Badar Khushnood is a founding member at LUMS Center for Entrepreneurship, Plan9, and NEST IO. He is also a mentor at Telenor Velocity, an accelerator and incubator in Islamabad and I2I. He graduated back in 1998 from the Lahore School of Economics (LSE) with a major in economics. Thereafter, he worked for the Nishat group, SMEDA, and ASUS for approximately two years each, respectively. In 2006, Badar and two of his friends, Amer and Zeeshan, together began Bramerz, which started off primarily as a digitization agency: it provided online platforms through its application products to various clients who wanted to go digital.
Not long after, in the same year, Badar was also hired by Google as their country consultant in Pakistan. His job was to operate as Google’s official “eyes and ears” from Pakistan, and report back to them with information regarding trends and potential plans, specifically to identify the gap between what Google was doing at that time and what was actually happening in places like Pakistan where it was not really operating. He was then to determine which of the gaps could potentially be bridged.
One of the projects Badar led, named ‘Wonders of Pakistan’, involved the preservation of 25 – 30 cultural and heritage sites in Pakistan through digital photography, 3D, and street viewing. As part of another project, 3D mapping was done for more than 250 locations in Punjab, which has enabled three-dimensional internal and external tours of places like the Badshahi mosque. He also helped lead the PASHA Social innovation fund. The idea was to ensure that all of Google’s grants coming into Pakistan were not turned into dead investments. Instead, they were aimed at initiating sustainable businesses. He worked on countless other projects at Google, which allowed him a great deal of experience.
Throughout all these years, Bramerz continued to grow. Business picked up especially well after 2008, when Nestle became their client. As Badar and his friends’ struggles seemed to smooth out, they launched their first product, BuzzVines—a portal, a discussion forum of sorts where anyone could post whatever they wanted to. However, monetizing all the traffic they had managed to attract was very difficult in a country like Pakistan.
Recognizing the problem of monetization, however, by 2010, Badar and his team began helping other publishers like Daily Times, Qudratt, and Daily Pakistan manage their technology to improve monetization, through an application called Publishr. The application helped publishers like Daily Pakistan run on their own domains, such as dailypakistan.com.pk. Think of it as Android, which enables you to build various applications, where Android as a platform becomes the de facto standard—in this case, Publishr being an Android of sorts. Now, Badar and his team have international clients from Singapore and Hong Kong, and are now the largest platform provider for publishers of all kinds.
In 2012, Badar and his team launched Olaround, a loyalty and discount app that offered location-based discounts for more than 350 brands in more than 500 locations. Thereafter, Fishry, a cloud-based platform for retailers and an e-commerce engine, was launched in 2014. At first, their flagship client became Domino’s Pizza, but then, a stream of other clients followed and, just last year, Badar and his team signed up approximately 80 brands, including KFC, Nishat Linen, Hush Puppies, Bareeze, and many more. As of now, Fishry is the largest e-commerce platform provider in Pakistan.
Badar attributes the success of Bramerz to the perseverance of its employees. According to him, everything else is secondary. “If you are really, really, really determined, and if you really stick to it for a while, the probability of your idea getting successful is much higher,” he says. Apart from that, having the right team in place holds great importance too. The subject knowledge is not something that makes a team great. If a team is honest and hardworking, Badar believes you can achieve everything else.
In order to motivate Bramerz’s employees, Badar asserts that their work environment plays a pivotal role: there is no sovereign boss the way it is seen in other structures like the bureaucracy. Everyone around knows they can question Badar, Amer, or Zeeshan; they will not be held accountable for that challenge. The team does not go ahead with what the head of department says. Any answer to a dilemma prompted by the team that seems like the logically best answer is upheld, and this approach has helped Bramerz stimulate commitment within the team.
Concerning Pakistan’s e-commerce position: Badar says that the country has experienced a varying trend in terms of business growth. Government policies are essential in this regard. For example, when cell phones first came to Pakistan, the old-school AMPS technology was in use. Thereafter, the Ministry of IT auctioned the GSM technology before mobiles proliferated. As a result, Pakistan was among the few nations in the world which had leapfrogged and adopted the latest technology, resulting in an exponential growth of digitized businesses. Contrarily, when 3G was being auctioned, Pakistan adopted it much later, after most other countries; this inhibited the growth of businesses here, in comparison to the global trends during that period. In short, the actions of the government translate directly into the performance of businesses and their digitization, which is why it plays a very vital role.
Pakistan is certainly closing down on this gap as digitized startups are increasing every day. Increased awareness is evident, owing to deliberate attempts to help Pakistan move in the right direction. However, there are infinitely more opportunities out there. And if the government can streamline its process of adopting new technology, Pakistan may very well be able to capitalize on them.
Badar, Amer, and Zeeshan are an important part of the ecosystem of startups in Pakistan. According to Badar, young people have been taking greater initiatives towards enterprise; however, there is room for improvement. “We need to invest more in our academic faculty as they will shape the minds of the Pakistani youth and, ultimately, its future,” he suggests. “Their role needs to be changed to those of facilitators of the interests of students. The objective of going to a university should not be merely to learn a subject, the objective should be to learn something exciting and new and applicable, allowing students to face the many challenges that may arise in today’s fast-paced world.”
Interviewer: Talha Minhas
Transcriber: Talha Minhas
Editor: Uzair Shahed Islam
