Thought Behind Things · Dec 1, 2023 · 2:09:29
Why Pakistani founders glamorise the wrong half of a startup
Awais Shafique sold his Munich startup Precise to Meta — the first Pakistani-founded acquisition for the company, and the seed of its German engineering hub. He walks Muzamil through a viral Stanford win that ended in depression, a borrowed plane ticket to Germany, the institute that gave him his co-founders, and why he thinks Pakistan's startup scene keeps optimising for the wrong things.
with Awais Shafique
13 min read
A humble Islamabad upbringing and an unplanned engineering degree
The episode opens with Muzamil framing the story the way most listeners will first hear it — a Pakistani founder who built a startup in Germany, sold it to Meta, and seeded what is now the company’s German engineering hub. It is, by Muzamil’s account, the first acquisition Meta has made of a Pakistani-founded company. But before any of that, the conversation winds back to Faisalabad, then to Islamabad, then to a series of schools that Awais Shafique did not choose for himself.
Awais was born in Faisalabad and grew up in Islamabad, moving between Pak-Turk International School, a model college in JET-4, and Bahria College for FSc. Each move came from the same place — someone, often a neighbour or a relative, telling his father that a particular school was good and his father acting on the recommendation. The family was, as he puts it bluntly, “very humble.” His father was the only one in the family who had studied — mechanical engineering at UET — and the rest of the household was carrying debt.
He admits a pattern that becomes important later in the conversation: “Wherever I was sent, I did not go happily. But I have loved that place once I went there.” Pak-Turk to model college was, in his telling, the moment he first stepped out of a bubble and met what he calls “the 99%” — a phrase Muzamil picks up and repeats, framing the international and private-school crowd as one-percenters disconnected from the country they grew up in.
The acceptance that broke imposter syndrome at NUST
Awais ended up at NUST SEECS doing electrical engineering — a choice he describes as semi-accidental. His father was a mechanical engineer, electrical engineering had a high merit cutoff, and someone had told the family it was the right move. He admits in hindsight he would have gone straight into software, but he is careful with the regret. “I don’t think there was any other way to get here,” he says. “The individual experiences I have are what have made me the person I am today, and I wouldn’t do it differently.”
At NUST the imposter syndrome arrived on schedule. He had always been a good student. Suddenly he was an average of the best students from across Pakistan. His response was unusual. “Maybe okay, I am not good at studying,” he tells Muzamil. “There was acceptance. It wasn’t going to depression or whatever.” He decided he could not be a top student in that room, but he could be a good engineer — someone who learned how things worked, tinkered, and built. That reframe, he says, is what carried him through the degree.
A Parkinson’s wearable, a viral Stanford win, and the dip that followed
Muzamil pushes Awais into the part of the story that is best known publicly: the medical device he built as an undergraduate at SEECS. It came from a single moment of seeing one of his professors — Sir Majid Magool, who taught entrepreneurship — living with essential tremors. The professor was successful, admired, financially secure, and could not hold a cup of tea steady. Awais wanted to fix that.
The device he and his co-founders built was a wearable that detected the rhythmic tremor in the hand and applied electrical stimulation to the muscle groups that flex it, counteracting the motion just enough that a person could button a shirt or drink a glass of water. He is honest about the prototype — it was “super MVP,” circuits and exposed wires, and his professor still jokes that he was the patient zero who let students attach current to his arm.
The team began entering pitch competitions, won every Pakistani one they entered, and got invited to the Stanford Health Longevity competition in 2017. They flew to Stanford with a prototype that looked, in his own description, like a watch wired to a circuit board with exposed leads. They were the only Asian team in a room of MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley. They won. Awais pulled a Pakistani flag out of his jacket pocket on stage, a photographer caught it, and someone said a line he tells Muzamil he will never forget: “This shows that innovation is not limited to any geographical region.”
The picture went viral. The next day his university and Pakistani news channels were calling. And then nothing happened.
“Somewhere in the middle I believe we got lost,” he says. The team had no idea how to convert fame into a product. Pakistan had no functioning mechanism to commercialise a medical device. American doctors who had been interested at Stanford lost interest when they learned the work would be done from Pakistan. The friends in the original group quietly drifted to other things once the publicity ran out. Awais slid into what he describes plainly as depression — a feeling of having failed his professor, his patients, and his parents.
Muzamil sharpens the reading of what happened. Awais had been pursuing what looked like an ordinary undergraduate opportunity. The media turned it into a story about a kid who was going to change the world. “And you start believing that,” Muzamil says. “And a point out there is jab aapko further answers nahi aa rahe hote, you are already trapped in your own net.” Awais accepts the framing without resistance. “All of the support turned into expectations which turned into me feeling that I was the biggest failure.”
Borrowing a plane ticket to Munich
The next decision is the one that quietly sets up everything that follows. Awais decided he had to leave Pakistan. He did not have the money. A friend’s mother lent him the airfare and told no one. “Agar paise ki wajah se yeh bachcha zindagi mein peechhe reh gaya, toh iske saath bahut badi zyaadati hogi,” she told him. A relative in Canada — an entrepreneur — added more. He applied to Technical University of Munich on the last day, into a computer science programme with a biomedical computing focus, and got in.
The first thing he did in Munich was pick up a working-student job. The job paid roughly 1,200 to 1,500 euros a month. He realised he could pay his hostel rent, eat, and still send money home. “When I realised that earning money is not that difficult,” he says, “I could focus on something else.”
That something else was a Munich institute called CDTM — the Center for Digital Technology Management. A friend had told him it took twenty-five students at a time and was structured not around developing ideas but around developing people. Awais got in within three months. He is unsparing about what it gave him: “CDTM has the highest unicorn-to-alumni ratio. Out of the twenty-five people in my class, eighteen are founders.” He calls himself “indebted to that institute for my life.”
Why an institute that doesn’t teach ideas produces founders
Muzamil presses Awais on what made CDTM different — and the answer reframes how Pakistani readers should think about their own startup pipeline. CDTM did not teach Awais what to build. It put him in a cross-functional cohort with a technologist, a designer, and a business student, ran them through eighteen months of working with real industry clients on real problems, and let them find both an idea and a set of co-founders along the way.
“The best thing,” Awais says, “is that if today you have to start a company, how do you know who to start it with? You know someone is a good technical person, a good business person, but you haven’t seen their work ethics unless you’ve worked with them.” CDTM let him work alongside the people who would later become his co-founders for long enough to judge them. He met his eventual CTO on day one — “super obnoxious guy, I was like, yaar kidhar se aa gaya?” — and only agreed to start a company with him months later, after watching how he worked.
The PPE problem that turned into Precise
The conversation moves into how Precise itself began. The institute paired teams with industry partners; Awais’s team got matched with a European leader in personal protective equipment whose head of innovation was a CDTM alumnus. The brief was unromantic: BMW workshops in Munich were losing days of productivity to PPE fittings that did not fit. Workers had to stop work, queue up, try on gloves and jackets and safety shoes, and start again — sometimes monthly as their bodies changed. The cost was real and the buyer was visible.
Awais’s CTO had patents around AI body modelling. Awais had read about the underlying techniques in medical school. They built a software product that, from any smartphone camera, generated an accurate 3D replica of a person’s body in a few seconds. The PPE company became their first paying customer. The product was 2018.
The pivot from PPE to fast fashion came when his CTO pushed for a larger market. Awais resisted at first — he had come into medicine wanting to help people, and shirts on H&M felt like a step backwards. But he was convinced. By the time Precise hit its stride, the product was a single button on a fashion retailer’s website that read “find me the right size.” The customer would put their phone on the floor, step back, and turn around once. Ten seconds later, Precise returned the right size and surfaced products fitted to that body across the catalogue.
The commercial model was the part Awais is proudest of explaining. “We would just tell you: put this button on your website. We put it for you. You don’t need to do anything technical. And you would make 10% more money.” Precise took a share of the incremental revenue. They got to two million monthly active users and a hundred million recommendations across clients that included H&M.
How Meta actually acquired Precise
Later in the discussion Muzamil asks for the part listeners came for: how Meta ended up buying them. Awais’s account is more interesting than the headline. Precise had hit product-market fit and was publishing aggressive data on how much revenue clients gained per button install. Meta noticed. The first approach, around 2021, was a cold outreach Awais initially ignored — he describes weighing whether to talk to them at all as “this is either a dumb move or it’s going to pay off.” Meta signed an NDA and asked to license the service, framed vaguely as something for Instagram.
What followed was months of negotiation that Awais frames in plainly emotional terms. Meta’s pitch was strategic: Precise would become part of an e-commerce experience Meta was building inside its own ecosystem — a counter-bet, Awais hints, against Apple. Acquisition came with a condition that he initially resisted. Precise would have to stop selling to its existing third-party customers entirely.
The work of unwinding those customer relationships fell on him. “I had to be the matchmaker in the middle,” he says. For every existing client, he had to understand what they actually needed, study every competitor that might fit them, and personally hand the customer over before walking away. “My argument was: yaar Muzamil, we are stopping for strategic reasons, but I found the perfect match for you.” He spent the back half of the negotiation persuading customers to accept their replacement before he could close the deal with Meta.
Precise was absorbed. Awais became a product manager inside Meta’s core monetisation org, working on integrating the Precise technology and on what he describes as “a bigger bet against Apple.” The Precise office became the anchor of Meta’s German engineering presence — the building has since expanded, and Meta has started incubating other startups out of it. He has since left.
Why Pakistani startups optimise for the wrong things
By the end of the conversation, Muzamil shifts the camera. He asks Awais to take off the German hat and put back on the Pakistani one — to look honestly at why one country’s founders keep getting stuck while another’s keep shipping. The answers Awais gives are uncomfortable, and Muzamil largely agrees with them.
The first problem, Awais argues, is glamour. Pakistani startup culture rewards the appearance of being a founder more than the work of being one. “The glamorisation is, you don’t show the hard truth, the real realities — that ninety-five percent of startups fail.” The viral pitch-competition founder gets to skip the unromantic middle.
The second is the obsession with B2C consumer ideas. Pakistan, Awais argues, has trained its founders to chase ideas every single person can use — the largest possible imagined market — because B2B sits behind what he calls “an iron curtain.” Selling to a business requires you to know which business has the problem, who the buyer is inside it, what their timeline is, and whether they have a budget. That research is invisible from the outside. Consumer ideas feel knowable because everyone is a consumer. They are also where capital, distribution, and survival are hardest. Muzamil concurs from his own observations: “We tend to think the businesses are not buying things, so we tend to go to consumers — but actually selling to consumers is harder than selling to businesses.”
The third, and the one Awais returns to most often, is that most Pakistani startups die at the problem-discovery stage, not at the execution stage. “Most companies fail because we are selling to someone who doesn’t even know what their problem is. They haven’t realised the problem, they don’t have a timeline, they don’t have a budget.” A founder who skips those three checks is building a product no one is positioned to buy, regardless of how clever the idea is.
The Stanford lesson, applied backwards
The conversation closes with Muzamil and Awais comparing notes on a young NUST founder building computer-vision automation for traffic signals — a story that, in shape, looks a lot like Awais’s first Pakistani startup. Muzamil’s worry is that the founder will hit the same wall: clear product, no clear buyer with budget and timeline, and a Pakistani ecosystem that congratulates him for the demo before disappearing when the work of selling begins.
Awais’s advice is not about the technology. It is about the question that should come before the technology. Who, specifically, is buying this? What is their thought process? Do they know they have this problem? Until those answers exist, the rest is — in his telling — premature.
Muzamil closes the conversation at the two-hour mark with a quiet observation that Awais has earned the right to make these arguments: he is, after all, the Pakistani founder who actually shipped, sold to Meta, and seeded the company’s German engineering hub. The fact that his advice for the next Pakistani founder is “do the unglamorous customer research first” is, in itself, the most useful thing he says all episode.
Full transcript
Welcome back to the ten eighty seventh episode of ThoughtBandThings. Today is the 12/01/2023 and आज हमारे साथ एक बहुत ही खास मेहमान मौजूद है all the way from Germany जिनका जो सबसे मज़ेदार बात यह है कि he actually built a startup that he sold to Meta. Meta being the company जो Facebook को own करती है originally they were called Facebook now they're called Meta. Germany की यह if if I understand this correctly this is the first acquisition for Meta in Germany definitely the first and probably the only one for a पाकिस्तानी और जो Germany का headquarter है Meta का वह इन्हीं की companies से पर eventually बना it's an incredible story before actually going to Germany and building this startup he actually did a medical startup in Pakistan जिसके लिए he went to Stanford as well and and and won a global competition there as well. Was super viral back in 1516 but he wasn't able to commercialize that. In this conversation we discussed you know startups in general Pakistan में क्या वजह है कि startups नहीं चल सकती? What are some of the major problems कि पाक्स्तानी founders face कर रहे हैं? What are the some of the major weaknesses जो पाक्षतानी founders में हैं it's a super super insightful conversation the story is incredible but more than that we you know very deeply discussed the overall ecosystem the industry the problems and there's a lot of insight for people particularly in the start up spaces Pakistan interested in so I hope it is as insightful for you as it was for me I had a great time if you new to करना मत भूलिएगा अगर आप पुराने हैं तो video को like करना मत भूलिएगा it really helps the algorithm अगर आपके कोई thoughts हैं तो comment section मुझे जाकर ज़रूर बताएं read all the comments and it really helps improve the quality of the conversation अगर आप overseas पाकिस्तानी हैं तो do consider helping us you know through the strike link below it will help us remain independent for as long as possible But anyways, here is Avaya Shafiq on TBT. Slava studio. अवैस, how are you? Pretty good, अलहम्मद अलहाह and you? Thank you, thank you अलहम्मद अलहा. Thank you for coming on the show. Pleasure pleasure, thank you. मैं conversation को थोड़ा सा start करूंगा. Just trying to understand where were you born and early life आपने कहां पर गुज़ारी?
यार, I've been all over Pakistan. मैं फैसलाबाद में पैदा हुआ था but mostly मैंने जो ज़िंदगी गुज़ारी है वह मैंने इस्तामाबाद में गुज़ारी है. Yeah and I've lived there for for a while. And education कहां पर आपने? Early education, yeah. जो मेरे bachelor Older हों, Ok ok. यार early education मेरी मैं international schools में भी पढ़ा हूं, private schools में पढ़ा हूं, moral colleges में पढ़ा हूं. तो मेरा जो circle है it's very wide
हर तरह के लोगों में And कहां बैठा middle and high school कहां पर था?
Year मैं moral college में पढ़ा था. कौन से वाला? JET four में हम रहते थे. I'm CB JET and four में थोड़ा. How was that? Yeah, it was pretty good. उससे पहले मैं थोड़ा सा आपको बताना चाहूंगा. मैं एक national school में पढ़ा था पाक्तुर्क का, I don't know, I पाक्तुर्क का होता है कि have heard they are incredible by the way. यार बहुत अच्छा था, बहुत अच्छा था. It was, it was great time उस वक़्त. मैं moral college में इस तरह आया कि like I said we're from a very humble family. मेरे अबू जैन is the only one who studied. जिन्होंने mechanical engineering की है UET से. हमारी society में जिस तरह normally होता है कि किसी ने कह दिया कि यार यह बड़ा अच्छा school है, यहां चले जाओ. मैं park tour में था, scholarship वगैरह में पढ़ रहा था. मेरा छोटा भाई था जो कि evening में जाता था किसी model college में. किसी ने कहा कि यार आपका बच्चा morning में चला जाए तो छोटा भाई भी morning में आ जाएगा. मुझे पाक्तुर्क से निकालकर उधर डाल दिया. मेरा भाई भी morning में आ गया. So we were in model college. कुछ और सा वह पाक्तुर्क से बड़ा shift था with the people जो वहां पर थे gave me a different taste of इस्लामाबाद which is very nice. फिर
उसके बाद मैं बैठ गया. What do you mean by कि different different
crowd था या? Different, yeah, it was यह model college में I mean I think आप भी इस्तामाबाद से हैं तो diversity ज़्यादा है? There is a lot of diversity, let's call it that way, a good way to put it. वहां पर हर तरह के लोग आते हैं, right? And you're a bit closer to reality. मेरे ख्याल से पाक्तुर जैसे school international, private schools में
आप बहुत बबल में होते हो right? Disconnected होते हो उससे? Disconnected होते हो Generally the one percenters of of our society. Yes. And when you go to public schools तो you begin to realize कि the 99% and it's huge by the way. You know they're they're they're very different and have a different reality altogether. Yeah. What was the experience like? What was the education like? What was the the culture, the friends that you made? Tell me about that. Yeah.
I think जिस भी जगह मैं गया हूं जहां पर मुझे भेजा गया है, वहां पर मैं खुशी से नहीं गया initially. Right. But I have loved that place जब मैं वहां चला गया हूं. उस every single experience मेरे school का, मेरे university का, work experience has shaped me to the person that I am today to be very honest. Right. And has played a great part in that. Model college का आप culture की बात कह रहे हैं वहां पर the education was pretty good I would say. I mean मेरे ख्याल से हमारे education system में it's very self driven मतलब आपको खुद से you have to do something और क्योंकि मैं बड़ा बच्चा था तो parents का बहुत focus था कि यार यह कुछ करेगा आगे जाकर तो इसको मेहनत करती है. First child is always the ultimate experiment हां वह experiment करते हैं तो they were like यार इस पर थोड़ा सा ज़रा मेहनत करते हैं which I think paid off. Right. Was So a great experience I would say. And then for for FSE you went to बहरिया college? Yeah, हां बहरिया college again. Really good friend of mine now, one of my best friends. वह मुझे किसी academy में मिला. I hated the guy at that time. मेरे अबू से मिले. किसी ने कहा यार बहरीय college बड़ा अच्छा है. वहां जाना चाहिए आपके बच्चे को. मैं model college में set हो गया था. मेरे दोस्त वन गए थे. I was playing sports. I was like and my बड़ा खुश था वहां पर. वह मेरे अब्बू से मिले. उसने वैसे ही उन्होंने कहा कि यार ज़रा भैरी college की form चला देना. वह लेकर आया I was like यार क्यों कर रहे हो तुम? मैं मैं खुश हूं ना करो. उन्होंने कहा यार वैसे ही apply कर दो क्योंकि किसी दोस्त ने कहा था and eventually देहरीय college में चला गया the guy became one of my best friends now. Right. इस्ताम आदमी रहते हैं. Interesting.
This was what year was this? 2012?
Year हां, it's 2012 जब मैं FSC से graduate हूं और मैं अपनी
electrical engineering start की है मैंने. Interesting. Why did you choose electrical engineering? यार थोड़ा सा मुझे
college to university का जो transition था वह. College to university का आपको बताता हूं. मेरे वालेद साहब जो हैं वह mechanical engineer हैं, right? और उस time like you know आपको कुछ पता नहीं है. किसी ने again कहा कि यार electrical engineer का merit बहुत बहुत high होता है. मेरा ख़लाफ़ वह करना चाहिए. नास्त में SEEKS जो ऐश्वर्व है, वहां पर जाना चाहिए. It's one of the best schools. Right. You were always a good student? Yeah, I was always a good student लेकिन मतलब I think I can't really say कि यार मैं electrical engineering service लेकर क्योंकि it was a higher merit. क्योंकि मेरे अबू mechanical engineer थे. बचपन से ही उन्होंने मुझे कहा यार साथ आ कि यह तो चीज़ fix कर दो मेरे साथ. तो मेरा मैं और मेरा छोटा भाई जो है दोनों ने electrical engineer किया और दोनों का ही यही experience रहा है कि we were very technically savvy like हम छोटा मोटा कुछ ना कुछ करते रहते थे, tinker करते रहते थे. तो that really played a big part कि मैं कैसे I went into you know electrical engineering. दुनिया भर में technology बहुत evolve कर चुकी है. अब आप घर बैठे एक mobile phone से पूरी दुनिया में किसी किस्म की भी different assets, stocks या even cryptocurrencies ख़रीद सकते हैं. जहां पर यह technological evolution आए वहां पर भी unfortunately हालात ऐसे हैं कि economy
एक ऐसी जगह पर पहुंची हुई है कि बड़े आजकल बुरे हालात हैं, inflation बहुत ज़्यादा बढ़ रही है, savings हमारी deplete हो रही है. ज़्यादातर लोग investments करते ही नहीं हैं और जो करते भी हैं वह 90% losses unfortunately बनाते हैं. इसी problem को solve कर रहा है शर्माया dot p k जो कि अपने financial trading platforms पर trainings भी offer करता है और data भी offer करता है जिससे आप पूरी दुनिया की markets ख़ासकर पाकिस्तानी markets को आसानी देख सकते हैं. अगर आप लोग अपने investments और trading में struggle कर रहे हैं तो I would definitely urge you to check out शर्माया financials platform. It's a remarkable place जहां पर आपको बहुत interesting you know reports के through data भी मिलता है, investment की advice भी मिलती है और ख़ासकर उनकी trainings जहां पर उनके experts जो हैं वह आपको crypto और stock market और commodities और assets के अंदर trade करके पैसे कमाना सिखाते हैं. So check out the platform and check out their trainings. Now back to the podcast. Do you think in hindsight you would you would still do electrical engineering at the time or would you be like यार software side पर चला जाता है? Yeah, मैं 100% software में जाता to be very honest. I
think there is a lot like I think maybe मैं different ग़लत impression दे रहा हूं. मेरा भाई maybe he is smarter than I am. He done pretty well electrical engineering में भी. Pakistan में या he is corrupt? Pakistan में था, Pakistan में अच्छी job की उसने फिर बाहर चला गया मेरे नुक में ही होता है मेरे साथ. मैं शायद इतना अच्छा electrical engineer नहीं था. मेरे different aspirations थीं but मैं क्योंकि अब जिस field में मैं अब हूं, looking back at it मेरे ख्याल से मैं differently choose करता but the funny thing is कि I don't think there was any other way to get here. मुझे लगता है कि मेरे जो individual experiences हैं that have made me the person that I am today और I wouldn't do it differently. जो वह struggle है, जो made a path with है, I think that I would keep it the same, I would say. Interesting, how was नास्त
overall as a university experience
not just the electrical part of it? यार नास्त मेरे ख्याल से बड़ा अच्छा मेरा time रहा था उसमें but जब आप ना मतलब for example अगर आप किसी अच्छी university में जाते हैं and you're good student हमेशा आप रहे अच्छे student रहे यहां पर बड़ा pressure आया कि यार to be good जब वह वहां जाते हैं और हर बंदा ही अच्छा है
तो you're sort of the average. तो impostor syndrome आपको सही hit करके आ के Exactly
exactly. मेरा तरीका to actually deal with imposter syndrome was कि यार मैं maybe ok I am not good at studying right. मैंने accept कर लिया. There was acceptance. It wasn't like going to depression or whatever. और उसमें वहां पर I mean the top students of all over Pakistan Yeah, are हमें यही बताया जाता है cream है पाकिस्तानी which is true. आती है cream आती है, बाकी सबसे अच्छे students आते हैं. So the average वह higher हो जाती है. और फिर basically you are just an average of a student. मेरा मेरा I had to मैंने आपको जितना पहले भी हम बात किए थे podcast से मेरा थोड़ी सोच यह थी कि यार मैं थोड़ा self reflective था, right? तो मैंने सोचा कि यार मैं क्यों electrical engineering में आया हूं और मैं क्या करना चाहता हूं आगे? और वह सोचते सोचते मुझे acceptance से मैं वहां चला गया कि यार मैं पढ़ाई में अच्छा नहीं हूं. I can't get good grades लेकिन मैं I can be a good engineer, right? मैं काम सीख सकता हूं और मैं कुछ काम से कुछ बना सकता हूँ. तो मेरा वह acceptance was my way of dealing with
impostor syndrome. Interesting. Do you think you were generally a street smart person? Someone who would tinker around and find ways out in innovative styles?
I would say yes as a short answer. उसकी वजह यह है कि जैसे मैंने आपको बताया मैंने almost हर दो साल बाद कोई ना कोई school change किया है और like change किया academic institution उससे आए मैं हर तरह के adjustment आए हुए हैं. Bubble में नहीं था. मैं हर तरह के लोगों से मिला हूं जिसकी वजह से I think मुझे street smartness भी थोड़ी सी मिली. जिसकी वजह से मुझे यह ability मिली कि मैं different perspective से चीज़ों को view कर सकता हूं which I think became one of my, one of my strengths. Interesting.
Within नास्त you started to build your first startup or was that after graduate? नहीं नहीं, it was in नास्त. Ok, what was that? हम
लोग बना रहे थे tremors की device. Parkinson's एक disease होती है जिसमें एक condition होती है उसे कहते हैं tremors, essential tremors. It's a condition
for ये symptoms कैसे हम? For those who don't know, me about Parkinson's and
what I am not an expert in that उसमें मैंने जैसा बताया कि the disease has a side effect or like an effect on your body जिससे आपके कोई भी body part uncontrollably shake कर सकता है. हम particularly essential tremors पर काम कर रहे थे. उसमें basically आप अगर कोई cup उठाने की कोशिश करते हैं, आपका हाथ हिलना शुरू कर देगा, वह intentional essential tremor आ जाता है. आपका हाथ कांप रहे हैं, आप चाय नहीं पी सकते, right? आप अपने button बंद करें, button ही बंद कर सकते. मेरा अगर अगर if you would like हम थोड़ा background में भी dive करते हैं कि why I started the company. Like I told you मेरा बहुत humble background है स्तालिक है. मेरे family में किसी ने business नहीं किया और the expectation was कि यार मैं electrical engineering graduate करूंगा और मैं family में contribute करना शुरू कर दूंगा to get out of the the debt जो भी हमारा था family का और मेरा यही plan था और यही expectation थी for the most part कि मैंने यही करना. मैं third year में था जब हमारे एक काफ़ी मशहूर professor and सीखs में उन्होंने वह entrepreneurship पढ़ाते हैं. What's his name? Sir, माजिद मगूल नाम उनका. Right. तो वह he is loved by a lot of people सीखs में काफ़ी अच्छे से वहां पर. उन्होंने उन्होंने entrepreneurship से मुझे introduce करवाया और third year में मुझे realization हुई कि यार मैं अच्छा engineer तो वन सकता हूं but Pakistan में आप अच्छा engineer बनकर भी क्या करते हैं? As an electrical engineer उस time पर you know आप किसी PNG में जा सकते हैं and eventually आप power plant में जाकर whatever maintenance कर रहे होते हैं तो I thought कि यार यह नहीं हो सकता this cannot be it for me, right? Financially तो मैं contribute करूंगा ही किसी ना किसी तरह से but मेरी भी कोई aspirations हैं. Purpose है कि मैं Purpose होना चाहिए. Grand scheme of things मैं दुनिया को क्या value provide exactly? Am I just doing maintenance? Exactly. Yeah, redundant काम है ये? Exactly. मुज़मिल वह बात है ना कि आप यह वह उनको Parkinson's था. He was very successful martialah, career wise, of person जिनको you aspire to be. आप चाहते हैं कि जैसे बने. उनका he had essential tremors और उनसे मुझे देखकर नज़र आया कि यार he has everything, like financially. I would like to be this person, admired by a lot of people. But sadly उनका अपने body पर control नहीं है, right? मुझे उससे पता चला कि यार इस दुनिया में hop कर सकूं, right? That was a thought process initially और हमने बनाया क्या उसके बाद essential tremors में आपके हाथ rhythmically हिलते हैं, right? या कोई भी body part. हम hands पर focus कर रहे थे. हमने एक device बनाई थी wearable device जो कि आपका यह rhythm जो है वह measure करके उसको counteract करें और हमें लग रहा था यार यह दुनिया में कभी कहीं ना कहीं बनी होगी. We were like यार चलो छोटा मोटा कुछ कर लेते हैं, इधर Pakistan में भी बनाने की कुछ करते हैं. But when we researched हमें पता लगा कि यार it's a novel concept यह अभी तक नहीं बना हुआ and we started building company for that. नहीं so
पहले तो मुझे यह बताएं what were you doing like how how did that device function? Right. And at this point time was this a white paper
did you actually have a sort of an MBP or a proof of concept out there? Yesterday we started building an MBP क्योंकि like I said मेरा मकसद जो मेरी thought process थी वह यह था कि यार एक बंदे की help हो जाए, इसी के लिए मैं कुछ बना दूं. It was more like यार मैं tinker कर लेता हूं तो कुछ ना कुछ करके मैं इनकी help कर दूं, right? उसी को मैंने अपने final project में भी डाल दिया. मैंने कहा यार चलो, like I might as well be great for it. तो वहां से हमने बनाना शुरू की. उसका एक part था detection का which was detecting कि आपका हाथ कैसे move करता है. Right. वह कुछ calibrate करता है, उसे पता लगता है कि यार एक certain frequency पर आपका हाथ हिल रहा है. उसके बाद वह electrical stimulation करता था आपके muscles की. आपके muscles basically बाजू के, you know, there's segmented into major portions जो कि आपके हाथ को flex करते हैं. तो अगर आप एक certain group of muscles को activate कर रहे हो तो आपका हाथ एक direction move कर जाएगा very very simple terms और दूसरे को दूसरी तरफ move कर जाएगा. तो you could somehow rhythmically, you know, mitigate थोड़े से कम कर सकते थे उस motion को enough कि वह बंदा अपने normal काम कर सकते थे. And were you were you able to achieve that? So very roughly like I said super MVP अब वह हमारे sir अभी जब stories सुनाते हैं तो वह मुज़ाग़ उड़ाते कि यार मुझे current लगाते थे नहीं कितने साल. तो he was your patient zero. फिर हम एक hospital के साथ भी काम कर रहे थे. वहां पर हमें patients मिले but वही बात है जो हम पहले बात कर रहे थे कि I realized कि यहां पर there is no proper mechanism कि आप उस चीज़ को commercialize कर सकें क्योंकि how can you directly jump into human testing without like, वह जो आपने बोला सारा research करने के बाद like, तो you know let's say let's call it that way like yes it was working for a certain group.
And you guys went to that product it didn't just come up in a university and die in that university you took it abroad as well you went to competitions tell me about that. Funny
story, उस वक्त जो incentivization थी was more like कि यार इस चीज़ को कितना हम
Cancer थे. Cancer. To put it very mildly. Very mildly, that's true.
But like I said हमारा जो core था जो हमने जिस वजह से start किया था वह basically was to actually help someone. जो आपने बात की खेचने की वह यह था कि how can we get publicity around this जिससे हम फिर आगे maybe funding raise कर सकें because जब 02/1615 की बात खेरों like no one in my family has done a traditional business. मुझे VC से concept नहीं है, मुझे पता नहीं है fund raise कैसे करना है? How do you like? How do you actualize this thing and do Like yeah, something आपने आपके दिमाग में concept है, आपने hardware बना लिया you know, उसको मैं कैसे product बनाकर बेचूं? मुझे कुछ नहीं पता इस चीज़ का, right? And there is no mechanism जो मुझे बताया उस चीज़ के बारे में कि यार यह यह यह करोगे तो आप raise करोगे. उस time भी बहुत trend था like हमारी university में भी बाद में outside of university बहुत competitions होते थे, pitch competitions होते थे. You would get money out of it. हमने Pakistan में करना शुरू किया and I think we were great at selling a story. It was something people could relate to directly. Pain थी एक actual लोगों की. हमें personal messages आते थे कि यार आप जितने पैसे ले लें हमारे अबू का, हमारे भाई का, amiga, यह मसला solve कर दें. Right. तो it was a real pain. People could connect you. Mhmm. We had a good way of building a product, मतलब हमारा vision अच्छा था कि कैसे बनेगा. Mhmm. तो हमने Pakistan ने pitch करना शुरू किया. Every competition that we would go to, we would win it. हमने कहा यार बाहर भी चले जाते हैं. Final year में हैं, why not? बाहर एक competitions में apply करना शुरू कर दिया. उस time पर आप NACH की website पर आ जाते थे अगर आपने किया तो मैंने कहा यार वाह यह तो बड़ी अच्छी बात है आपको personal branding मिल रही है. चलो यार और apply करो. You would get some money out of it and then you would put it into the product. आपको मुझे यही नज़र आया कि यार आप pitch competitions में जाओ, थोड़ा सा पैसा मिले, उसे product को थोड़ा सा आगे कर लो, company की branding थोड़ी सी बेहतर कर दो. यही यही मुझे तरीका नज़र आ रहा था for raising money. हम लोग, we went, we did a bunch of trips US के इधर उधर गए. एक जो major effect हमारा हुआ था in '17 I believe, वह यह था कि हम लोग Stanford में बुला लिया हुआ health longevity center है वहां पर Stanford में. उनका कोई competition हो रहा था where you would build a device जो कि longevity Promote करती है. Promote करती है. यह longevity में बहुत अच्छा fit हो रहा था कि यार आप, you know, आप एक elderly age पर जाते हैं जहां पर ज़्यादा patients होते हैं tremors के, वहां पर वह उनकी quality of life कैसे भी दिख रहा है. उस वक़्त Trump भाई elect हुए थे और जब हमने जाना था उस pitch competition में तो visa बड़ी मुश्किल से मिला. Visa मिला तो हमने कहा यार हम तो prototype लेकर जा रहे हैं. वहां पर हमारा prototype था. आप imagine करें एक घड़ी से मैंने बनाई थी जो कि detect करती थी. उसके अंदर एक circuit था not packaged at all. एक board मैंने बनाया हुआ जिसमें से तारे निकल रही हैं. तारे निकल रही हैं. वह मैंने पहली दफा में गए US एक एक और वजह से. और वहां पर जो बाकी सारी हम Asian regions सिर्फ I believe हम थे. अच्छा. बाकी सारे universities जो थी वह थी MIT, Harvard, Berkeley सारे बड़े बड़े नाम. हम वहां गए हमने कहा यार मुफ्ते खाना मिल जाएगा. Stanford देख लेंगे. Exposure है हां. Exposure है लोगों से मिल लेंगे. हमारे कुछ entrepreneurs थे, कुछ professors थे valley में हमने कहा वहां उनसे मिल लेंगे. वहां गए हम लोग वहां पर हमने pitch किया. Pitch करके बाहर आ गए, खाना खाया. खाना खा रहे थे तो उन्होंने results announce करना शुरू किया. हम लोग वापस गए. तो हम लोग बैठे हैं. हम by some miracle we actually won और मेरे jacket की pocket में Pakistan का flag था मुझे था कि यार तस्वीर बनेगी तो हम निकाल लेंगे Pakistan से गया है कोई तो we actually won a room हम stage पर रह गए और मैंने Pakistan का flag निकाल लिया and someone took a picture and we got a standing ovation for that Standing ovation हमें इसलिए मिला और someone said something which I will never forget. उसने कहा था कि this shows कि innovation is not limited to any geographical region. इसका मतलब यह है कि हमें innovation कहीं से भी आ सकती है. दुनिया की भलाई के लिए, दुनिया की improvement के लिए innovation कहीं से भी आ सकती है and we should support these people और वह California was
Is the mecca of technological innovation. Yes और
I think वह I wouldn't call it anti Trump but वह Trump के इतने बड़े supporters नहीं है तो I think that was also promotional. Messaging हां. Messaging कि यार आपने electronics plan लगाया हुआ Pakistan पर वहां के बच्चे आकर एक छोटी सी university के वह they are building something जो कि revolutionary हो सकती है. हां. Right? हां. और that went viral like that picture went viral. अगले दिन मुझे university से call आ रहा है, मुझे news channel की call आ रही है, मैं उधर ही बैठा हूं valley में और वहां पर call आ रही है कि यार oh यहां जी, यहां जी, यहां जी, and somewhere in the middle I believe we got lost क्योंकि हमें नहीं पता you know आप थोड़ा सा दुबारा इसको recap करें. Someone जिसकी family में कभी किसी ने business नहीं किया. किसी को पता नहीं है business कैसे करना है, किसी को यह नहीं पता कि product कैसे बनाना है, किसी को यह नहीं पता कि पैसे कैसे raise करना है, उसे basically आप pitch competition की तरफ लेंगे and then they just get good and good, really good in that. International level पर represent करें वह चीज़ हमारे soft image के लिए बहुत अच्छा था Pakistan के लिए और Pakistan में I got rewarded for it great great perfect that I felt like यार वह that was the peak right for me और मुझे लगा था इसके बाद मैं कुछ नहीं गिर सकता मैंने कर लीजिए मैंने करना था मैं आगे हूं बस हो गया और when I came back to Pakistan electronics में तो लगा हुआ था हमारे relationship इतने अच्छे नहीं थे US के साथ कुछ medical doctors थे Stanford में, Harvard में. वह मुझे कह रहे थे कि यार oh, you know, हम collaborate करते हैं. मैंने उनको कहा कि यार sorry मैं तो Pakistan आ गया हूं. उन्होंने कहा oh अच्छा, हम काम नहीं कर सकते आपके साथ. क्योंकि उनको भी नहीं पता कि यार एक third world country में I mean it's not third world but like developing country Developing country में आप कैसे किसी की help, किसी की help कर सकते हैं, किसी से product बनवा सकते हो. How would you ship that product और test होगा और कैसा सब कुछ होगा, right? उनको भी mechanism नहीं पता. Pakistan में कोई बैठा नहीं है जिसको पता है कि product कैसे बनाना है, इसको लेकर आगे कैसे चलना है, how to capitalize on this fame And unfortunately or fortunately, I think everyone just played a part in that. Everyone got rewarded for that fame a little bit जो साथ थे and eventually that fizzled out and I think I personally and also my two co founders I think I personally went into depression because मुझे लगा था this was the end. मुझे personal messages आ रहे हैं लोगों के कि यार what happened with the device? मुझे कुछ नहीं पता कि इसको आगे कैसे लेकर चलना है, And sadly I don't know कि यार इसके बाद क्या होगा? और on top of that मेरी hardest negotiation जो थी was with my parents जब उनको मैंने बोला था कि यार आप मुझे time दे दें थोड़ा सा buzz करने के लिए. मैं आपकी ज़रूरत पूरी नहीं कर सकता अभी और मैं अपना कुछ करना चाह रहा हूं और वह लड़ाई करके मैं जो है बनाऊं मेरे parents ने eventually support कह रहे हैं मुझे. But I don't know the answer to what we what you can do next. Yes, मुझे नहीं पता कि मैं आगे क्या करूंगा and I felt like the biggest failure. I felt like यार I failed my professor, I failed all the patients and I felt like I failed my parents, right? उनको उनसे मैंने तो वादा किया कि यार oh मेरे दिन में तो बड़ी, you know, I could be I could be the next big thing, I could build this new product and as a as a result मुझे पैसा भी मिलेगा इसका, right? Right. But that was I think one of the worst points in my life when I was really depressed. Do think if you were to look back?
Because for you largely you were just pursuing आपको एक opportunity नज़र आ रही थी. आपने वह opportunity pursue कि अगर आप honestly उसमें देखें भी तो कोई rocket science तो नहीं थी. Yeah. आपने कुछ पढ़ा हुआ था आपने उसके around pursue करना चुका आपने certain time लगाया. फिर जब इस तरह की आपको fame आती है ना तो उसमें particularly media and and and when people are talking about things तो they add a lot of themes. Yeah. That are great. They feel great but they sell well as well. आपके एक बार आपको लोग आकर करना शुरू कर देते हैं कि यार यह तो genius है ना, like he is the next big thing, he is gonna change the world because oh wow. And you start believing that. You start believing that, right? And a point out there is जब आपको further answers नहीं आ रहे होते तो आप अपने ही जल्दल्य फंस चुके होते हो. Because आपका अगर media fame नहीं थी तो आपको answers नहीं आ रहे हैं. It's fine. But जब media fame मिल गई है और आपको answers नहीं आ रहे हैं now everybody is like looking at you all excited कि ok you know अवैस what's next? And you're like I I don't know I'm just a kid. I have no idea. Do you think that played a played a bigger role in in you in in you seeing how you see yourself failure. शायद अगर वह media fame ना होती है अगर वह आवाज़े ना होती है कि वैसे gonna change the world or वैसे gonna do something big तो शायद आप इतने बड़े failure ना करते हैं आप कहते हैं हां ठीक है मैंने try किया try किया यहां पर फंसाऊं तो मैं फंसाऊं and I'll see what I'll do. But the media then made you a prisoner of your own. Do get
it? Yeah I get it. I think बहुत interesting perspective है इस चीज़ को view करने का and I think I completely agree with you. मेरे ख़याल से it was the expectations. You're right. And यह सारी, you know, all of the support turned into expectations which turned into me feeling कि I was the biggest failure at that stage. क्योंकि मैं expectation ही नहीं पूरा कर पा रहा था. And if you go back, dive deeper a little bit. आपने मुझे सवाल किया कि कहां पढ़े? Were you a good student? I think जो भी आप कह रहे हैं that's eventually your वह pressure build हो रहा है. आपको feel हो रहा है कि you're a good student. आप expectations, expectations, expectations, expectations and मेरे लिए I couldn't be that good student like जब सारे ही अच्छे हैं नास्त्मे I couldn't be that good student. My expect changing that expectation was like मैं कुछ बड़ा करूंगा, मैं अपने career में कुछ बेहतर करूंगा जो मुझे नज़र आ रहा था कि मैं कर सकता हूं and I felt like कि मैं नहीं कर सकता anymore, right? And that came crashing down to that point where I felt like यार,
can't do it anymore. Do you think the hit and a dip is necessary to truly be able to understand what value really is?
Yes. मेरे ख्याल से that event was a shock to the system, to my system.
Your understanding of the system? Yes.
नहीं I mean internally how I think things उस चीज़ के लिए shock था और वो times होता जब मैं like when we had to close shop और कोई avenue नहीं नज़र आ रहा there is like you know no one is taking up the device और आगे नहीं चीज़ चल पा रही कोई help नहीं कर पा रहा कोई बता नहीं रहा इससे निकलना कैसे है इसको आगे कैसे लेकर चलना है तो at that point I got a lot of time to think कि what makes, what made me get to this point और who I am as a person और मैं क्यों सब कुछ कर रहा था और मैं आगे क्या करूंगा, right? उसकी वजह से I eventually decided कि मैं Pakistan से birth चला जाऊंगा क्योंकि मुझे Pakistan में कोई future नज़र आ नहीं रहा था. मैं काफ़ी I was, मयूस था काफ़ी और that was I felt like I was huge disappointment to the family, to my parents और उनसे मैंने एक negotiate किया कि यार please मुझे थोड़ा सा time दे दें, मैं आपकी help नहीं कर सकता और फिर मैं दुबारा उनसे यही कह रहा हूं कि यार oh, थोड़ा और time दे दें, मैं बाहर जा रहा हूं. By the way मुझे पैसे भी दे दें. हां. मेरे पास कुछ कोई पैसे नहीं थे to actually go abroad. I had no way of going abroad. One of my best friends at the time उसने मुझे कहा था कि यार मैं Germany जा रहा हूं, education free होती है. वहां पर computer science और जो medicine में भी you know you could do something, इसको वहां लेकर जा सकते हो तो you could build it कहीं और, right? यहां नहीं बना सके, कहीं और बना लो. और Germany मुझे cheapest option नज़र आ रही थी कि यार वहां पर education free है, अच्छा infrastructure है, blah blah blah, right? मैंने apply कर दिया बिल्कुल last दिन पर technical university of Munich में computer science, biomedical computing में. बिल्कुल last time मैंने apply कर दिया बगैर सोच समझे क्योंकि मुझे कुछ नहीं नज़र आ रहा था मैं Pakistan में क्या करूंगा और मैं I got in. उसके बाद I didn't have any money not even to buy a plane ticket. I think मेरे father की कोई saving was around like three hundred dollars like 60,000 थी उस time पर. हमारा अपना घर था भैरिया में but हम debt में थे and the actual saving was just a little bit उस time पर वही बात है कि another hard discussion at home कि यार मैं बैठ जाना चाह रहा हूं क्योंकि मुझे वह चीज़ नज़र आ रही है जो शायद आप अभी ना देख सकें and I felt like यार मैं शायद disappoint इतना कर चुका था. उन्होंने कहा कि यार चल कर ले तू जो करना है. They
were very supportive I would say. हां मतलब for a lot of parents they'll be like यार बेटा हो गया ना अपनी औकात पर आ गए तो आप जाकर नौकरी करो पैसे कमाओ. Most parents in Pakistan tend to stay a clear of the risk that you because you knew कि यार there is something in me where I want to pursue a direction और मैं कुछ ना कुछ करके बना लूंगा कि मुझे थोड़ी सी support मिल जाए. But for जो आपके left right लोग होते ना वह वह बुरा नहीं चाह रहे होते हैं आपके लिए. But उनको यह होता है कि यार अभी पहले भी इसको किया था नहीं हो सका. अभी अपने आप को बड़े उसमें ना डाल दे मसले में. And so they tend to want you to come to the most average risk averse side. Yeah exactly. But they they didn't push you कि यार नौकरी पकड़ लो या यह कर लो this they were supportive of the idea कि this is what you want to do and this is something that came entirely from you. This is not something जो कि
family को शुरू do. Yeah मैंने जैसे बोला कि मेरे father I think मेरे सबसे पहले पढ़े में वह उन्होंने भी bachelor's किया यहीं से बाहर कोई पढ़ने गया नहीं हुआ तो पता भी नहीं था कि बाहर कैसे जाते हैं मुझे भी नहीं पता था और I think they were very supportive for sure. But to be honest मुझे अमिल, I was at the lowest point in my life and जब मैंने यह चीज़ realize की कि यार मैं इससे नीचे नहीं जा सकता, the only way is up now. Yeah. और मैं I don't have anything to lose. मेरे risk appetite बहुत ज़्यादा बढ़ गया था and I realized कि यार अगर मुझे इस depression इस जगह से निकलना है तो कुछ I have to do something you know astronomical और कुछ बिल्कुल ही out of this like out of my thoughts वह करना पड़ेगा. कोई नहीं बैठ गया मैं चला जाता हूं right वहां Change the environment basically change. Change the environment to get a clear head मेरे one of my best friends उसकी mother ने मुझे loan दिया and she said something that I would now forget. उन्होंने कहा था कि यार अगर पैसे की वजह से यह बच्चा ज़िंदगी में पीछे रह गया तो इसके साथ बहुत बड़ी जाती होगी. She didn't tell anyone. She gave me the money और किसी और हमारे बहुत अच्छे relative जाने वाले हैं. जिनसे कभी बात नहीं हुई थी उनको मैंने कहा ख़ैर कुछ दे सकते हैं दे दे दें. He helped. He was also an entrepreneur Canada में माशाला. पैसे लेकर मैं चला गया, पहुंच गया Germany. जाते ही मैंने सबसे पहले job पकड़ी. वहां पर एक concept है working students का Germany में. उसमें यह होता है कि आपको और jobs नहीं क्यों नहीं पड़ती but आप कोई technical job कर सकते हो किसी company में और वह आपको पैसे देते हैं थोड़े से, right? मैं मुझे जो पहली job मिली उसमें आई थी मुझे हज़ार बारह सौ euro मिल रहे थे, पंद्रह सौ euro मिल रहे थे. उसमें मुझे realize हुआ कि यार वह इतने पैसे हैं कि मैं stool hostel में रहकर अपना थोड़ा खाना पीना करके मैं वह भी घर भेज सकता हूं. तो जब वह मुझे चीज़ realize हुई कि यार पैसा बनाना इतना मुश्किल नहीं है और जो three months मुझे किसी ने बताया था one of my very good friends उन्होंने बताया था कि यार एक institute है Germany में Munich में जो कि entrepreneurship में focused है but वह ideas नहीं develop करता है, वह लोग develop करता है, right? And you might have the right profile to get into that और वहां पर you will find like minded people, right? तो in three months I got into that institute. मुझे नज़र आ गया कि यार मैं student job करता रहूं और मैं इसे focus करता रहूं. मेरा main degree गई और I would still do great, right? तो मैंने उस पर focus करना शुरू कर दिया. मेरा जो eventually Precise का co founder था वह मुझे पहले दिन मिला. Super obnoxious guy. I was like यार किधर से आ गया? और उसने मुझे कहा यार मैंने तुम्हारी ना profile पढ़ी थी और मुझे लगता है कि we could do something great और उसने मुझे कहा कि यार, Avaya let's found something greater. मैंने कहा यार मैं तुझे जानता भी नहीं हूं. मतलब आकर तुझे बोल रहा है company हम शुरू कर लेते हैं. मैं पहले Pakistan में ज़रीद होकर आए हूं. दुबारा नहीं कर रहा मैं. But I kept him in mind और जो उस institute का framework था वह यह था कि it was partnered with industries, right? वह कोई पच्चीस लोग लेते थे एक certain region से Germany में और उनको industry के साथ partner करके let's say मुज़मिल की company है. मुज़मिल कहता कि यार मेरा यह problem है और यह आप solve कर दें, right? आप थोड़े से पैसे देंगे. आपको hire नहीं करनी पड़ेगी team वह एक innovation project हो जाएगा but वह starting से problem identification से लेकर MVP development से लेकर commercialization डेढ़ साल का program होता है जिसमें you work with different industries और उसमें से आप end to end एक चीज़ लेकर जाते हो. The the the best thing is कि इसमें ना सिर्फ़ आपको ideation कर सकते हो आप, opportunity ideation की भी मिलती है but आपको अपने co founders भी मिलते हैं. The best thing is कि यार अगर आज आपने company शुरू करनी है, how do you know कि मैं किसी साथ काम शुरू करूं? आपको पता है कि यार कोई अच्छा technical बंदा है, अच्छा business का बंदा है लेकिन आपने उनके work ethics नहीं देखे unless you worked with them, right? तो this institute gave the opportunity कि मैं basically वहां पर उनके साथ काम करके उनकी personality judge कर सकूं and then we could also come up with an idea. Interesting. तो
आपके तीन co founders थे इस company, right? Three of them were at दो the same और co founders हां मतलब all three of you guys were in the same institute? Yes, we were in the same institute. And how did you come up with this idea in the very start? Yeah. मतलब is this something that came from the industry? हां. या problem industries आई थी उसको then run me through कितने डेढ़ साल का program है at what point did you decide to actualize this?
जो पहला Parkinson's वाली device थी वह मैंने initially थोड़ा सा pitch करना शुरू की but again Germany में medical device बनाने के लिए it's a lot of restrictions like a lot of steps और I feel I felt like कि मेरे पास इतना time है नहीं क्योंकि मैं loan लेकर आया हूं, मैंने loan उतारना है, मैं job कर रहा हूं, मैं masters भी कर रहा हूं तो, कब मैं करूंगा उसकी तरफ? तो मुझे realize हुआ कि software has a lot more potential, right? Basically like I told you जो हम कर रहे थे it was called Precise, हम लोग बना रहे थे AI personal assistant for shopping, right? लेकिन जो हमारी core technology थी जिसके around सारा product बना हुआ था वह यह था कि हम लोग किसी भी phone से, किसी भी smartphone से आपकी body का एक three d replica बना सकते हैं which was extremely accurate. And this was 2017? 2018. 18 का end, right? तो हम लोग एक एक चीज़ बना सकते जो कि मुज़मिल को three d replicate कर दें without the skin but his body is very well replicated और around your body जो error था it was around this much like it was super super accurate और हमने कहा कि हम इस technology को कहां लेकर जा सकते हैं और like, ok यार हम fashion में ले जाते हैं, यहां पर बड़ी market लग रही है. All that process maybe we will get into that. लेकिन हमने start कैसे किया? Like I told you, the biggest benefit of this institute is called CDTM - Center for Digital Technology Management. I am indebted to that institute for my life. And I will tell you कि what we can take away from that institute. But a little context on that and then back to precise. CDTM has the highest unicorn to alumni ratios. इसका मतलब यह है कि उसने सबसे ज़्यादा unicorns produce किए हैं for the people that it has. मेरी मेरी class में पच्चीस लोग थे उसमें से अठारह लोग founders हैं and successful founders, not just कि किसी ने भी project शुरू कर लिया. वहां पर biggest success यह है कि जब इतनी publicity मिल रही है, बीस साल से चल रहा है institute, तो industries भी actually problem लेकर आती हैं फिर, right? आप business के साथ partner हुए हो, CDTM से ही startup निकला है. उसी का मसला आया. उसी ने CDTM को वापस दे दिया. उसने कहा यार यह मसला आया था. हमने ही हल किया था किसी का. अब आप हमारा हल कर दें. तो वह मसला जब लेकर आते हैं वहां पर हमें एक हमारा CDTM का एक alumni था. वह Europe की बहुत बड़ी company है protective equipment बनाते हैं. PPE COVID के time में बड़ा word चला था PPE बनाते हैं personal protective equipment. वह बनाते हैं Europe के leader हैं वहां पर वह innovation का head था वह problem लेकर आया CDTM में उसने कहा कुछ ना कुछ से तो निकल जाएगा. वहां पर हमने उनके साथ ideate किया तो हमें पता लगा कि उनका sales का बड़ा problem है कि वहां पर Munich में गाड़ियां बनती हैं, BMW की workshop हैं. वहां पर अगर jackets fitting ना हो, gloves fitting ना हो, shoes fitting ना हो तो it's a safety hazard और वह fit करने के लिए basically बड़ा time लगता है, पूरी workshop रुक जाती है. It costs a lot of money. Right. Individual जाएगा वहां पर जाकर. Exactly. हां. वह PPE देगा, पूरी workshop रुकेगी, हज़ार बंदा आकर कपड़े try करेगा, body change होगी, दुबारा आएगा, all of that stuff. It costs them a lot. उन्होंने कहा कि यार यह जो manufacturer है यही कुछ कर दे. यह कोई technology बना दे ताकि हमें जाना ना पड़े. COVID भी आ गया था उस time पर आ रहा था और twenty twenty में but. तो हमने कहा यार हम हमारे पास एक technology है क्योंकि मैं medicine में इसके बारे में थोड़ा सा पढ़ा था इस technology के बारे में. मेरा जो CTO था उसका भी एक AI में patent था around this concept, not exactly this but he had a lot of experience. तो हमने कहा यार ok हमने technology के बारे में पढ़ा है. What if हम इसको इस product के around encapsulate कर दें कि हम कहें यार oh three d model अच्छा चलो. आपके कपड़े आपको पता लग जाएंगे कि three d model के साथ कैसे fit हो रहे हैं, right? तो वह चीज़ वहां से शुरू हुई. हमारा पहला paying customer भी वही बना, right? क्योंकि industry ने कहा कि यार oh, यह तो हमारा मस्तलाहल कर देगा. तो उन्होंने हमें pay भी करना शुरू कर दिया उस चीज़ के लिए. ICICI था, हमारी development शुरू हुई, हम student थे. तो we got time to do that
and but that's how got started on this. What about your other masters? Did you leave that at some point? Yes,
Germany में Germany में they give you flexibility कि आप थोड़ा late करके masters अपना खत्म कर दें. मैं एक दो exam जाकर दे देता था बिल्कुल आखिरी दिन बिल्कुल barely pass कर रहा था. But when Precise started making money तो हमने कहा चलो यार I I can take that risk. I can take that risk. I can leave.
Interesting and you had initially went so how does it work in Germany? This institute and the first institute inherently were free? Sorry? The both of these institutes were free? Yeah yeah exactly and you got into the second institute because of your medical device experience basically. हाँ मैंने मतलब मैंने वो चीज़ पिछी थी मैंने कहा था कि यार मैं
you know I have founded, मैं करना चाह रहा हूँ कुछ तो that that helped me quite a lot. I think the the best part was कि वह पच्चीस लोग जो लेते हैं वह cross functional team बनाते हैं. Right. तो basically कोई technologist होगा, कोई business के बंदा होगा, कोई designer होगा, वह model works really well. उन सबको साथ पढ़ाते हैं और वह जब develop करते हैं, हमें कोई problem आई साथ यह PPE वाली तो हमारा business perspective भी था. कोई उस time पर someone could foresee कि अरे oh अच्छा that could be business as well. मैं technology का perspective ला सकता था. फिर कोई designer था जो कि encapsulate कर सकता था इस चीज़ को into a nice product. So in this case you guys were three people in the team or in the start there were multiple people working? Yeah, there were multiple people on the concept. लेकिन then I told you about the guy जो मेरा पहले दिन मुझे मिला था, कह रहा था कि यार मिलकर कुछ करते हैं. He had a technology background और इसका कोई patents वगैरह भी थे. उसने मुझे कहा यार वैस, I think there is bigger potential in this than just PPE. क्योंकि मैं यार मैं medicine का मेरा वह था like पहला startup health care का था. मैं medicine में करना चाह रहा था, super passionate about like medicine कि यार यही improve करने का. मैं कहां fashion में जाकर किसी की कपड़े fitting कह रहा हूं. I didn't want to do that. Right. But he convinced you. He convinced me कि यार oh, the technology is super cool. इसका eventually medical use case भी हो सकता है because you know, you could see how your body is forming, what the fat content is. Fitness वाली side पर हम निकल सकते हैं but I think कि जो initial वह है वह PPE से बाई रहे हैं. It's more in fast fashion, right? Right. Let's think about business opportunity there. तो वहां पर basically वह जो जो the idea, the solution converted into a business. Yes. And what were the roles? Because initially there were like three people. How
did you divide the roles? कौन क्या कर रहा है? Again, it's a software startup. So is everybody working on the product?
कैसी ना? ये initially to be very honest आप सब कुछ ही कर रहे होते हो you are wearing all sorts of hats right? मेरा personal experience था वह technology में था तो मैंने technology initially build करना शुरू कर दी with my CTO.
Right. And what like क्योंकि आपका initially जो Pakistan का experience था वह तो largely hardware में था मैं भूल गया था मैंने कहा भूल जाओ इसे
but yeah you are right but उसमें भी focus हुआ था a bit of software as well so you had the software at
least starting point? And that's what you brushed on because this was a purely software as a service of sorts. Right? Yes. Absolutely. Interesting. So so the company started a year and a half after, like, once you'd graduated from the institute?
हां जी. Not not a year and a half. During that institute, Germany came in 2017 and 2018 we had the company. Interesting.
When did you, from the time you had the company till the time you sold it off to Facebook or Meta as they now call it Tell me about the evolution what happened and how did Facebook end up buying a company that was making PPE fitted PPEs you know what was the evolution there? Ok great. I think maybe आपका पिछला question I don't know if I answered about the roles. Yes वह भी आप कर दें detail में क्योंकि you said कि everybody we were wearing multiple hats everybody was working on everything but was there any particular lead होता है ना किसी तरह startup है तो startup में everybody is doing everybody but sometimes you at least divide the leads on something कि that का responsibility at least हो. Yes yes of course वह natural transition हो गई थी
क्योंकि मैंने पिछले startup में I did a bit of sales, know I was passionate about building processes and all of that stuff I did that a little bit as well so I could go into a commercial role मतलब मैं CEO वाली site पर जा सकता था but मेरा जो एक और co founder था he had a lot of he was fit for that market Germany के commercial role के लिए because he was German and he was very well integrated into the market. It was very natural कि वह वहां चले जाए. मेरा personally reflecting on that मेरा जो दूसरा skill set था was complex technologies को encapsulate करके usable products बनाने में था. Right. And I was really passionate about thinking about why's कि हम बना क्यों रहे हैं? कैसे जाएगा? सब कुछ. तो I eventually moved toward product. Right? Right. I don't know Pakistan में कितना यह role explored है but I was the CPO, chief product officer. तो मैं product strategy में आ रहा था, development देख रहा था, आगे reporting, customers के साथ, of that. वह चीज़ देख रहा था. My second co founder was the CTO completely technology development में with me and then we had a commercial person जो कि sales, fundraising, all of that stuff वह कर रहा था. Right. That's what I did. A little bit of clarification, precise eventually turned into not just PPE but we turned into fast fashion. So for example, आप product को explain करूं तो वह यह है कि for example अगर आप जारा की website पर जाएं, वहां पर एक button नज़र आएगा आपको find me the right size. Right. आपने यह hoodie देखी या shirt देखी और वहां पर आपने button पर click किया. विज़ारा की website के ऊपर ही there would be a prompt which would say कि यार हमें अपनी थोड़ी सी information दे दें about your body और आप अगर phone पर हैं तो phone आप अपना ज़मीन पर रखेंगे, थोड़ा सा पीछे जाएंगे, एक दफा घूमेंगे. In five seconds, ten seconds आपका पूरी body का three d model हमारे पास आ जाएगा and then we would tell you कि यार इस shirt का size यह है और once we have your body information आपकी personalized, customized clothing अगर आपने कहीं से बनवानी है वह भी आप बनवा सकते हैं but eventually like हर ज़ारा के ऊपर सारे products fitted to your body वह आपको नज़र आऐंगे and you could buy perfectly fittingly. आप लोगों की जो towards the end of it Yeah.
Who were some of the clients that you were working with? Like, कहां पर यह product actually Yeah. अगर मैं B2C की बात करूं तो consumers कहां पर interface कर रहे थे with this product? हम B2B2C
थे. जिसका मतलब यह है कि हम लोग businesses को बेच रहे थे और हमारे clients were H and M, you know, a bunch of really big brands in Germany.
We had 2,000,000 active users monthly and 100,000,000 recommendations. और वह होता क्या था API call पर होता था कि basically उनकी website पर आप integrated हैं customer जब उसको use कर रहा है तो वह पीछे API call हुई है system में define करके वापस भेजें parameters और वह पैसे Exactly compare कर रहे exactly.
इस पूरी complications को अगर आप simplify करें हमारा product बंद किया गया था. Let's say मुज़मिल का अपना fashion store है. मैं यह नहीं कहूंगा कि यार मुज़मिल यह integrate कर लें, आपके customers का यह यह बात होगा. We would just tell you मुज़हमल, put this button on your website. We put it for you. आपको कोई technical कुछ करने की ज़रूरत नहीं है and you would make 10% more money. And we were proving it. बड़े बड़े clients जिस तरह H and M उनके साथ we were proving it. Right I don't know if I can name a lot of these clients because अब it's different but we were proving it कि यार आप डालें button डालें और आपके पैसे ज़्यादा वन रहे आपको figure करने की ज़रूरत नहीं है कैसे वन रहे हैं हम आपका करेंगे we do a bunch of magic behind the scenes were super transparent. Germany में थे तो data protection थी. हां, उनके GDPR is crazy. GDPR का सारा करके we could tell you कि यार अच्छा मुज़मिल, this is what we think would fit your body best. Styling में जा सकते हैं, फिर virtual try ons में जा सकते हैं हम बात कर रहे थे उसके बारे में. And how are you making money? On every call or? No, we would say कि we increase your revenue and we take a share of that, so commission. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. So it's a- We are pretty aggressive with that. So you don't make money unless they make money? Yes we're pretty aggressive with that कि यार हम कोई पैसा नहीं बनाएंगे we are you know हम prove करेंगे our value and I mean maybe we could jump into the acquisition process और उसके बाद maybe I will share my thoughts on why I think we got acquired. Meta ने तो मैंने नहीं बताया कि क्यों खरीदा but
what was the actual acquisition? The rationale behind it. Yeah, rationale behind it. So tell me about the acquisition. How did it happen? Particularly the thought process in the founding team when a big name is looking to acquire तो क्या सोच होती है? बंदा यह भी सोच रहा होता है ना कि यार नहीं नहीं भाई हमारा scene है हमें उन्होंने acquire करने की कोशिश किया तो हम तो चार साल बाद वह Snap के साथ नहीं हुआ था Infamous के 3,000,000,004 billion dollar की Facebook ने acquisition की offer मारी और उन्होंने कहा नहीं जी हम खुद बनेंगे और $100,000,000,000 की company बनेंगे. Yeah yeah. So so what was it like for you guys?
Yeah we were making decent money I would say. I think I can't share a lot of figures but making a lot of like decent revenue we were growing quite quite a lot क्योंकि हमने PMF like we hit product market fit हमारा हम जो value claim कर रहे थे वह हम prove करना शुरू हो गए On multiple tens of hundreds of clients, we said 10% of revenue, one button is crazy. And we said, we'll numbers and numbers and numbers. जब इतना aggressively हम उनको data driven proof कर रहे हैं तो हम basically publish भी कर रहे हैं यह चीज़ें I believe around that time acquisition की बात start हुई थी twenty twenty one में. हम acquirer नहीं ढूंढ रहे थे. हमारा business अच्छा जा रहा था. One of our biggest clients I think I can name them because उनका case study भी थी website पर H and M. वह use कर रहे थे एक startup जो कि दस साल पुराना था with different technology. That was the global leader, right? I think that was worth a billion उस time पर और वह use कर रहे थे और हमने H and M से कहा था कि यार हमारा आप, you know, like what's the harm in that? Like, कर लें test, हम आपको सारा setup कर I mean this is zero cost thing anyways. हम setup कर देते हैं आपको पैसे नहीं देने अगर हमने ना आपका improve किया और आपने पांच साल पहले किसी ने decision किया था वह छोड़कर भी चला गया company तो आप test करके देख लें कौन सा बेहतर है. अच्छा, we were way better than that company which was I think worth billion उस time पर. Please don't quote me on this but I think it was around that. और I think H and M was paying a shit enough money उनके लिए और उन्हें realize होगा यार एक छोटा सा startup Munich से यह कह रहा है और which is way better और वह हमने case study हर जगह डालना शुरू कर दी. H and M ने भी डालना शुरू कर दिया I think और उस time पर I think एक I think PBH उसका नाम है holding का वह Tommy Hilfiger और Calvin Klein hold करते हैं. उन्होंने भी एक case study की which was like market का analysis on कि यार products जो कि sizing और fashion में काम करें उनका analysis उन्होंने किया और वहां पर I think we were top one or two out of the like global market जो थी in terms of user experience, in terms of everything, right? वह चीज़ हुई तो I think we were मेटा के radar पर आ गए मेटा के normal M and A process होता है जिसमें M and A की team merger and acquisition की team होती है जो usually reach out करती for acquisitions लेकिन हमें आई थी किसी senior director की, right? AIM और senior director थी उसकी email आई थी directly और उसने कहा था कि यार I want to talk to you, right? हमें तो पहले लगा fake है, right? मतलब मैं tech का director हूं, हमें क्यों message करेगा? तो we jumped on the call और हमें वहां से पता चला कि यार अच्छा, उन्होंने एक सवाल करना शुरू किया very direct. They're like यार data कैसे आ रहा है? Train कैसे कर रहे हो models को? यह कैसे कर रहे हो? वह कैसे कर रहे हो? We were like यार यह तो चुना लगा रहे हैं. मतलब यह तो उन्होंने definitely definitely like इन्होंने बनाना चाह रहे अपना कुछ और हमें नज़र आ रहे हैं कि यह तो this is not good. Like I told you that my CTO Tommy उसका नाम है वह बड़ा like he has this personality where he is very aggressive sometimes like outlook wise. Is super nice guy, super super smart guy, very commodit और उसने directly उसे बोला कि यार look we think you are gonna steal your tech और we don't want to talk to you. It's like यार
बंदे में you know like हां हां मतलब मैं talk हूं बोलना उसके लिए भी आपको थोड़ा सा मुझे यही है. Exactly exactly exactly.
तो I was like यार यह dumb move है या फिर it's it's gonna pay off और उन्होंने कहा ok fair ठीक है you don't want to talk to us हम NDA sign कर लेते हैं और हम आपको use करना चाह रहे हैं for Instagram or something. कुछ नहीं बताया क्यों, कैसे क्या और उन्होंने कहा हम use करना चाह रहे हैं आपका service use करने के उन्होंने कहा चलो यार that's that would be insanely good for us. The numbers that could potentially start coming, would be phenomenal. Exactly. करते करते bunch of talks you know उन्होंने हमें कहा कि यार किसी को नहीं बताना, अपने employees को भी नहीं बताना, हम अपने employees से बीछ पा रहे हैं और सिर्फ हम पचास लोग हो चुके हैं. Employees से बीछ पा रहे हैं कि यार क्या हो रहा है? उनसे हम secretly talks कर रहे हैं after everyone has gone in our offices और उनसे यह बात हो रही है वह कह रहे हैं फिर ऐसा ऐसा diving deeper into कि यार how is the company structured? Product आपने कैसे बनाया? Sorry आपने product कैसे बनाया? वो सारी चीज़ें discussion हुई and eventually they said ok we want to buy you, right or that was a very interesting interesting discussion when they said they want to buy us, क्योंकि we were on this spectrum like तीन लोग हैं तीनों divided हैं One wants to really sell. I'm somewhere in the middle or one doesn't want to sell at all. Right? Bunch of reasons, you know, someone would sell. You know, you get money out of it. That's one of the biggest ones. Like, as a founder, as an entrepreneur, how do you make money eventually? आप salary ले सकते हो but ये shares जो hypothetical values होती हैं value for company, वो realize तब होती हैं सिर्फ when someone buys your shares या वह बड़ा बगैर fish आती है या something called secondaries के कोई और आकर share आकर खरीद लेता है तो हमें लग रहा था कि ok this could be a good exit I mean eventually हमने exit करना ही है If it's a good price तो we would jump into it, why not? दूसरा यह है कि personal branding हो जाएगी कि people who sold tometta, insane, right? Germany में I think ok again please don't quote me on this but this was a fact that was pushed to me quite a lot इस negotiation में कि Germany में I think there was second company in the history of Germany that has been sold to Meta you know it could be financial outcome आपके लिए personal branding आ जाती है the third thing that was pushed to us was Germany में Meta का engineering office नहीं है it was just a sales office I think Pakistan में भी ऐसा ही है जहां पर वह आपको ads run करने में help करते हैं it was more like business development but engineering office नहीं होती engineering नहीं होती Even though Germany is such a big top country. तो उन्होंने pitch किया कि यार oh आपका office जो है ना वह German hub वन जाएगा for engineering for Meta. It's a big privilege for you, right? आप उस चीज़ को build करेंगे office को. You would hire people and you would build this into this huge hub. Think of the experience you have. उन्होंने कहा okay, product integrate होगा Meta में. You would get a you know decent amount of money. आपकी personal branding होगी and you get to build an office. I was like, okay great great argumentation but again I think for us it was I think I'm really proud of this कि हमने उन्हें pushback दिया कि यार why do you think, we know कि why Meta is great for us but why do you think we are great for you? हमें strategic alignment चाहिए क्योंकि हमें यह नहीं चाहिए कि आप acquire करें, office बंद करें, product बंद करें and you know done because हमने जिस लिए शुरू किया that's something different. But we think there is a lot of potential in this season. We can grow this. हमें नज़र आ रहा है. अभी हमने we've started making money. We've, you know, gotten proven our value quite a lot. तो हमें लगता है कि we can now push this globally.
Right.
Why should we sell to you? And I think they had great arguments कि यार, हमारा strategic vision जो है we are building an e commerce, you know, platform whatever within Meta or EHE's wallet chees fitted, because you know, you even product but you're building the whole experience or they actually did that when we got acquired. Would the acquisition have meant that you would have stopped selling to third parties that were already using your products? Yes. So I think I can now say that, because we were not allowed to say that before. We had to funny thing, like, I was reporting to our customers, Kiato, everything's going great. You're making more money. We signed the acquisition offer. Next day, they told me, KR, I've canceled getting contracts, k, k, you know, we don't want you to sell this anymore. We want us for ourselves. For ourselves, k, k, a different vision. And it was really funny that I had to go back to these customers and tell them oh remember मैंने आपको दो दिन पहले बताया था कि you are making so much money we have to cancel contracts लेकिन without telling them a reason why which is very interesting
but you had to just say कि listen like it's not you it's me.
Exactly exactly. यार हां yeah it was it was a lot of negotiating back and forth मुझे what I had to do was like हर customer का क्योंकि हम cater कर रहे थे for a very wide audience और हर customer का I had to understand कि क्या offer कर रहे हैं उन्हें and I had to look at every competitor जो कि उनको fit होगा. Mhmm. And I had to be the matchmaker in the middle. मेरा argumentation यह था कि oh मुज़मिल, हम strategic reasons की वजह से बंद कर रहे हैं but I found the perfect match for you और मैं अब उसको भी convince कह रहा हूं कि यार भाई customer ले ले अपने तेरा अपना timeline चल रहा है but ले ले please और मैं उसको भी नहीं बता सकता कि क्यों बंद करूंगा. तो which was interesting times but
we made it through. Interesting and you joined Meta as a as a product manager at the years?
Focused on this particular product or? Yes, हां हम लोग थोड़ा सा broad चले गए थे और हमारा basically मेरा जो goal था वह यह था कि यार इस product को मैं integrate करूं, right? Meta में but also to kind of figure out कि यार पूरा how would this vision come together, right? So we were a part of like a bigger bet like I told you against Apple. We were, हम core monetization में थे जो पैसा बना रही थी company का.
तो हम थोड़ा strategic level पर चले गए थे but इस product को उस mind में रखते हुए. Makes sense and you guys essentially that that vision was actualized के the hub of meta in Germany was originally precise? Yes, yeah yeah absolutely. That holds true today as well? Yes, it holds true. What's the headcount for the Meta employees there now?
I can't I think I can't share a lot of that. क्योंकि मुझे भी I left Meta. I I started working in Meta. I think I'm jumping ahead. We just opened an office हमने announce किया it's we got a pretty big building वहां पर और हम अब startups को भी I think incubate कर रहे हैं. हम कह रहा हूं मैं but now them but yeah I think there's I don't want to miss all. There's a lot happening there. There's a lot happening. But वह चीज़ वह चीज़ वन गई है कि we've now brought Meta into the German ecosystem जहां पर technology मतलब university अच्छी है जिस तरह अगर आप देखेंगे Stanford और Stanford क्यों इतनी इतनी कामयाब है? क्योंकि engineering offices साथ हैं. तो Google, Microsoft, Amazon थे around that but meta नहीं था. तो we want to bring in the last piece. Right. तो it was a great privilege कि हम कर सकें उस चीज़ को. Makes sense. थोड़ा सा मैं
camera का रुख बदलता हूं. Yeah sure. I want you to take off your German hat that you've been wearing for the last four five years. Six years. Did you get the passport yet? नहीं यार अभी नहीं. मैं language नहीं सीख रहा हूं. So take off that hat where the Pakistan hat that you were wearing the day you left Pakistan. Right? And so now channels that that kid probably what? Six minus twenty twenty two year old kid. You know, who's failed in life. Whose family has debt and they're taking a bet on you. Taken a bunch of loans left, right and center. And एक तो यह है कि हां मैं क्या करना चाहता हूं उसके लिए मुझे क्या पैसे अदरकार हैं? और उसी के साथ साथ alternatively provide you in lieu of salaries. So, मैंने वह एक डेढ़ साल उसका भी गुज़ारा Meta का and अभी recently I am back in Pakistan. Now a very different person and a different dynamic altogether. How has a lot of that changed? Do you think? The the perception of and I wanna talk about public. I don't wanna talk about, you know, केचा अब्द, the the star who was a failure, I want to talk about on a very human personal level, your friends and your family, particularly your family. How have those dynamics changed? And in terms of you sort of coming back being the eldest son, the dynamic of the family your father has retired, how has that changed now financially or much different?
Yeah, I mean as you can expect it's changed quite a lot. Alhamdulillah for the better. I mean, I mean जब मैं I told you I was repressed, I was at the lowest point, जो मेरे parents ने मुझे एक चीज़ बोली थी वह यही थी कि यार मायूस नहीं होना क्योंकि वक़्त बदलते हुए, you know, things change very quickly, right? वक़्त बदलते हुए पता नहीं चलता और हर किसी का जो किस्मों में लिखा हुआ है वह मिल जाना है उसे given कि वह बंदा मेहनत करे और उस चीज़ के लिए struggle करे. तो they're very proud of, अलम्दुल्ला very proud of this कि what I've achieved. Obviously they, I think it was a funny discussion like उनको I think they didn't realize कि what meta acquisition meant और वरना Facebook पर करता भी क्या है? Were they so
were you onboarding them every now and then कि ये हो रहा है, ये हो रहा ये ये company start कर रही है, ये company grow कर रही है. एक medal होता है. Did your siblings understand? Did you have those conversations and eventually when you did sell? Yeah. Again how did that how did that change the dynamic? Yeah I think the
dynamic changed quite a lot. I am a very private person. I think I like to be. The second time when this happened I didn't really capitalize a lot on the PR and the media because I was like यार जो करना था वह कर लिया है अलाम्दल्लाह. That has changed quite alert financially I mean we're in a better situation obviously मेरा भाई भी मैंने आपको बताया he's mushroom in Munich तीसरा भाई भी जो है वह भी job कर रहा है.
और किस space में? He is actually
in media I would say. Exactly. Design media and all of that stuff. So things have changed quite a lot. I mean, think one thing that have changed is like people know me a little bit more I would say from this context of precise yeah dynamics have changed quite a lot I would say but I would say maybe in terms of relationships
again मैं context build करता हूँ. मैं initially एक चीज़ बड़ी चीज़ बोली थी कि रोटी कपड़ा मकान. Yeah yeah actually yeah. So I want to sort of channel the Maslow's hierarchy. Maybe ऐसी सोचती are right. Family now you are growing up in an environment where there was a financial stress at all times and the worry of मैं करना हूं, scholarships हैं, you know कुछ भी करना है तो करना है और अब्बू का हाथ बैठाना है. You are the oldest तो मुझे पता है कि my old siblings were like that, right? But dynamic इस तरह वह चलती है कि जो आपका साथ छोटा होगा probably वह फिर उसको उसके लिए वह finally at least security यह वाली आ गई financial security and then those dynamics change. उस Maslow's hierarchy वाले context के अंदर how do you think the families dynamic has changed?
That has changed quite a lot in terms of that. Like, obviously, mentality is a little bit. Right? O sea, self actualization is the pyramid. Right? You can now self reflect and think of what you would like to do for yourself and for the society तो I feel like कि मैं थोड़ा सा उस जगह पर चला गया हूं I think one of the reasons why I wanted to come to your podcast was कि अगर मैं Pakistan में कुछ कर सकूं, right? Germany में I've already started doing this. Like, I'm helping founders right now, helping people build companies and left, right, wherever I can help in whatever capacity, right? But क्योंकि मेरा context वह वाला वन गया. I have that network. मुझे नहीं पता कि how can I channel that and and to do better for Pakistan? But I really want to do that. Right. क्योंकि मेरा network वहां पर वहां पर मैं जानता तो I sort of like try to kind of focus there a little bit. But I wanted to sort of use your channel, your medium to kind of maybe discuss that or voice that कि I would like to to find a way कि मैं किसी तरह से यहां पर भी कर सकूं. Interesting. Yeah. If I were to sort of expand in this particular conversation,
I'll start off with with with something very simple. You did something in Pakistan, didn't work. But you were younger as well, didn't have exposure. Then you did something in Germany, it worked. Yeah. If I were to ask you in a very simple way, you you graduated from Nast. Nast produces a lot of startups now. One way or the other. I remember I had a a very smart kid come on the show He's running the startup called Inlights.
Okay.
And what he is doing generally is बड़ी simple सी चीज़ कह रहा है दुनिया भर में वह already हो चुकी हुई है उसने local पाकिस्तानी style से करना शुरू कर दी कि आपके जो इशारे हैं उन इशारों को आपने automate करना है based on the traffic, right? तो वह भी इसी तरह आया I think he's either an electrical engineer or a one of those and what he's doing is कि जी वह जो safe city cameras लगे में वह उनको use कर रहा वह run time पर identify कर रहा और वह ishara smart in a much cheaper way. If you buy technology, millions of dollars will be locally and edit context and camera can identify there is an ambulance coming. So it starts to realign the traffic in a way that it optimizes the ambulance is able to pass. Ok. A lot of interesting stuff. Mhmm. मुझे personally मैंने I spoke to him as well and I was like listen you're in यह आता है और यह चला जाता है और जब तुम graduate करोगे ना तो you will begin to realize कि यहां पर just the scale, the grandeur that you are beginning to experience now where people take you more seriously than the average kid your age, that will come and that will go and that is not what makes you. Yeah. It is the the innovation that unfortunate as it may be, you might not be able to find a lot of that in Pakistan and you may have to go elsewhere. मैं कह रहा हूं again मैं यानी रहा हूं yes or no but you know वह एक history से बंदा सीखता है. फिर इसी तरीके से day after tomorrow there is another startup coming in they are called Viro They have built AI thingamache with a lot of that I found more interesting because I mean not to say अहमद is a smart kid. I found very interesting because वह global markets को target कर रहे हैं Pakistan से बैठकर there a lot of potential there but again exposure to the global markets. It's easy to get the downloads. It's difficult to sustain it as the market begins to drop. In that context, what would you say your biggest learning would be for startups in Pakistan or rather student led startups in Pakistan hoping to go out there and create something.
Very interesting thought. मतलब there's a lot जिसके बारे में बात की जा सकती है. You're absolutely right कि जो आपने example दी एक product की you know you get initial fame क्योंकि it's a big problem but उस चीज़ को commercialize और actualize कैसे किया जाए इस चीज़ को अगर आप dissect करें सिर्फ उसी startup की example ले लेते हैं तो maybe we could, you know, we we would have a nice discussion around that. मेरे perspective से the first thing is problem discovery. Maybe उससे भी पहले अगर आप step लें तो एक company में क्या चीज़ होती है? It's people, right? जो founders होते हैं, बना रहे हैं कुछ. मैंने आपको अपनी story बताई कि यार मैं कैसे founder बनाऊं, right? And when I now invest in startups, मैं सबसे पहले यह चीज़ पूछता हूं कि यार why you, right? और आप founder बंद क्यों रहे हैं? और आपकी team क्यों सही है इसी चीज़ को बनाने के लिए? Why are you the right people? Right? And what is this sustainable, you know, technological advantage that would make you successful या unique? वह चीज़ हम बाद में discuss करते हैं but let's start with the founding piece, right? मुझे personally लगता है कि why people have to eventually go out and or why startups might actually fail in Pakistan is कि there is not a lot of focus on founder development या not a lot of opportunities. हम लोग founder led नहीं हैं, हम लोग idea led हैं. Right? And what I've realized in my experience, in my little experience is ideas are cheap. Right? Execution really sets you apart. जब हमने start किया था, there were, the market was crowded. आज मैं कहता हूं कि यार, I don't know, with couple of engineers you could claim to do the same thing कि यार, oh, मैंने app बनाई है जो video record करा और size दे रहा है. That's it, simple. And जब हमने start किया था there were 25 people or 25 companies around the world already trying to do the same pitching to the same investors कि यार हमें पैसे दे दो जब हमने छोड़ा था वह पचास हो गए थे हर university से भी निकल रहा था और execute कौन करते हैं? It's the people. Right? वह क्यों सही हैं in your constellation of your team to actually build this startup? इस चीज़ पर इतना काम नहीं होता. And I feel like if there is more work on this we would have more successful companies जहां पर as when I started the company it was very like Pakistan में पहला जो मैंने medical startup किया है यह करने की कोशिश की, उसमें I didn't have a lot of opportunities. मैं electrical engineering में पढ़ रहा हूं. मेरे school में सिर्फ electrical engineers ही हैं जिनके साथ मैं potentially found कर सकता हूं. उसके अलावा मैं कहां से ढूंढूं founders? Which is rather mind numbing considering कि NUST is has everything. साथ screen. There is no collaboration between their own sub schools. There is no opportunity, there could be. There is no opportunity
जहां पर वह एक cross functional team बना के I mean there is now उसको तो एक NSCP वगैरह हो गया था या नहीं आया था सिर्फ़? यार sure. Because my understanding is today now NSTP does cross functional,
interdisciplinary collaboration मैंने जो थोड़ी बहुत startups देखे उसमें वह यही है कि वह business development का BPA का बच्चा आ जाएगा और you know desire करता I think this will be later at the stage, right? आपने मुज़मिल ने कोई idea ढूंढ लिया but idea ढूंढना कैसे है? Right? वह next step है. मेरे ख़याल से वही बात है कि आपकी founding team कैसी है? Right? How how well do they work together? क्या वह साथ execute कर सकते हैं? क्या उनके पास right skill set हैं and why them? इससे अगर आप थोड़ा सा आगे जाएं तो problem discovery है, right? कि मैंने बोला कि हम idea लड़ रहे हैं, right? हमारे ज़िंदगी में idea आता है और मैं कहता यार oh मैं इसके बारे में business start कर देता हूं. But ideas are like I said cheap, right? किसी ने किसी ने सोचा होगा. I think what sets you apart if is if you are problem obsessed, right? आपने idea के नीचे एक core problem identify कर लिया और वह problem identify आप कैसे करेंगे? When there's like अगर आप B2C कर रहे हैं like which means that you're selling to individual customers, end users या आप B2B कर रहे हैं. Munich has a strong B2B culture. मैं खुद भी B2B में I would say my expertise is there. वहां पर opportunity हमें मिली कि businesses want to share their problems. वह कहते हैं यार अब ऐसा में यह problem आ रही है और यह हमारा है and they want to talk to you. Problem discovery I feel like is a bit, you know, there is a huge gap in problem discovery to idea. हम idea पहले ढूंढते हैं and then we say कि यार oh let's go out and validate that idea and
there is no I feel like my hypothesis कि violation I think is I would agree with you and जो आपने इसमें B2B और B2C वाली बात की है मुझे उसमें ज़्यादा value नज़र आई है. I will explain why. Pakistan में most of the people are looking for जो मैंने originally off camera भी बोला था कि हमें बड़ा सा idea चाहिए जो कि हर बंदा इस्तेमाल कर रहे वह कर रहा कि हमारे यहां Pakistan में ना we tend to the businesses are very much behind a big sort of iron curtain. They don't let themselves out. मैं जब भी मेरे business के लोग आते तो मैं उनसे पहली चीज़ यह बोलता हूं कि यार आपका Pakistan में there is no how it's made content पूरी दुनिया में होता है जिसकी वजह से consumer बाहर जाता तो वह हमेशा direct to consumer कोई product build करने की कोशिश करता है जो कि in a developing country जहां पर margin call वैसी कोई नहीं होती and customer की pocket जो है और buying power नहीं है तो आप उसमें already आप उसका एक limited budget में से पैसे निकालने की कोशिश कर रहे हो और उसके ऊपर आप उसमें premium add करने की कोशिश कर रहे हो जो कि आपको value prop देगी जबकि the मेरे हिसाब से ना Pakistan में and the only thing that can actually work is a B2B prop because already they have premium that they can let go of in order to increase efficiency and optimization. And I I did a startup in smart homes in 2016. It didn't work, failed, stopped. 2016 के end में a friend of mine came back I think it was 2018 actually. Friend of mine came back from The US, Carnegie graduate. उसके Carnegie Mellon में ही एक एक और friend था जो कि लाहौर में था तो मैं उसके साथ उसके घर गया. सात महीने में आपका पैसा वापस. सात महीने के बाद आपको premium है. Right sir, is a direct accounting. जो आपने जितना बोला ना मैं direct कह रहा भाई मैं 10% sale बढ़ा रहा हूं. Yeah. Right? Exactly. So suddenly you don't have to convince the customer. Yes. Suddenly you're making the customer money and taking a piece of that money. Right? Yes. So the value prop is very clearly there first of all. Yes. एक तो यह तो B to B वाला was was very interesting for me. दूसरा industry के साथ वह connectivity नहीं जिसकी वजह से वह जो idea है ना कि you you think of है ना. इसको मैं इतना कहूंगा. A lot of people that speak to who are doing startups are doing startups for the sake of startups. There's, मैं generally उनको कहता हूं. Don't wanna, I don't wanna respect anyone but आपका vision सही clear होना चाहिए जिनको मैं article entrepreneurs कहता हूं. Right? So they, this was a generation that grew up and saw a bunch of these articles where this guy left his job and now he founded a $200,000,000,000
company. Your glamorization is you don't show the hard truth the real realities कि यार 95% startups fail होते हैं. Sorry to cut you off but yeah. Yeah, I know of course. You're right और जो आप बात कर रहे you're absolutely right यार कि B2B वाला is is super interesting. They are behind an iron curtain और हमने बात की problem discovery की, जो आपने बात की value prop की. सबसे मुज़ामिल मेरे ख़याल से I mean that's where my expertise is with as a CPO कि how do you connect कि जो चीज़ आप बना रहे हो वह किसी को real value provide कर रही है और I think यहां पर जो है ना बहुत ज़्यादा thought process होने की ज़रूरत है कि what does value really mean for someone. मेरी अभी I am I am starting another company इंशालाह soon. मेरी एक. Any insight on the industry or what area you are focusing on? I don't want to talk about the product per se but Yes, I mean like I said previously we did technology first, right? हमने tech बनाया कहां fit होता है? उसकी limitations हैं, right? अगर वह नहीं fit हो रही या fit होगी तो वह एक ही industry में fit होगी. I flipped the script a little bit and said, अब I don't have any financial whatever constraints तो मैं क्या कर सकता हूं, right? So, I'm looking into B2B में ही हूं मैं. That's my expertise, I would say. मैं sales और recruiting वाली site पर HR automation opportunities देख रहा हूं. तो that's something that, you know, I don't have the product yet. Many teams start किए. We're ideating but we're now clear that we will start another company. Right. जो मैं पहले बात कर रहा था value proposition की, वह यह थी कि वहां पर it's very it's very hard to find कि हर किसी के लिए value है क्या? मैं अभी किसी से बात कर रहा था very successful entrepreneur Germany में. Has a second company as well. उसने मुझे एक बात बोली which is very interesting. उसने कहा अवैस, अगर तुम किसी की problem identify करते हो ना, right? When I build this product मैं मुज़ामिल के पास लेकर आता हूं. वह कहते हैं oh मस्ता तो आप हल कर रहे हैं but actually buy तो मैं करता ही नहीं हूं यह product. मतलब मेरी तो पूरी team है जो कि purchasing से deal करती है. मसला मेरा ही है but purchasing team है. तो उसने crux उसका यह था कि यार it's not like आप user और customer को identify करना is different. It's not just enough कि आप एक problem identify करो और you build a good solution for it but you have to understand the buyer.
जिस तरह अभी आपने example ली I hope it goes well for the guy जो traffic light से कर रहे हैं. I will actually like I will send him your podcast as well like I am because आप लोग story बड़ी similar है दोनों नास्त के हैं. I would like to I would like to connect How would
you happen or have to? How help? How would help? Yeah. अगर उस उस startup की बात करें आप, there is a clear need, right? आपने बोला millions of dollars इसमें लगते and there's a clear need. He built a solution for that. Who is buying the solution? Right? What is their thought process of buying the solution? Maybe
you could explain a little bit more. आपने कहा CDA करते हैं या कोई और करते या? I mean, अभी वह CDA कर रहे हैं. मुझे उसमें upside यह नज़र आई थी. मुझे बस कही था कि उसकी emotional management होनी चाहिए. मुझे लगता है पाक्षा में enough emotional management नहीं होती. मैंने डेढ़ बजाय कुछ नहीं किया था. ठीक है, मैंने कुछ किया था but मेरे हिसाब scope में मैंने कुछ भी नहीं किया. I was just an ordinary kid. A year down the line this industry wasn't mature enough for the things that I was expected to do and I went through depression and वह जो the acknowledgement that you gave that I've been very vocal about is care people do tend to get depressed and it's the emotional management and the biggest problem is when you do something when you're the first to do something you more often than not do not have mentors that can understand your context. So, basically, leaders नहीं होते जो कि आपको guidance provide कर सकते हैं. Exactly. The loneliness that you tend to have at the time is just horrifying. तो मैंने भी उसको यही बोला था क्योंकि मुझे उसमें यह था कि यार I am not saying you are not gonna be successful in Pakistan. Yeah. But your expectation needs to be very well managed. Yeah. And you need to have mentors who can guide you on क्योंकि उसका मुझे वह thirst नज़र आ रही थी, वह arrogance नज़र आ रही थी जो कि उस जवानी में होती है, जो आप में भी थी, जो मुझे में भी थी, जो आज आती है जब आपको बार बार regurgitate किया जा रहा था कि भाई तू king है. But in terms of his product, right now it's a singer buyer model, he is in the city, constantly हर दफा मुझे मिलता यार government का बड़ा bad scene है, government का बड़ा bad scene है. मेरे लिए his government is a testing ground, उसका real money is in these societies. So the value prop will be when he does traffic management for let's say बहरिया town or Blue World city or this or that there is margin call there and there is definitely a very clear value prop. Yeah. You know urban planning, cities develop and they are competing with each other, it's capitalist market and if he can give a cheaper premium compared to the other side. अभी यह मसला आ रहा था We have very of flexibility. High have वहां पर मेरे लिए एक of question mark था you know what like if there's if the economic model does not exist this is gonna be a problem. Yeah, you're you're you're absolutely right. मुज़मिल आप बिल्कुल सीख रहे हैं I think just building on those those notes.
जो आपने बोला मैं सिर्फ यह कहना चाह रहा था कि आपने बिल्कुल 100% सही बात की जो उन्होंने भी बोला कि यार government का issue है whatever. You just need to think from a different angle as well buyer perspective से, right? Most of the companies fail because हम किसी को बेच रहे हैं जिसको पता ही नहीं है कि उसका मसला क्या है? उसने भी realize नहीं किया मसला, उसका timeline नहीं है या उसका budget नहीं है या कोई और buyer है. तो जो आपने बोला मुझे कि यार government में buying process हमें नहीं पता. Societies का आपने मसला भी हल कर लिया, आपने solution भी बना लिया. Pain exist करता है. Value proper identification में it's it's important to understand कि buying process क्या है, purchaser कौन है, क्या steps होते हैं and then you understand कि वह किस तरह से सोचते हैं and then you build that into the product. That you know makes you a bit more let's say more attractive, आपकी sales आसान हो जाती है. दूसरा मैंने आपको बोला कि यार हमें जो पता लगा कि जो innovation वाले लोग हैं जो sizing departments हैं वह कह रहे हैं हमें returns आप कम करके दें कि लोग ख़रीद रहे हैं लेकिन size नहीं fit हो रहा तो वापस आ रहा है. But जो decision maker था वह CEO था. Didn't give a shit about this. उसने कहा यार company पैसा ज़्यादा बना रही है यह मेरा goal है या costs cutो. तो उसको like to make the buying process easier हमने उसको reformat किया into saying कि यार button लगाओ दस percent वह revenue कर लो. And that's what I was trying to suggest कि यार I think हमारा mindset needs to change a little bit in this कि जब आपने founding team पर ज़्यादा काम किया, आपने problem discovery पर ज़्यादा काम किया, हमने identify किया कि there needs to be accessibility कि यार लोग आपसे open हों कि you can call up मुज़मिल and say कि यार मुज़मिल आपकी क्या issues हैं आपकी company के? So I can solve those problems. And once you've done that मुझे मुज़मिल access हो कि मैं understand कर सकूं कि मुज़मिल चीज़ें खरीदता कैसे है? Right? And if I understand that मैं उसको अपने value prop में अपने product में build करके then I would like मुज़मिल. I think there is a certain level of collaboration
within that. मुझे आप कहा ना कि हमारे यहां I mean वह ethics की भी बात है, वह उस चीज़ की बात है कि जितना आप अपने आप को closed off रखोगे ना आप नहीं कर सकते. There's a collaboration required where you trust कि यार मैं third party को यह थोड़ी सी information दे रहा and they'll come up with a solution and they will help me out. हमारे यहां constant यह होता है. वह बड़ा
कैसे
उस idea को from an idea to actual real product आपने बनाना है. हां. But इसमें if I were to ask you, if I were to ask you to zoom out. अगर thought processes का फ़र्क है, मैं थोड़ा सा ना basic fundamentals पर आता हूं. What do you think of this startup? Because Pakistan में ना when I और यह ambigous है globally startup की term is ambiguous there is no dictionary definition of it. But Pakistan में you go to incubators they'll give you a different definition. To VCs they'll give you a different definition. The industry, the ecosystem will give you a different definition. And then you have got like people on Instagram like, I will message you, Sir I am doing a startup and you know here is my leather wallet I want to send it to you and somebody, right? So how would you define a startup?
You are very hard to define, to be very honest. I think it can be very broad मतलब आप किसी भी चीज़ को start up कह सकते हैं I think like a couple of people trying to solve a problem कुछ बना रहे हैं Ok,
personally the way that I would define it is what you said I don't know about couple of people, one person, 100 people
I would say solving a problem Ok, yeah that's actually better definition.
जिस case में अगर मैं solving a problem की बात कर रहा हूं ना तो अगर कोई आकर मुझे एक wallet बेच रहा है तो मेरे लिए वह problem solving नहीं है. मेरे लिए वह एक business है, small business है. No disrespect to that person but अगर वह पचास और लोग wallet बेचे और तुम भी wallet बेच रहे तो it's just like सदर में एक गौर आपने shirtों की दुकान खोल ली. हां सही. क्योंकि इतनी वह varied है कि there is no right and wrong answer. It's just what you personally how would you हां आप किस तरह define करोगे ताकि आप conversation को किस तरह lead कर सकते हो. Right? The way that I would define a startup is to solve a problem. मुझे जो मसला आ रहा है ना Pakistan में and I want your thought on that. Because our article entrepreneurship हुई है because startups historically solving a problem historically has not been our core forte. हम generally बाहर से किसी को बुलाते और कहते हैं यार हर किस्म का मसला वही solve करके देगा. Yeah. जब मैं दो हज़ार पंद्रह चौदह पंद्रह around the time when you were getting in the space as well. Yeah. तो होता यह था कि startup की एक definition हमारे सामने आई. जो incubators भी वही करते थे, investors भी वही करते थे. Largely यह वह लोग थे जिनका डेढ़ों पहले कोई experience नहीं था. With anything they are also people who dread up कि गोरे ने Silicon Valley में क्या किया है तो वह Pakistan में वह exact same formula create करने की कोशिश कर रहे थे और वह यह कह रहे थे कि startup सिर्फ एक चीज़ होती है और वह यह होती है कि आप एक highly scalable चीज़ बनाते हो जिसके अंदर investor का बहुत अच्छा पैसा आता है और फिर investor जो है वह तीन से दस साल के दरमियान में उस पैसे को multitudes of factors में multiply करते हैं और वह ले जाता है and they are very risky, that's perfectly fine but that is the only definition of a startup and that was thrown around and taught and a lot of the ideas that were much more sellable but they were let go because of the size. A lot of the ideas that were much more sellable were let go because the lack of scalability and a lot of ideas were let go because the model was कि आपने investor के पास जो जाना ही जाना है और आपने एक valuation game में घुसना है और आपने दिखाना है और आपने billion dollar होना लाज़मी है. The the term unicorn was thrown around like a basketball जिस पर मैं curious होना शुरू हो गया कि in a country जिसकी total GDP $300,000,000,000 है उसको क्या ऐसा चस्का चढ़ा हुआ है कि यार मैंने एक billion dollar company बना है. But what is this vanity metric? Yeain कि एक एक बच्चा है मेरे पास आ रहा है मैं पूटी कोड़ी नहीं कमा रहा या तो मैं billion dollar कमाऊंगा या मैं 0 rupees कमाऊंगा. That doesn't make any sense to me, right? There is value profit 5,000,000, 10,000,000, 50,000,000, 100,000,000. In this space you will small business and large business opportunities exist theoretically. The second thing that I found odd was you got these kids from let's say the smartest minds in Pakistan who were coming out and who were talking about innovation driven, scalable startups and they were again they were trying to innovate. So for example someone like you who said कि मैंने Parkinson का problem दुनिया में solve करना ही करना है. You know, अहमद की मुझे अच्छी बात यह लगी है. वह कह रहे दुनिया में मसले solve हुए हुआ है इशारे solve हुए में. Yeah. वह एक direct basic चीज़ कह रहे शायद solve हुए में लेकिन बहुत महंगे होते मैं उसको localize करूंगा मैं यहां कर लूंगा और अगर उस mentality से बच्चा जब जाएगा एक factory के अंदर तो हो जाएगा हम हर business है ना हम planners बनाते होते थे. You know, diaries, planners, self help types. वह Pakistan में वन रहे थे उनका paste import हो रहा था, उनकी glue import हो रही थी, उनकी spiral binding import हो रही थी और उसमें वह यही था कि उसके दस हज़ार मसाल थे and मेरे दिमाग में याद था कि नष्ट के बच्चों को focus यह करना चाहिए कि art paper बनाना कितना मुश्किल काम है. ठीक है? Engineers कहते हमारे पास engineering की jobs नहीं है. Why don't you are an engineer, you understand technology, you understand you know all of this. You are the right person to go out there and set up the supply chains कि मैं एक छोटी factory, micro factory, micro factory उसको optimize, so on and so forth. So, again, है क्या? क्योंकि उस definition ने define करना है कि हमारी economy में value proposition कहां पर build की जा सकती है? Okay, very interesting question.
I think मैं आपकी आपकी definitions से I would agree. Solving a problem will be a startup as a business अगर आप कर रहे हैं तो, right? अगर मैं इसके बारे में थोड़ा सा सोचूं कि what would be the let's say कि हमारे जो cream निकल रही है नास्ती के students निकल रहे हैं उनको क्या focus करना चाहिए? You're absolutely right कि हमारे let me phrase this properly right? I think अगर हम थोड़ा सा dive deeper करें मुझे personally मेरा hypothesis यह है कि हमें जो goals सिखाए जाते हैं that's they're a bit misaligned to what we should be doing, right? As a as a collective, as an individual. I think वह misalignment यहां पर आती है कि हमें entrepreneurship जो बताई जाती है वह सिखाई सिर्फ़ यह जाती है कि यार you know you're you have to be the next Steve Jobs, right? मतलब उससे नीचे कुछ करना ही नहीं है तुमने. जिस तरह हमने बोला कि यार यहां तो unicorn बनाओ यहां ना ही करो तुम बेहतर. And you have to I think मेरे लिए वो चीज़ fundamentally if you break it down it goes back to KR founders बंद कहाँ से रहे हैं और उनको सिखा कौन रहा है right? और उनको क्या सिखाया जा रहा है और जैसे आपने बोला कि हमारे incubators भी आपको align इसी तरह करते हैं कि बेटा funding तुम्हें कब तब मिलेगी जब you know you could you would build the next unicorn right? उससे नीचे आपको कोई fund नहीं करेगा maybe that is the ground reality मुझे यहां के incubators का नहीं पता maybe that. मुझे एक बात बताइए. जी. आप लोगों ने funding ली थी. जी जी. Investor से किस
तरह से how did that sort of process happened pre seed seed series a b c investor कितना कितनी equity investor के पास थी investor कितना role था acquisition में क्या मतलब what was all of that yeah it's funny and then we come back to the question जो आपका वही बड़ा interesting question था.
यह acquisition की हमारी story sorry investment की story is also a little bit longer please cut me off जाओ में भी आप कहेंगे. Right. We had really superstar investors. Plug and play investor था एक VC है. Silicon Valley में they were I think early investors of Google, PayPal. वह हमारे onboard आए थे in very early days. Angel Angel investors थे हमारे. We had Hermes Pérez का आपने नाम सुना होगा, luxury brand है, उसकी CEO थी, CND brand है, उसका family ने invest किया था, Hugo Boss का COO था उसने. They were like really really good people on onboard. हमने initially जो पैसे raise किए थे the very first one, वह हमने raise किया था through CDTM which I would, मैं उसको बार बार इसलिए बता रहा हूं कि क्या I want to link it back कि why did that institute help me so much. हमने बात की collaboration की, problem discovery की. मैंने बताया कि हमारा idea वहीं से निकला जब industry ने आकर हमें कहा कि यार यह मसला तो हल कर दो हमारा. वह industry collaboration हुई, हमने उनका मसला हल किया, वही हमारा पहला paying customer वन गया. हमारा जो network बना हुआ था वह पहला investor था. वह plug and play का वहां पर Germany में lead था, right? Plug and play house वह name था, वहां पर was very big investor like I told you. वह CDTM से था तो उसे पता था कि यार CDTM founders are a bit different, right? Like वह already filtered हैं. उसने उनसे बात करना शुरू की. He gave us the first, you know, initial investment. Then he brought us other, you know, people like, मैंने आपको बताया angel investors हमने किए, फिर other VCs we brought onboard. But at the end of the day, I think for us it was not about like raising a lot of money, right? हम business fundamentals में थे और I think by choice भी थे but by circumstances भी थे क्योंकि when we were raising money COVID आ गया था. And we had to be like कौन कपड़े खरीद रहे और fitting कपड़े कौन खरीद रहे हैं, you know, like COVID में. तो we had to be really smart about care, where we use the money and how much do we raise. Eventually, when we, you know, make started making money good money and we started you know showing this this value problem we got more and more and more money. So कितने rounds हुए थे आपके? We were at series A. You were at series A? Yeah.
If I were to ask you आपके जो investor था over from 2018 till 2022
that you were required. Yes, '22. Right? Exactly.
How much did they multiply their dollar for every dollar that they spend? Here I think.
If you could do a quick math. येर हां I mean we did this. I don't know कि मैं कितना openly उसे बता सकता हूं but I think there were investors जिन्होंने 10x आराम से किया था. Right. मेरा
question उसमें यही है largely. For for a country like Pakistan, do you think कि we are at a point where we the the model यह एक model है. जी. यह एक model है कि आप एक चीज़ आते हो, आप उसको करते हो, उसको prop up करते हो और उसका scale quickly बढ़ाते हो. जिसकी वजह से investor का mindset भी यही है कि मैं gamble करूंगा, मैं चालीस में invest करूंगा, 97% fail करेंगे लेकिन जो It's called spray and pray. हां, जो जो जो 3% है वह मुझे इतना return लाकर देंगे कि मेरी principal investment at least double या triple हो जी. जिसकी वजह से Pakistan में बहुत सारी family offices भी इसमें घुस रहे हैं and so on and so when looking for problem solvers they're constantly looking for people who can provide them the multiplier. हां जी. That is a 10 x, 15 x, 20 x multiplier. जी. For people, for for businesses in Pakistan और problem solvers in Pakistan, that multiplier more often than not does not exist. So the smartest men in the room, चाहे वह investors हों, चाहे वह problem solvers हों, they tend to let go of lower hanging fruits that may provide them a 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x return over a shorter term and definitely a much bigger return over the longer term. But they refused to invest in certain in that sort of a business because they were startup startup. Have you ever heard of Interloop's story? No. Interloop was started by Musadtig Zulkar Nayan in 1993. Now this guy, he did engineering, he came to फ़ैसलाबाद, it's interesting you were born in फ़ैसलाबाद, he started working in the textile industry and he identified a problem something something to do with कि जी the way that they make धागे वगैरह वह तो सही नहीं कह रहे उन्होंने क्या किया? उन्होंने दो छोटे छोटे धागों के बनाने के units बना लिए. Thirty years में that very small shop that they started now exports roughly around $300,000,000 worth of socks and I think towels also. Wow. They are the biggest hosiery खिलाता I believe यह. Socks का जो होता है. They are the biggest manufacturers of hosiery in the world. Wow, अच्छा लगा. They export to Intodex, they blah blah blah blah blah. They are the only or one of the few fully carbon neutral Europe market. Carbon credits खेल रहे हैं. वह एक flow ही अलग चल रहा है. अब उन्होंने जिस business में वह आए हैं वह Pakistan की industry के हिसाब से it was the ultimate solid business. आज का VC 1993 में जाता है और मुसद्य गुरुक्लान में एक young आदमी उनके पास आता और कहता sir मुझे पैसे जाइए मैंने ना एक gloom की वह निकाली. वह कहता है यार यह startup थोड़ी होता है तुम जाओ और जाकर जो है ना मुझे बताओ कि तुम कौन सी ऐसी service बना सकते हो जिसको तुम scale करके $300,000,000 पर ले जाओ. Probably वह नहीं बना सकेगा Pakistan में बैठकर. Right? But over thirty years he has made a company that exports 300,000,000. उसकी net worth कितनी होगी? वह आप उसको हिसाब से देख लें. मेरा मसला यह है जो मेरा वापस्थानियों से आप भी वापस्थानी है. मेरा वापस्थानियों से एक बड़ा इख़्तिलाफ है कि वापस्थानी western context पाकिस्तानी ecosystem में आकर push करने की कोशिश कर रहे हैं और one of the reasons why the failures that have happened in the पाकिस्तानी startup ecosystem has largely been because these were these व्रवापिस्तानी जिन्होंने वहां का model उठाया उन्होंने कहा यह मेरा मुल्क है मैं इसको समझता हूं एक success story build हुई. Pakistan में हमने launch करके बहुत ज़्यादा user उठाया. आज करीम के लिए पाकिस्तान एक सड़ का दर्द है. ठीक है? क्यों? क्योंकि Pakistan में वह value prop ही नहीं थी ride hailing में जिसमें premium भी नहीं था, losses बहुत ज़्यादा थे, दो number ही थी वगैरह वगैरह वगैरह. So, Pakistan as a market where you can do startups for Pakistan becomes increasingly difficult and maybe we need to redesign what we mean by startups in Pakistan. Maybe we need to redesign for example, if you have $100,100,000, you will a Pakistan ecosystem to invest. So startup, organic market किस तरफ़ है? Middle East की export की requirement, import की requirement किस तरह से है? यह लड़का जब जाएगा और जाकर वह करेगा तो मैं global investor हूं मैं इसके साथ क्या game खे सकता हूं? Businessman की तरह सोचें ना? Yeah yeah. यह पैसा doubling again मैं बार बार कहता हूं degenerative gamblers की तरह क्यों सोचते हैं? Right? मुझे एक चीज़ बेचें कि यार I am a problem solver या I am a gambler. ठीक है? आप you cannot be a bit of both and and to that for me is a is a big शिकायत from a lot of successful. मैं बिल्कुल भी diminish नहीं करना चाह रहा. Successful वापिस्तानीs who've done really well abroad in a different dynamic but are unable to identify how to maneuver through the पाकिस्तानी space specially because Pakistan में they are considered as very credible voices. Yeah. And so the local voices that actually give you a counter narrative are then diminished कि यार तुझे क्या पता यार वह अगला वहां से आ है. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that?
Great perspective. Mean, interesting perspective. आप सही कह रहे हैं I mean, let's say मेरे पास अगर $100,000 है मैंने invest करना है यहां पर तो I would look for a starter जो कि मुझे कह रहा कि यार मैं billion तो बना ही लूंगा. And if they have a way to do it, I would probably invest there versus like you said, poultry farm. Right? उसी मेरे ख़याल से couple of reasons हैं. जो आपने बात की, I think I will address that first and then come back to this topic. आपने बात की कि यार जो वहां का model है, वह यहां पर implement करने की कुछ की जा रही है. Maybe that's how VCs work. I'm not an expert in VC funding. However मेरा इसका एक additional perspective है वह यह है कि there is a lack of funding in the middle, right? So basically I asked someone this, they said कि VC का model यह है कि वह multiplier effect पर चलते हैं, private equity funding होती है कि businesses में invest करती है. Private equities या फिर अगर for example there is a bunch of like I mean for example I also invest in businesses जो कि कहते हैं कि हम VC funding लेंगे नहीं, right? और काफी ऐसे founders हैं जो कि VC funding ली और उन्होंने कहा मैं दुबारा नहीं लूंगा, right? Because of multiple reasons. उनका model यह है कि वह self sustainability की तरह जाते हैं, वह business fundamentals का focus करते हैं. आपने बात की कि poultry farm अगर मेरे पास आकर there is a there is a person जो कि who knows his shit उस ecosystem में and he is the right person to do that और वह मुझे justify कर सकते हैं business fundamentals पर. I would invest in that. इस पूरे process में there is multiple I would say difficulties. एक चीज़ यह कि उसको access नहीं है मेरे से, right? He cannot reach out to me, right? मैंने Avenue नहीं बनाया हुआ. हां, मतलब he cannot reach out to you or
I I also feel like one of the reasons why I'm having this conversation is because for the viewer if if if people are, मैं इस वैसे कह रहा because I know someone in in इस्लामाबाद, poultry farm भी an example. Poultry farm नहीं खिलाएगा वह. Poultry तो मुर्खी होती है. Goat farm, I don't know. Ok. गाय farm क्या खिलाता है? But he made that simply because he wanted organic food for himself. So उसने Australia से गाय की breed मंगवाई. उसने उसको reproduction उसकी पूरी figure out की. उसने land लिया. उसने land लिया. कहते हैं कि by the way this guy is is a very successful AI engineer who worked for a German startup automobile में वह self driving में काम करता था. He was a CTO. He built a 300 people team in Islamabad. Interesting. And now he works for motive and simultaneously उसने एक problem statement को solve करने की कोशिश की. What is the guy called?
अथीक. Ok, maybe.
मेरे साथ he used to be my class fill at fast. अच्छा. तो organic. उसका feed भी organic होना है. Yeah. तो उसने उसका अनाज भी बगैर fertilizer के अपने land में उगाना शुरू किया. अब उसका खाना भी उधर उगता है. So it's certified 100% organic. हां. जब मैं अच्छा मुझे वह समझ आई मैंने कहा यार wow बड़ा fit काम कर रहा है यार. मैं Dubai में जब land किया ना और मैंने Car four का organic section देखा और वह मुझे नज़र आया कि किस तरह से वह ICICI तक grow कर रहा है कि मुझे एक vision आ गया कि दस साल बाद यह होगा actual. Yeah. और यह छोटा सा रह जाएगा. बिल्कुल. तो तब मुझे नज़र आया कि यार अतीक जो जो you don't invest in अतीक's and अतीक is not looking for investments but as a reference. Yeah. You don't invest in Atik's business that Atik is a farm, a land, a them a getting them. You invest in the breadth of knowledge that he is acquiring because after 10 साल बाद, this organic system, the meat imports उसकी certification के लिए आपको एक पूरा process चाहिए जो कि क्योंकि meat पाक्सान से export होता है पाक्सान की जो सबसे बड़ी company है the organic meat companies listed in the stock exchange वह बढ़ी ही इस वजह से because Middle East से meat पाक्सान से जा रहा है. So the breadth of knowledge that अदीक has that's valuable. Right? अदीक जैसा बंदा कभी भी investors को इस व्यक्ति से reach नहीं करेगा. Because investors की जो language आ गया आ रही है ना जो मेरे platform पर भी आती है, जो across the board आती है, वह language multiplier की है. And I feel like that जो आपने कहा ना funnel exist नहीं करता कि they never going to reach out. मुझे वह वह funnel largely इस वजह से है because the investor is not looking at it like that.
Understand your perspective. आप सही कह रहे हैं maybe that's one of the ways to put it कि मैंने as an investor right. मैं जो point आपकी बात ठीक है I am aligned, I agree with that. मैं welcome back to हमारा जो पिछला discussion point था. I just wrapped that up. मेरे ख़याल से जो problem है वह एक नए investment institute की है in the middle जो कि इसी को
help out कर रहा है. जो character बनता है basically.
Yeah, in a way मैं मैं जो कहना चाह रहा I'm going more towards like maybe angel investors या different institutions. I think maybe हमारे लिए maybe this does work कि अगर आप उसे voice करें opinion कोई कि VCs need to change but I think जो VC model है the way they वह तो voice नहीं होगा, हां. It's it's hard to do that. Mean, a bit harder to do do that. अगर there is use cases कि यार, you know, people are actually making 10x छोटे businesses में. Maybe they do shift and they they're like, ok, हमारा थोड़ा portfolio वह भी होना चाहिए. But I feel like maybe उनका model different है. Right. They're investing in different way, you know, different mindset. मेरे ख्याल से for early stage startups भी there I think there is not a lot of opportunity कि वह capital raise कर सकें from smarter, smart people. There's ways of like smart money versus like the money. तो if there's someone who for example me, you know like I don't have hundreds of millions कि मैं invest करूं into startups or you know I spray but maybe if my goals are कि यार you need to understand my goals as an investor, right? Right. VCs का different goal हो सकता है. मेरा goal अगर तो यह है कि I need to diversify my portfolio and my personal vision is aligned with कि यार मुझे organic meat चाहिए या organic वह चाहिए and I am passionate about that space और मैं businesses में invest करना चाह रहा हूं not necessarily startups में क्योंकि I know a lot of people जो कि यह कह रहे हैं उधर Germany में भी कह रहे हैं और I was also looking into this space, right? कि अगर एक अच्छा business वन सकता है with some capital, why not? Right? But आपको goal होना चाहिए. अगर अगर मेरा goal है कि यार मैंने 10x ही करना है और मैं 5% of my wealth के साथ मैं invest करूं तो that's fine. You know that's risky investment. Course. मुझे एक बात यह था आपने you used invested
in startups as well? Yes.
Most mostly US or Germany में. Of course. Did you invest
through a VC? क्या आपने उसके उन्होंने आपका पैसा लिया और divided that across multiple streams या did you do a direct sort of angel कि मैं drown चल रहा है, मैं भी अपने chunk डाल देता हूं. यार both. मेरा VC में भी मैंने किया हुआ है और मेरा अपना direct investment भी है through my holding company Ok. और personally directly भी मैंने किया हुआ है.
I was also looking into Pakistan as well like I said मतलब I wanted to fill in this gap. मैंने एक पाकिस्तानी VC से भी बात की थी couple of months ago. उन्होंने भी मुझे यह identify किया था कि यार there is no consortium. Consortium I think is the right word like no collective investment fund from Angels, right? जो कि earlier stage पर आप आप आते हैं, आप मुझे यह नहीं कहते कि यार वैसे मेरे पास 10x वाला idea है but know billion dollar idea है but you're like यार I could have a modest $10,000,000 business. It would give us dividends और you know whatever whatever way of doing that. Have you looked at गंदाहारा
ventures? शैरी और हैदरी. शरीर हैदरी, ok. Yeah, I think he's He's early stage. He's been on the show. He specifically focuses on early stage. Wasn't it Deo
Deo Sai.
Actually I हां, तो यह
उन्हीं से बात की थी. अच्छा अच्छा So he said even earlier I think if I'm not misquoting him. He said even earlier there needs to be I don't know I forgot how much he was investing per round but like for example आपने आप मेरे पास आते आप कहते हैं RMS you know I need initial seed money मैंने यही organic farm लगाना है I don't have the money to do it I don't want to raise millions of dollars I cannot raise it because मेरा model ही नहीं है यह I don't know give me €25,000 or something dollars कि मैं थोड़ा सा system set कर लूं अपना and then we're partners you would get some cashback or whatever right तो I think that's I institutionalized because उसमें आप पैसा लगाते हो ना तो होता है यार यह भाग जाएगा या यह कर लेगा क्योंकि या कर लेगा there is no formalized way of doing this ना ही वह available है ना ही investors available है and I was really like पिछली दिनों I was really looking into this कि यार is there any like you know collective investment whatever group early super early stages Angel Investors का जिनके छोटे tickets होते हैं who actually are helping these like businesses who are strong in business fundamentals or could be strong in business fundamentals and don't you know give you this vision of like okay I'm a billion dollar company
and not pitching to VCs yeah okay वैसा I'm we're at the two hour mark I'm gonna wrap this up but this was super super insightful मैं एक चीज़ यह कहना चाहूंगा अगर कोई दो घंटे तक पहुंच ही गया audio या video के ऊपर if you are one of those that वैस just talked about चाहे वह on the investor side हो कि you look for smart opportunities that do not necessarily have to have a 100x growth spurt but less riskier but definitely a growth opportunity smaller ticket size good business fundamentals good business fundamentals either on the investor side and or on the business side where you know you maybe require funding, you have the ideas or you have the set of people who have these ideas please reach out to me, please reach out to Aves, Aves is already looking for it, उसको तो आप reach out करी लें मेरे से भी reach out कर लें because if this is something that's valuable I would love to put it out in the public ताकि और भी लोग इस्तान आकर आ सकें. I'm gonna wrap this up अवैध. मैं एक सवाल आपसे पूछूंगा या ask all of the guests who come in. You're 28 years old right now. You lived in Pakistan for most part of your life. I believe your first experience started happening in twenty fifteen, sixteen of going abroad for conferences and events and all of those. Then eventually you relocated to Germany, stayed there for six years. Are you still in Germany? But all of what you've learned throughout your life, particularly in the last six years, how do you see Pakistan of twenty fifty, twenty seven years from now? Knowing what you know now, seeing what you've seen with this caveat that you can't say we have a youth population and you can't say if this happens then this वाली situation. I want you to just take the data that you already have and can see and extrapolate that कि आज के data को मद्देनज़र रखते हुए आपको दो हज़ार पचास का Pakistan कैसे दिख रहा है? And I can't give you an answer कि यार what I think. Give me an image of what what what comes to your mind when you think about it. यार, a
lot can happen in thirty years. Let me build context and then I will give you an answer, short answer on that. Approximately thirty years, कर लें आप? जब आप पुछ रहे हैं, I would say thirty years पहले I think internet beneath, you know, smartphones beneath. तो there's a lot that can happen thirty years on the decisions that we take. Our country is huge, right? It's political, it's like there's geopolitical situations, social economic situations जो कि
-Some things you can control, some things -Some
can control, some things you cannot. मैं आपका question limit करूंगा to things that we can probably control, right? It could look, there could be an idealistic case, a realistic case, a pessimistic case, right? Depending on हम क्या decisions लेते हैं, किस तरफ जाते हैं. मैं further limit करूं your question to my expertise where it could be businesses. I think a better way to answer this would be कि हम क्या कर सकते हैं to actually get to this idealistic or realistic scenario which has a better image या outlook. मेरे ख़ियाल से I think there is, I don't know, मैं roughly read कर रहा था like Pakistan has the potential to to become one of, you know, a growing, a very good economy because we do have a youth population. Germany के बारे में पढ़ रहा था. It's becoming someone labeled it as the sick man of Europe, elder population है. तो we could use this to our advantage, right? I mean, thirty years is long time where we could play our cards right and get into a nice situation. Maybe I'll say if we get into a nice financial situation, if we want to get into a nice financial situation, there's two ways to do it. Cut costs, generate value, get more money. Right? Media expertise, where where I could answer is, how could you build a business ecosystem that enables you to either cut costs or you know generate more value make more money हम बात करे थे शुरू में I think we didn't get a chance to touch on that I think मेरा perspective यह है I've not been on the ground for like six years might be changed मेरा perspective यह है कि we are a software exporter economy but export हम जो करते हैं वह IT services हैं. हम सिर्फ़ IT services ही try करते हैं कि यार हम उसी को scale करें, तो more money comes in, उसी को tax करके we would make money. I feel like there's better ways to do it. There, you know, we talked about it a little bit as well. I think we need to shift our mindset from saying कि यार हम लोग IT services company export करें versus हम IT products export करें and I think there needs to be a lot of work done in changing the mindset of people जो कि export products की तरफ जाएं और services की तरफ ना जाएं. हम individualistic होकर ना सोचें but collective होकर सोचें और अगर हम इस चीज़ पर focus करें कि यार हम what can we do to change the outlook of these products जब हम Germany जैसे country को बेच रहे हैं? Germany अगर software ख़रीद रहे हैं Pakistan से वह क्या सोच रहा होगा? वह सोच रहा होगा यार quality compromised होगी, cheaper होगा, डंडी मारी होगी, कहीं ना कहीं मसला होगा, reliable नहीं होगा. We need to do some steps to change that outlook and if we get to that situation जहां पर हम लोग product outsource करें मैं hardware products की बात नहीं कर रहा, हम raw materials की बात नहीं कर रहा, but I'm thinking of companies like Meta, companies like Microsoft जो कि Valley में बैठी हैं, Silicon Valley में बैठी हैं जब Silicon Valley कुछ भी नहीं था but in thirty years, in thirty years they've used the internet to build businesses जो कि export करें and they're now like some of the biggest companies in the world. I mean, they're running the American economy. Yeah, running. Yeah, exactly. If you look at the S and P, like five-six percent Apple का होता है और like they're the core of The US economy. वह export करें और वह software products export करें not services, I would say. तो I think we need to shift to that direction and if we get to that direction we could be in the trajectory to a very good
you know stable financial economic situation I think. That's my 2¢ on that. Makes sense, yeah. Aves thank you so much for sharing all that insight and for coming in and taking your time out. Critique होनी चाहिए. Not in a disrespectful way, just a food for thought way. But irrespective, if you disagree with anything, let me know in the comment section below. These are just opinions. I would be happy to change them if you have a solid counterargument. I would love to read your thoughts in the comment section below. But, anyways, this was सैयदिमा ज़मीला संजय दी. You're watching ThoughtBank and Things. Thank you so much for watching, I'll see you in the next one.
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