Muntaqa Peracha & Waqas Asar

Muntaqa Peracha: early life

Peracha was born in Karachi. His family later moved to Lahore so that his father could set up a textile unit. He attended Aitchison, where he completed his O-levels and A-levels. His father is an engineer, which led Peracha to consider engineering himself. He learned QBasic from the IT head at his father's office. [1]

Muntaqa Peracha: education

Peracha studied computer science at Georgia Tech for his undergraduate degree and graduated in 2004. He started in computer engineering and switched to computer science after a semester. He says Georgia Tech ranks in the top five or six among public universities, and in the top five for computer science. He found its academics very aggressive and hard to adjust to. [1]

Peracha failed a course at Georgia Tech in one of his first two semesters. He says he was accused of cheating on a final exam, which led to him failing the course. He says he regrets not contesting the grade, and that he has since challenged problems respectfully whenever he sees them. [1]

Muntaqa Peracha: career

Peracha worked at Verizon Wireless, at a startup that was later acquired, and at Digital Insight, a company that Intuit acquired. He decided not to pursue hard-core coding, because he believed growth in it would taper off. He wanted to move toward the consulting business. [1]

Peracha then joined a local company and stayed about seven to eight years. He worked in product management, project management, sales and business development, and was made country head of a services division. He moved to Islamabad for about a year for a project. [1]

At IBM, Peracha worked on the technology services side, selling enterprise technology solutions. He was sales head for Pakistan and Afghanistan for an IBM division and worked at IBM for two years. He found IBM very process-oriented and at times claustrophobic. He moved to Karachi in 2012. [1]

Peracha moved to Inbox about two years after joining IBM. Inbox sells enterprise solutions, hardware, software and managed services. Peracha was at Inbox for four years. He worked on managed services for two years, then in its consulting arm for two years, and in his last two years he was VP of its digital arm. He ran the P&L of a consulting arm that had no CEO. He says a team was sold in its entirety to Engro Digital. [1]

Peracha joined Dun & Bradstreet as its country head for Pakistan. He says Dun & Bradstreet holds information on about 400,000 corporates, and that a credit bureau is essentially a technology business. He says he was not interested in staying on that path because it had moved into the financial services industry, which was not his background. [1]

TPL

Peracha then decided to join TPL. TPL started as a vehicle tracker business, and TPL Life offers health and life insurance. Peracha was Chief Commercial Officer for the TPL group, whose holding company is TPL Corp. He says the intention of the role was that one person, rather than five organisations, would talk to the same company. [1]

Foodpanda

Peracha first came to Foodpanda by chance, on a sales call for TPL Maps to meet its CEO at the time. Foodpanda was shifting from restaurant-run deliveries to its own riders at that time. Peracha joined Foodpanda as Commercial Director. He says Pakistan is the largest country within Foodpanda. Waqas Azhar joined Foodpanda as Director Marketing. [1]

Waqas Azhar: early life and education

Azhar was born in Dubai and is originally from Lahore. He studied at Beaconhouse for almost eight years. His parents decided to send him to Army Burn Hall, and about six months later he told them he thought he should come back. He did his O-levels at City School and then studied computer sciences at the University of Punjab. [1]

Waqas Azhar: career

Azhar describes himself as a marketer through and through. He chose marketing because he wanted to be a generalist who finds business solutions. He started an internship with McCann Erickson in Lahore, working on Coke and Sprite. [1]

Azhar then joined Engro Foods and moved to Karachi for the job. He worked at Engro Foods for eight years in two stints. He says he was part of the team that launched Olper's. He returned to Engro Foods in 2013 as General Manager Marketing for the dairy portfolio, and says Olper's became the market leader around 2013. He moved from Olper's to the tea whitening segment and launched Tarang. He worked on Dettol at Reckitt in Dubai for two years. [1]

Azhar worked at Coca-Cola for about seven years, based in Lahore. He worked on Sprite and Fanta for almost four of those seven years. He became marketing director for Central Asia and the Caucasus at Coca-Cola and was based out of Almaty, Kazakhstan. He led Coca-Cola's Karachi Is Love campaign. He left Coca-Cola in 2021 and joined Foodpanda. [1]

Views

Peracha describes himself as generally not a pessimistic person. He says Pakistan's insurance penetration is below 1% and that insurance products in Pakistan have been made confusing. He says selling insurance carried a higher incentive than selling core banking products, and that the plan was to democratise insurance for everyone. [1]

Timeline

2004

Muntaqa Peracha graduated from Georgia Tech.[1]

2012

Muntaqa Peracha moved to Karachi.[1]

2013

Waqas Azhar returned to Engro Foods as General Manager Marketing for the dairy portfolio.[1]

2021

Waqas Azhar left Coca-Cola and joined Foodpanda.[1]

Appearances

Frequently asked questions

References

1. Food Panda's bet on Pakistan as its biggest market . Thought Behind Things , 2022-10-14.