Bakhtiar Wain

Early life and background

Wain was born in Bahawalpur. His father taught at a school. He grew up in Sargodha and attended a school where his father was the principal. His mother was not working. [1]

Education

He completed the first year of FSC before moving to FC College Lahore, where he studied from 1976 to 1978. He then studied at Engineering University Lahore. The university closed for about six months soon after he joined. He was offered a scholarship that went up to PhD, but he did not take it up. [1]

He says the universities of his time were a very homogeneous society, and that the teaching was a mixed bag, with some teachers outstanding. He took accounting courses at the Pakistan Institute of Management. He ordered three books from Amazon on future cash flow modelling in Excel. [1]

Early career

After university he started a job at Fauji Fertilizer. He then moved to Exxon Chemicals. He also worked at ICI for a short while. He describes himself as not a corporate person. [1]

Wain joined a business about a year after another person started it. He bought an XT computer with almost three years of savings. He says he had no doubt that the world was changing. He ran many corporate training sessions himself and trained the higher management of many corporations. [1]

He says it was a very taxing undertaking because they did not have capital. He says the business ran for about six to eight years before it branched off. A business partner of his had a software background, and the business transformed into a software business. Because he had industrial experience, the company moved into industrial automation. He says he had no industrial connections beforehand. [1]

Avanceon

Avanceon started around 1994 and began as a boutique company. At one point it had about 25 to 30 engineers. Wain has said Avanceon had revenue of about 2 million dollars at one stage. Avanceon kept more documentation than most companies of its size from the start. [1]

Engro invested in Avanceon in 2002. Wain says Engro's investment was less than one million dollars. Engro decided to divest its non-core businesses around 2008 to 2010. Avanceon bought back its shares and went public. He says an IPO was a critical part of the decision because stock options had been committed to employees. [1]

After going public, Avanceon raised further capital and expanded into the Middle East. He says the Middle East offered much more attractive options at that time. He has said Avanceon has about 500 engineers and operates in Pakistan, Dubai, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. He has said Avanceon is aiming for 100 million dollars in orders next year. He says the plan to reach that target is called Road to 100. [1]

He has said Avanceon now charges a premium over multinational competitors. He says Avanceon's value to customers is being a local call away. He says Avanceon chose not to invest in hardware and to use the world's best equipment. He says its value addition is to eliminate foreign engineering work. [1]

He says hardware makes up about 30% of a project's material. He says that in many industries the whole plant is run from one central control room. [1]

Octopus

He says Avanceon set up Octopus as a new subsidiary. Avanceon acquired a company through a share swap with Dawood. Avanceon merged the acquired company's product into Octopus. The acquired company had about 35 to 40 people and did international projects. Its major project was with GE. [1]

He says OmniConnect enables what Avanceon calls OT data. He says the software has a complete no-code interface. He says the data is connected to business analytics tools, in Avanceon's case Power BI. He says a person with three hours of training on their software can finish the work in two hours. Tapal is one of the companies using cloud dashboards from Avanceon. [1]

He says the company began working with Microsoft and started doing proofs of concept. The proofs of concept took about a year and a half. He says they are native to Microsoft security. He says each tenant in the data lake is totally isolated from others. He says the software is multi-tenanted. [1]

He says some of the models are owned by the company as its intellectual property. He says customers can use Microsoft tools and Python tools through the company's API. He says the company does not sell customer data. He says any fundraising now would be only for the US and selected Western markets. He says they are not thinking about the Middle East right now. [1]

He says Octopus's mission is to build a world-class tool that takes OT data to big data format in the cloud. He says good OT data in big data format is the critical component of their business. He says a faulty sensor produces faulty data. He says early feedback has been very good. He says the product spec is that someone can do a project after four hours of training. [1]

He says a services business cannot scale as well as a product business. He says Octopus was built to be scalable. He says Octopus's first pitch is that it will eliminate Excel reporting. He says Octopus will train the people who write reports on its system. He says some competitors need an international call for support. [1]

Views

He says a person who is not willing to open doors and pitch ideas is not cut out for business. He wrote scripts before his sales meetings and rehearsed them as a war game. He believes a senior person passing on negative assumptions to a young person is the biggest disservice. He says people who stop reinventing themselves will fade away. [1]

He says HR is a very important component of the business. He says the leadership Avanceon has built is a very big component of its success. He says he is proud that Avanceon's talent is world class. He says quality control in Pakistani industry is far from global standards. He says in Pakistan the quality of human labour matters more than its cost. [1]

In his opinion, the salary tax is retrogressive. He says the change increased the cost of business of local companies by 25 to 40 percent. He says brain drain is the most critical issue at the moment. He says the turbulence in Pakistan does matter to businesses. He says businesses should keep doing their work rather than only talking about turbulence. [1]

He says Pakistan missed an earlier cycle. He says the concern should be not to miss the new cycle. He believes problem solving as a skill will create many more jobs. He says he is always bullish about Pakistan. He says he cannot predict Pakistan's future in 2050. [1]

He says he has always been intrigued by universal basic income. He says universal basic income is many steps above the idea of a minimum wage. He says he is not an economist. [1]

Personal life

He remains in touch with his close university friends. He is still connected with six or eight roommates from his university years. He says his university batchmates have done very well. One of his roommates retired as managing director of OGDC. His wife decided to start a planner business. [1]

He recommends Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham, and says it had a big effect on him while growing up. He highly recommends Lessons in Chemistry. He also recommends a book titled Fine Balance. [1]

Timeline

1976 to 1978

Studied at FC College in Lahore.[1]

1994

Avanceon started, around this year.[1]

2002

Engro invested in Avanceon.[1]

2008 to 2010

Engro decided to divest its non-core businesses, around these years.[1]

Appearances

Frequently asked questions

References

1. How Avanceon now charges a premium for being in Pakistan . Thought Behind Things , 2024-08-02.