpower है because बहुत सारे business houses होते हैं उनके पास enough manpower होता है उनको मसरूफ रखना होता है. लेकिन अगर जहां पर ज़रूरत है कोई और professional की तो आप professional को वह baton दे दें. आप उसको बोलें इस चीज़ को आगे लेकर चलो. Long term sustainability professionalism से आती है and that's what we've done with MacPac. MacPac we do not consider a family business. We have majority shareholding but we have other shareholders which are minority shareholders which are on the board and मेरे वाले ने मुझे एक बात बताई थी इतिशाम जब तुम managerial position पर आओगे. तुमने हर फ़ैसला करते हुए यह सोचना है कि तुम्हारे पास शायद पांच सौ share रखने वाली कोई बेवाओं जिसकी कोई और ज़रिया आमदनी नहीं है और हमारे पास emails भी आए हैं इतिहास में, history में कि ऐसे भी email आए हैं कि जी हमने share से कमाकर अपनी बच्ची की शादी की which is a source of pride and and and contentment But ऐसा भी आया है कि जी हमने यह इतने रुपए का लिया था और यह नीचे हो गया और मेरी जमा पूंजी ख़त्म हो गई. तो there are both sides to it. So that brings a lot of responsibilities, responsibility. So when my father told me कि तुम जब position पर आओगे तो तुम जो फ़ैसला करोगे ना तो यह सोचकर करना कि तुम उसका हक वहां तक पहुंचाना पड़ेगा जिसको तुम ढूंढ नहीं सकते. So always decide for that minority shareholder first of all. Second of all जब आप कुछ गलत कर नहीं रहे तो कुछ छुपाने की ज़रूरत ही नहीं है. तो आपने अपना अगर ऐसे जो businesses जो family businesses हैं या large conglomerates हैं उन it is a process आप उन बच्चों को तैयार करें. उस उस institutions पर भेजें, उन courses पर भेजें, उनको life coaches दिलवा दें, उनको mentors दिलवा दें. So mentor की बात हुई तो I got lucky in the process that I met someone at a wedding and in the morning he first emailed me कि तुम मेरे साथ आकर काम कर लो because of the things we discussed and this was early in my years maybe 02/2010 somewhere around that. I am forgetful in dates. This man became a father like figure for me and he guided me. तो businesses में succession planning की तैयारी पहले होनी चाहिए. Succession planning के लिए help ले लेनी चाहिए. तो उसमें बरकत ज़्यादा है, इत्तेहाद में बरकत है. तो इन चीज़ों पर ध्यान करना चाहिए. MacPak अलहम्द उल्लाह was able to do that. एक risk था जब farmer का इन्हें निकाल हुआ तो our stakeholders, bankers, everybody or even competition probably, they thought कि we will not survive. But अल्लाह दुरिल्लाह we survived and we thrived because legacy और learning थी. हमारे खून में यह कारोबार था. तो हम लोगों ने उसको professionalize करा करते जा रहे हैं. तो अल्लाह ख़श्क़र आज मैं फ़क़र से कह सकता हूं कि मैं daily decision making में micro level पर zero involved हूं. Interesting. And I'm proud of that because I've done everything in the last fifteen years plus with my hand. So the way to grow, the way to scale up and where I want to take the company in the future, whatever the vision I have is, which will be disclosed in due time. In order to do that, we have to have a very good ecosystem which is not a sethia system. But a hybrid of a shareholder who is passionate in the business and over viewing the business and professionals which are much better than me in doing their jobs. I only hire people in the company who are better than me in those areas. चाय बनाने वाले से लेकर मुझसे अच्छी चाय बनानी चाहिए. Finance संभालने वाले को वह finance आना चाहिए जो मुझे नहीं आता. Market या मुझसे बेहतर हो, supply chain वाला मुझसे बेहतर हो. That's how we create that magic that we create and being a very closely connected company and with the right systems that we help create it whatever these challenges happen you know कुछ macroeconomic challenges हम पिछले कुछ सालों में गुज़रे हैं as a country as business people COVID भी आया, then country के कुछ challenges आए and then micro economic challenges, whether वह competitive landscape के challenges हों, सबकी अपनी एक journey है. But if you're effective, if you're efficient, if you have the right systems, you can always find a niche. So the way I manage the business and tell my people is listen, be like water. We're in the space of flexible packaging. We have to be flexible and be like water. अगर आगे कोई रास्ता रोक भी लिया, अगर कोई और आ भी गया तो आप अपना रास्ता इधर उधर से बना लें, बस flow करें, चलते रहें. खड़ा पानी सर जाता है. आप चलते रहें, ताज़ा रहेंगे, अल्लाम में आपको नया रास्ता दिखा देगा और इंशालाह आपका वक़्त आएगा. Mhmm, makes sense. थोड़ा सा मैं conversation को flip करूंगा. I wanna I wanna tell you back to what I started this with.
In terms of Pakistan today, there is obviously a huge economic crisis that we're looking at. And for a lot of young people right now, there's a lot of joblessness, obviously, hopelessness in a sense that उनको समझ नहीं आ रही कि यार, this is not the world that we were promised essentially. And so they're trying to really work hard in figuring out कि हम ऐसा क्या कर सकते हैं जिस पर हम अपना path carve out कर सकें. जो हमारे parents ने हमें बताया था ना कि बेटा यह करो, यह करो, यह करो और फिर ऐसा करोगे तो यह ऐसा निकलेगा वह शायद Obsolete हो गया हुआ है. And उसमें ज़हर एक एक मेज़ चीज़ यह नज़र आती है जो मेरा जो मेरी पुकार है वही है कि you know we need to globalize ourselves and we need to globalize our economy and in the age of internet and in the age of knowledge, anyone can sit in any place. लैया में बैठकर वह जो है वह, you know, he can go and look at what's selling on Amazon and he can, you know, do this or that. पहला अगर मैं आपसे एक generalized सवाल करूं. How do you see the export potential? Because you're standing somewhere in the middle where a bunch of different products come in and you package that and you आपको नज़र भी आ रहा ना actually कि return customer से आपको यह भी समझ आ जाता कि आपने चाहे क्या नहीं बिकता है. So in a in a in a very interesting way you're you're there in the center understanding कि यार क्या चलता है, क्या नहीं चलता? कौन सा बाहर चलता है, कौन सा बाहर नहीं नहीं चलता? Yes. उसको मद्देनज़र रखते हुए आपको इस वक़्त का current export potential Pakistan कैसा रखता है? Huge, amazing.
There's so much potential. We shouldn't let the challenges in our economy and around us and what we see on on on conventional media bring us down. That's just weight that brings our morals down,
our hope now. दूसरा also I also feel like कि the challenges sometimes create opportunities as well. That's why that's why I am coming. So the the blanket idea कि यार economy खराब है तो सब नहीं चलेगा. Economy खराब है तो अब हमें figure out करना कि अरे अच्छा नहीं economy खराब है तो dollarized चीज़ ज़्यादा चलेगी. Yes, exact वह हमें चाहिए ना. Right. जैसे COVID आया for example तो food चला, food की packaging चली, pharmaceutical
चला. तो अगर आप उन stocks में होते तो आप gain अच्छा करते, उन companies ने अच्छे returns लिए हैं. अगर आप investment की बात करें. उन spaces में आप कुछ काम करते तो चलता रहता. इसी तरह अभी अगर मुल्क को dollars चाहिए और लोगों को dollar में कमाना है, ठीक है? तो हम agricultural country थे. अभी भी कुछ हद तक हैं और कुछ revival आ रहा है जो policies आ रही हैं उस पर focus आ रहा है. कोई किसी कहीं भी गांव में रह रहा है या शहर में रह रहा है. आप एक agricultural product को उठाइए. आप उसको अच्छा सा package कीजिए, उसकी packaging में invest कीजिए और उसको export कर दीजिए. आपके पास Alibaba से लेकर Amazon से लेकर अपनी e commerce website की marketing करके आप उससे बहुत सारे products from Moringa leaves to Himalayan salt to let's say any kind of super food जो एक niche market है दुनिया की लेकिन बहुत बड़ी market है, high value added market है और आपको commodity करना है scale पर तो आप चावल से लेकर चावल की valuation से लेकर आप potato को process कर लें, आप potato का powder बना लें और उसमें आप mashed potato का product pack अच्छा करके बाहर भेज दें क्योंकि यह वह चीज़ें हैं जो हमारे पास मौजूद हैं फसले और हम उसमें value addition करके export कर सकते हैं. Same with meat related products we can value add there. आपको जिस चीज़ का शौक है ना आप बताओ, for simple let's say एक एक fresh graduate है mechanical
engineering का. Unfortunately हमारे यहां language ऐसी रही है कि value addition समझाई नहीं कि उस engineer को. What does that mean? Like and I the context that I am asking this question is your father had this understanding कि यार एक नई packaging आई है. बिल्कुल. वह हर product में घुसनी है. अब एक मैं इसी का alternate flip करता हूं जो बहुत सारे industries में हुआ कि आज भी Pakistan में roles after roles आ रहे होते बाहर से. जी. और उसको थोड़ा सा repurpose कर कुर्के वह लगाया जा रहा हूं. जी ऐसा है. Right? That for me doesn't make a lot of sense because you're literally जो जो sea route है it's like 8,000 kilometers से वह travel करके आ रहा है. उधर भी वह customs पर पैसे दे रहा है, इधर भी customs से पैसे दे रहा है फिर वह travel कर करके. It's not efficient. Definitely not efficient. Right? And in a in a country now that is going towards a a free float dollar, the market is always going to make it more conducive to have a efficiency driven, you know, structure to to the to the product. Definitely.
बहुत सारे products हैं मुज़मिल भाई. You rightly said it. मैं आता हूं एक large scale challenge पर बकिन अगर हम youth की बात करें from प्यास को dehydrate करने से लेकर आलू बहुत सारे लोग direct export कर रहे हैं. उसको french fries बना अगर export कर दें तो उसकी value five x और 10 x ऊपर हो जाती है. हम चावल for example जो उगता है उसका जो brand का छिलका है वह दुनिया में उसका oil वन रहा है. उसके oil को press करके हम export कर सकते हैं. कुछ लोगों ने initiative अभी शुरू की है लेकिन बाकी लोग या जला देते हैं या जानवर को खिला देते हैं. तो वह millions of tons available है. इस तरह के बहुत सारे products हैं जो हमारा कचरा है और बाहर का सोना है. ठीक है? मैं ख़ुद भी करना हम हर चीज़ नहीं कर सकते लेकिन बहुत सारे business ideas होते हैं. मुर्गी के पंजे हैं या तो हम soup में डालते हैं या तो हम ऐसे ही export कर देते हैं China को. हां. उसको हम यहां pickle करके यहां पर उसकी अच्छी packaging करके उसको वहां पर lollipop की तरह खाते हैं. तो हम अपने जितना हमारा waste है, उसको हम अच्छा process करें, उसको package करें और एक तरीके से चीज़ को export करें. हम बहुत amazing geopolitical जगह पर बैठे में हमारे पास चीज़ें उग सकती हैं. हमारे पास एक तो अपनी बड़ी population है to consume. Mhmm. यह जितनी भी बातें होती हैं brain drain की, एक certain percentage तक लोग जा सकते हैं. उसके बाद यह population यही है जो youth हमारी tech से कमा रही है और आगे कमाएगी. I see a huge revival in the economy and that will bring money, that will promote consumption, that will increase the per capita consumption of packaging. तो जितनी capacities हैं वह utilize हो जाती हैं. Youth को उनके पास मर्द औरत काम कर रहे हैं. उनके पास time नहीं होएगा कि वह प्याज़ भी काटे, सालन बनाएं और फिर खिलाएं एक दूसरे को. वह ready made चीज़ें लेंगे, वह easy life पर जाएंगे जैसे एक west या modern economy में हो रहा है. So people will need more of such products. इसी तरह आप export related कोई भी product कर लें और उसको premium package करें, उसमें invest ज़रूर करें. यहां हर top end quality मौजूद है Pakistan में. सबकी websites हैं, companies की, associations हैं. You can reach out, you write on any social media, people will approach you. उस पर मेहनत करें और अपने आप को दुनिया में फैला दें. हमारे कुछ neighboring countries ने बीस साल पहले यह किया था. Even though we are little late, अब वक़्त है हम कर लें. Tax से कमाएं, agro की value addition से कमाएं. हमारे बराबर over 1,500,000,000 लोगों की demand है. If अगर हम China भी export करते हैं जो मैंने पंजों की बात की वह China में बहुत चाहिए. लाल मिर्च China में बहुत चाहिए. हिमालियन salt के licensing का different तरीका है China में लेकिन वहां बहुत चाहिए. हां, लोग ना अमूमन conventional market को सोचते हैं, US सोच लेते हैं, Canada सोच लेते हैं, फलाना सोच लेते हैं. हमें out of the box सोचना पड़ेगा. हम out of the box सोचें, अपना niche और passion decide करें और उसमें patiently मेहनत करते रहें, consistent रहें, फ़ल आएगा और guidance ले लें. अपना एक coach mentor system बना लें, कोई आप advisors बना लें और आप उस पर लगे रहें इंशालाह success आएगी. तो potential बहुत है. अगर डट के करते रहें, किसी भी industry को पकड़ लें और उसको सही तरह present and package करें चीज़ चलेगी. Makes sense. Packaging की अगर मैं बात करूं तो packaging
एक जो सबसे generic दिमाग में आती है तो यह आती है कि यार marketing के लिए बहुत important है packaging, right? Generally जो जो tech, everybody has an access to some sort of a tech तो उनको हमेशा वह जो होता कि यार iPhone को unbox करना is always an experience या you know so on and so forth. But you know Dubai में जब मैं देखता हूं तो वहां पर जो And so that's where I began to realize कि अच्छा नहीं the way that it's packaged is also well thought out because there it somehow increases the shelf It's it's there's a lot of other features. For sure. That go with with packaging as well and because you mentioned agriculture or perishable goods. वहां पर like the packaging then becomes supreme, right? So so tell me अगर मैं आपसे पूछूं कि beyond just the marketing
packaging क्यों ज़रूरी है? I'll tell you. So in my view packaging has three main purposes and the problem we're solving with products of MacPak and related products our industry is doing is that globally more than 30% food is still wasted that we produce and there are various reasons for it. Sorting is also one reason that people want perfect products. But then packaging is a major reason. If we package the product properly and then move that to the market wherever it is which could be other countries. तो three purposes मैं highlight करता हूं packaging के. One, the first purpose is that it preserves that product and gives it a better shelf life. It could be six months, it could be few days, it could depends on what product is. Milk would have a different life, biscuits would have a different life. So first is preservation. Second is labelling. We give allergy information, we give the packages recycling information. We communicate to the customer what it has inside as ingredients, whether it's okay for him to consume. Then they can decide. Third is the marketing aspect that it must be presentable and look good to the market you're trying to target. First time मैं हमेशा बोलता हूं कि first time जो है product packaging से बिकता है. जब आप वह खोलेंगे, आपका experience उस product को खोलने का ठीक होना चाहिए. तो वहां बहुत बड़ी science है. MacPak के products जो हैं, they're carefully designed कि वह customer experience के लिए आराम से easy peel कराते हैं उनको खुलें ताकि बच्चा जब उस package को खोलता है तो वह लड़े ना और वह product पढ़ना गिर जाता है. दांत लगाना पड़ता है लोगों को पढ़ना. तो first the experience they're going through. Labelling आ गई आपके पास. Marketing उसकी last चीज़ है कि first time उसने खरीदा. वह product चख्खा, अगर वह product उसके लिए अच्छा होगा, उसको अच्छा लगा फिर वह repeat पर आएगा. Labelling - that we communicate what we're selling, and then the marketing aspect to attract the client. So that is why packaging is so important. And everywhere you take your product from in the market, MacPak is already touching them already. We're part of that process, we're part of that product anywhere. So that's that's how we're impacting your lives every day positively. जो आपकी
product है basically, the the film Film, n g. Right? That's plastic essentially. Right? Yes, 100%. There's there's this huge now movement that talks about climate change, talks about environment and and वही कहती है कि यार plastic is the worst thing that, you know, we're dealing with. It's non biodegradable. It's going into landfills. It's destroying our world. How do you see see that aspect? Because, you know, like you you mentioned कि जी, हम तो हर जगह पर हैं. Mhmm. हर packet में, हर इसमें, हर उसमें. Are there alternatives that you can tap into? You mentioned cellulone. Yeah, cellophane. Cellophane, right? So so clearly there has been transitions in this as well. Yes.
How do you see the the industry जब आप इसमें economic context start करते हैं? It's amazing that you mentioned this. This is a very hot topic for the last few years and we we we manage and influence this industry in very significant manner and I love nature. I am a diver. I keep close to nature. So I have also seen the changes on the reefs let's say when I go diving I've seen changes in ten years also. I'm worried for the future of my children also, what kind of world they'll live in. So it's not that we don't care, we really care. So I'll tell you what is happening and I'll and I'll tell you what we're doing about it. So it's it's very easy to blame any product or or say that product ग़लत है और plastic पानी में आ जाता है या समंदर में आ जाता है या road पर आ जाता है. देखो कितना कचरा है. Plastic की ख़ुद कोई movement नहीं है या it's not a living thing. Human behavior हमें अपने आप को देखना पड़ेगा कि हम क्या उस product को use करके, क्या हम उसको सही से dispose कर रहे हैं? क्या हम उसको trash can में डाल रहे हैं? क्या हम उसको source पर sort कर रहे हैं? अगर हम उसको source पर sort करेंगे और अपनी गाड़ियों से बाहर नहीं फेंकेंगे और जब हम boating पर जाते हैं या समंदर में जाते हैं या या हम कहीं भी जाते हैं तो हम उसको फेंकेंगे नहीं. तो वह हमने consume किया ना product. तो we have to responsibly dispose it properly. शायद ज़्यादातर लोगों को ना पता हो पीछे recycling के signs होते हैं, recycling की global information है. कौन सा product, कौन सा plastic है, उसके numbers होते हैं. हमारा product जो है वह PP range में आता है, उसके पीछे five होता है, 100% recyclable. MacPac makes 100% recyclable products जो अगर consumer बेहतर तरीके से sort करें, we have a setup. We also created a sister concern जो इस trash को collection system से उठाए और उसको हम repurpose करते हैं into better products. हम reuse करते हैं जहां वह reuse हो सकते हैं और जो end of life plastics होते हैं जिनका कुछ नहीं हो सकता. बेशक हम नहीं बनाते. For example, road पर कोई HDPE bag पड़ा हुआ है या कोई भी कचरा पड़ा हुआ है जो नाले clock कर रहा है. हम अगर वह trash partners के साथ उठाकर या scavengers के साथ उठाकर हम उसको eco bricks में और eco tiles में convert कर देते हैं जिसमें tons of carbon footprint save हो जाता है for for in in a certain square footage of area. So, we are also helping solve the problem but we also advocate and educate people and our stakeholders कि we have to change our behavior as humans. जहां आपने alternates की बात कि हम cellophane से packaging world शुरू हुआ था जो tree based पर था. वह II petrochemical space वजह से क्योंकि we didn't have enough trees in the world. हम trees are our lungs for the world, right? They they they give us that oxygen. अगर सात billion plus लोग आज plastic छोड़ देते हैं और paper पर चले जाते हैं तो शायद हम ज़्यादा faster climate change करें because हमें इतने trees काटने पड़ेंगे. People talk about sustainable sourcing and trees that are farmed specifically for paper That's still not long term sustainable. Paper on its own needs more water and more energy to be created as compared to plastics. Again, its supply chain and its value chain in order to recycle, again, they need a lot of water. World is water scarce. Pakistan is water scarce. We cannot have so much water कि हम उतनी pulping करें और उतनी पानी को consume करें और waste करें and then it has its certain chemicals also. Plastic on the other hand, if used correctly, आप अपने जब आप design करेंगे products को, exportable products को, आप 100% recyclable products लें, price पर सिर्फ ना जाएं. आप mono materials खिलाते हैं. क्या आप या PPP based materials ले लें या आप PEPE based materials ले लें. आप mono material structures पर रहें. One, आपको acceptance globally बेहतर होगी जब आप लिखेंगे आप 100% recyclable हैं. Europe में अगर आप ग़लत product भेजेंगे आपको extra tax होगा. US में भी कुछ certain rules हैं. Every country और region has its rules. आप mono materials use करें जो 100% recyclable हैं. जो Pakistan बना रहे हैं, हम भी बना रहे अलम्रिला and we are pioneers and all these things. और जो हमारे customers हैं वो भी ये सब चीज़ें बनाते हैं जो mono materials होते हैं. आप वह वाले products लें, उसको आप अपने consumer को educate करें कि वह सही से trash करें, उसको सही से उसको dispose करें और वह फिर recycling stream में आएगा. Whether वह हमारी companies करें या कोई और करें, वह हमारी ज़िम्मेदारी है. हम अपनी expensive गाड़ियों में शीशा खोलकर बाहर कुछ कचरा फेंक दें, वह हमारी ज़िम्मेदारी है. हम समंदर में जाकर कचरा वहां फेंक दें, वह हमारी ज़िम्मेदारी है. Product खुद नहीं जाता कहीं. तो product का replacement जो historic था paper उसके अपने challenges हैं and it's not that कि future में नहीं हो रहा. Future में there are very interesting things coming up. In the process, in these last fifteen years, I have been also trying to look for a product which can, you know, take us places and change the game of the industry. So, in that process we found a product which was very good R and D. उसका नाम था polylactic acid, PLA. हमारे जैसे दिखने जैसे product BOPLA बना दुनिया में. मैं उस product का journey बताता हूं. कोई भी product की R and D होती है ना किसी भी किस्म के consumption के product की, तो वह affordable होना चाहिए, scalable होना चाहिए और practically usable होना चाहिए. तो यह product दुनिया ने बहुत create बदबदस्त बनाया. वह look में same था, machinability भी same थी, scalable machinery थी, हो गई थी. उसमें challenge यह आया कि polylactic acid का जो source है ना, that came from corn and sugar. Brazil was one of the big ones who who made that raw material. It was not petrochemical based. Mhmm. दुनिया runs on economy and capitalism. उसमें एक global इधारे ने उस product की process को patent करा लिया. That killed it. Really? Such an amazing product जो दुनिया में बना था. अब जो patent हो गया ना वह इतना महंगा हो गया. Let's say conventional plastic अगर $1 का था तो वह $4 पर पहुंच गया and the price of corn started going up in the world. The price of sugar started going up because corn is a major source of food for cattle in in the in the organized world तो prices of beef started going up in America. ठीक है? So it was food based, food security का challenge शुरू हो गया कि वहां इतनी consumption बढ़ गई है तो भाई आप cattle को क्या खिलाएंगे? आप sugar की दूसरी uses हैं, वह कैसे होएगा? तो commodity prices change होने लगी. So the world thought oh wait, this is not sustainable. तो price affordable नहीं थी customers के लिए. तो the world did an experiment. Pakistan में किसी ने नहीं किया. हम करने वाले थे. हमने इसलिए नहीं किया because दुनिया में reversal आ गया. Otherwise MatPak would have been the first in doing it. But my understanding is कि वह खेल हो गया या वह रुक गया and we're now waiting for certain changes across the board जिसमें फिर eventually sustainability उस product की. Like that's the next maybe switch that we might see. So so अभी जो जैसे हमारे products हैं ना वह sustainability में fallen करते हैं because they're 100% recyclable. But जहां आप biodegradability की बात करते हैं तो एक हमारे पास biodegradable की product line है MacPac के पास but the consumer has to pay a little premium for that. So the consumer has to be a brave also कि मैं अगर कुछ अच्छी चीज़ चाह रहा हूं जो environment के लिए और मेरे future के लिए अच्छी है तो मैं उसका added value भी दूं और companies have to adapt कि उनको अगर carbon footprint या carbon credits मिलते हैं या carbon footprint save होता है so they have to take that step. हम लोग सिर्फ़ बात करते हैं एक मसला है जिसको ख़त्म कर दो, इसको रोक दो. एक problem आया है इस इस problem को रोक दो. ऐसा of the solution. हम अगर आज सारा कुछ रोककर paper पर चले जाते हैं, we don't have enough. हां, मतलब वैसे मुझे जो problem आती है ना, problems नहीं मतलब confusion आती है. वह यह आती है कि आपने
ना अपने अपनी society को भी देख रहे हैं, आपने इसकी economics को भी देख रहे हैं. So for example in a lot of ways I mean with plastic again मैं अगर Dubai की बात करूं या US की बात करूं एक average household consumes a ton of more plastic. पाकिस्तानियों को तो पता ही नहीं है कि कितनी plastic इस्तेमाल हो रही है क्योंकि वहां पर इतनी products हैं जो अब दुनिया कहती है ना कि plastic is a problem. That's a developed world problem. For sure. Because there वह तो बस आंखें बंद करके यानी कि एक चीज़ है छोटी सी चीज़ है उसके वह पचास layers में उन्होंने बंद किया हुआ है. एक खोलते हैं फिर कुछ और खोलते फिर overdoing. They're overdoing, right? So when they say कि यार plastic is a problem we need to solve it they're doing it on in a very different context. When we are doing it तो हमारी already consumption per capita बहुत थोड़ी है और हम more often than not essentials पर लगा रहे हैं. Yes. शायद हमें उसकी intervention में जो आपने earlier on mention किया था कि human behavior change ज़्यादा important है क्योंकि the alternatives at this point in time are way too expensive कि उससे फिर आप गरीब आदमी का access to certain products, certain things फिर
diminish कर देते हैं. You rightly touch the right points. The West started these scenarios and I often say हमारी society में essentials, आटा, चावल, दाल वाली चीज़ें अभी भी पूरी package नहीं हो रही. खुला मसाला भी मिलता है, ठीक है? खुला सब कुछ मिलता है. So मैं एक एक example देता हूं. जब हम काम में आए थे ना तो हमने बहुत product development, market development की. तो अब आज आपको वापस नज़र आते हैं rusks, pack हुए हुए cake rusks हमारे वाले ने शुरू करवाए थे. Example एक product मांगते हैं doll हो गई जो circles में है, वह आप उसमें overdo किया हुआ है plastic packaging को, ठीक है? तो आप वह reduce करें जो essential नहीं है. आप जब food security के मामले को देखें तो आपने actually सही चावल Pakistan से America पहुंचाना है. आप अपने fruit की packaging देख लें. आप उसमें value add और proper packaging करेंगे तो इतना ज़बरदस्त आम जो हमारा है वह दुनिया में सही तरीके से पहुंचेगा. हमारे बहुत सारे ऐसे products हैं जिसको हम क्योंकि सही package नहीं कर रहे हैं वह दुनिया में उस तरह पहुंच नहीं सकता जो वह deserve करता है. तो coming back to what you said, Pakistan की per capita consumption still is about seven KG per capita और जहां west की बात करें that's about 40 to 50 KG per capita. So we can learn from their mistakes and go in the right direction. Mhmm. Which I mentioned कि आप mono materials use कर लें अपनी packaging में. आप excessive toys के लिए excessive packaging use ना करें. Food essentials के लिए use करें. Packaging जो है ना वह food security यह भी दे दीजिए contamination नहीं होती. आप दूध की let's say बात करें. खुल्ला दूध में हमारा मौशा मिलावट कर देता है. Package है, package दूध है. उसके अंदर contamination पानी मिलाना, कुछ और मिलाना. बाद में at least नहीं हो सकता. अगर किसी ने पहले करके मिला लिया is one thing. But रास्ते में जो delivery वाला है या रास्ते में जो उसकी supply chain है, वहां वह safe हो गया. उसको waterborne diseases हो सकते हैं. God forbid. तो it is actually a tool for safety and survival also. So we have to think of it in the right uses we have. Overuse ना करें, सही use करें, सही से dispose करें और सही से dispose करके उसको वापस आप stream में ले आए वापस conversion stream में, recycling stream में. Makes sense. I I just wanna understand
अभी आप लोगों का क्या goal है? Because we've talked about exports. We've talked about other people taking, you know, because you're you're the intermediary essentially, right? You're the b to b. So, एक point पर तो आप यह कह रहे कि you know, I can enable exports and exporters who can come in and who can, you know, take it global. But then you are also creating a product that has a global demand. Yes, ma'am. Right? And so do you see at a time जब dollar गिर रहा है और again free float किया है तो वह essentially global economics के हिसाब से वह अब normalize होना शुरू होगी. Right? So वहां पर कहीं ना कहीं economics में अब opportunity एक खुलती है कि यार raw material तो मैं भी मंगवा रहा हूं उसी price पर जो है India मंगवा रहा है, China मंगवा रहा but शायद labor arbitrage में मैं value addition में I can actually sell it cheaper, right? So, is there are we looking at a potential global expansion for MacPac as well?
So interesting you mentioned that MacPac is is is is focusing on exports ahead very strongly, very aggressively. We've recently created a wholly owned subsidiary in UAE which is called MacPak Middle East so we're going to base a lot of export activity from there yes there is a global room and demand and the product quality we have in Pakistan and at MacPak which I earlier might have mentioned कि we are exporting to Europe and North America the biggest challenge I do also want to share is that the energy prices in Pakistan are not comparable to Middle East or our counterparts in neighbourhood or even let's say China has been a global player present so there we don't have a fair playing ground so internationally when people say कि labour हम affordable है या cheap है. So our MacPag we're capital intensive. We have a lot of automation and umbilical. So we're not largely labor oriented like usually like textiles are. But खैर saying that
यहां पर अगर मैं further consume कर सकूं कि energy is is the core component, right? वह आपने अगर melt करना की चीज़ को heat चाहिए, तब भी आपको चाहिए. आपको machines operate करनी है तब भी आपको चाहिए और इसमें difference यह है कि in in The UAE for an average I'm a residential customer. I'm sure industry कभी same ही scale होगा but for an average customer in The UAE, I pay 29 rupees a unit. जिसका मैं इधर इस्लाहाबाद में 65 rupees a unit देना. Amazing. It's it's I mean, the difference is so huge. It's a two to three x difference जो कि directly price of product में जाएगा और फिर आपका competition out होगा. So because of that we cannot compete. तो मैं एक example देता हूं आपको कि हमारी जो सिर्फ़ energy cost है ना, वह कुछ मुल्कों की total processing cost है.
Insane. It's it's it's it's very non competitive. But that doesn't mean that we're not going to export. We're going to export for multiple reasons. One, the country needs dollar, the company needs dollar or foreign currency, if I correct myself. Plus, local market obviously there is enough capacity that we are not going to use all the capacity in the country. So export is inevitable. For that, MacPac created MacPac Middle East and we have an aggressive plan how we'll penetrate and we are going to leverage my technological expertise in order to do that. So we've started that footprint in those markets. There will be many exciting things that will come in the future which will once they're forwarded and once they materialize
then it will be made public information but somewhere exciting to do. Do you think there's a possibility for some sort of a captive power solution that a lot of industries Yes, are now moving
we have 100% captive power. We do about 6MW but it was gas based Now we have recently due to our sustainability goals We have added a big chunk of solar which will get active in March and then so on So we have added 1MW of solar right now We're going to add more with as time passes. Like, यह energy is is is a very important topic and it's a big topic and if I'm allowed to say, मुल्का यह problem हल हो सकता है. One, we have enough capacity. We need to just work on the distribution. अभी हम non utilization charges दे रहे हैं. अगर हम उसको ही pass on कर दें industry पर या export industry पर तो we can do much more. Secondly, being a country which has the technology to create the cheapest form of energy, which is cheaper than solar में एक CapEx है और wind में एक CapEx है. If I am allowed to say we have the technology और अगर हम nuclear technology अपने country में energy उससे बना लें, US उस पर dependent है तो हम बहुत cheap energy अपनी आवाम के लिए और अपनी industries के लिए बना सकते हैं. हमारे पास gas let's say अगर कम हो गई है या explore अभी further नहीं हो रही है या distribute नहीं हो रही है, whatever the challenges. Energy is the lifeline. Agriculture में इतनी intensive energy नहीं चाहिए but आपको value add करने के लिए energy चाहिए. And in order to stay competitive in the market, in the global market, the policy makers, the people who are going to decide things for this country, they need to focus on energy, affordable energy. If I talk to someone in The Middle East or elsewhere, they are ready to give me ten, fifteen, twenty years of a lock price. That's a big advantage of a company who's in Dubai. Big advantage of a company who is let's say in our neighboring country or China. So they have that advantage but we have a disadvantage. But that doesn't discourage us. That doesn't say that there is no future. If we are not competitive in commodities, we will work at value addition. We will create products that are better priced in the international market. We have to think out of the box, act efficient, act responsive, proactive and find ways to survive and thrive. At MacPag, we don't allow ourselves to be complacent or find a reason कि महाशरा ऐसा है, environment ऐसा है, तो हम यह नहीं कर सकते. We've always brought in new products. We've always brought newer solutions. But the way we turned around this company from 2,007 till date is, it has mostly been out of the box ideas and great people. So there are a lot of exciting things in the pipeline I never let any competitive company discourage me we've had a beautiful journey we're very resilient we're very determined Allah's blessed it with great people skills and it is going to be wonders and there is so much potential, अलाम्दुलिल्लाह, in the world's market and in the Pakistan market and I'm excited to see that happen and lead that to happen.
ऐत्रशांत, thank you so much for taking the time out and coming over and I hope to see particularly in the export side of things. Thank you so कि आप enable भी कर सकें और आप ख़ुद भी जा सकें and I hope कि जो energy mix वाला problem है hopefully that's gonna be solved sooner than later. Thank you so much for coming in and sharing all that insight. Once again thank you for having it was lovely talking to you. And for all of you guys thank you so much for watching. अगर आपको यह episode पसंद आई हो अपने दोस्तों के अनुसार ज़रूर share करिएगा और comment section मुझे ज़रूर बताइएगा. वह report है your thoughts about Pakistan, Pakistan's economy, exports, the climate sustainability or the environmental sustainability of plastics? What do you think about packaging particularly? मैं इसमें ज़रूर mention करना चाहूंगा. बहुत सारे Pakistan में एक एक फ़ौज खड़ी हुई है Amazon के लड़कों के लड़के लड़कियों की, जो कि पूरी दुनिया में drop shipping कर रहे हैं, China से products निकालकर पूरी दुनिया में भेज रहे हैं. थोड़ा सा अपने फ़ारिक time में ज़रूर सोचिएगा कि कौन सी आपके इर्द गृत पाकिस्तानी ऐसी product है जिसको दुनिया शायद accept कर सकती है, quality अच्छी है लेकिन वह वहां पहुंच नहीं रही और उसको सिर्फ़ आपने क्योंकि आपके पास वह skill है, आपके पास वह marketing की, branding की skill है. सिर्फ़ आपको packaging डालनी है, माल गोवेर house तक पहुंचाना है and then you can potentially reach the global market and earn dollars from it as well. But anyways, this was सैयद मज़हब्बेलास and ज़ेदी. You're watching Thought Behind Things. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.
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