Founders & Startups
How Pakistan's operators are actually building — from first cheque to nine-figure exits.
155 episodes
You can outsource intelligence, not understanding
with Hashim Syed
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Hafiz Ahmed: I woke up at zero after a £600k night
with Hafiz Ahmed
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Ahmad Awais: 400 million coders won't afford AI
with Ahmad Awais
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45:55 Pakistan's first giga factory bets on a new kind of rider
with Saad Farrukh
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1:02:56 Pakistan's startup space has become practically meaningless
with Mutaher Khan
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1:48:23 You can't have 32 logistics players all surviving
with Ehsan Saya
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1:39:53 How Daari Mooch turned a beard-oil bottle into a 3M brand
with Ibrahim Shaukat
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1:51:12 Sending your kids abroad isn't an investment, it's exposure
with Obaid Arshad
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2:26:42 AI won't take your job. Someone who uses it will.
with Ahmed Abubakar
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1:56:46 Pakistan's delivery riders survive on five-rupee margins
with Umer Munawar
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2:13:27 Six billion dollars a year already runs through Salesflo
with Yasir Suleman Memon
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1:28:24 Khazanay Founder: I Met Sam Altman & He Loved Our Startup
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2:06:58 Scents N Stories CEO: We Have 40+ OUTLETS Across PAKISTAN! | Saad Afridi
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1:35:47 Why Kickstart stopped buying buildings and let landlords pay instead
with Saad Riaz
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1:38:30 How Dipitt got onto shelves in 33 countries
with Syed Zeeshan Haider
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1:25:23 Why Pakistan's next unicorn ships from a warehouse, not a website
with Arif Iqbal
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1:37:45 If you're mega ambitious, stay home and build
with Omar Shah
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1:53:12 Why Pakistan's western wear market is the next $5B prize
with Muneeb Zafar
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1:51:07 Pakistan's electric scooter winner isn't selling to bike owners
with Saad Farrukh
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2:04:53 How a Sahiwal kid built Pakistan's largest e-commerce logistics company
with Omer Khan
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2:01:49 Why PriceOye sells you a $500 phone before a $5 t-shirt
with Adnan Shaffi
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1:53:59 Why Yango bet on Pakistan when everyone else was leaving
with Miral Sharif
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1:27:21 Why Netflix isn't really competing for Pakistan
with Jonathan Mark
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1:31:21 Pakistanis think too small — and the language barrier is the smallest part
with Qumber Hussain
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1:20:42 AI will not kill jobs. It will kill the people who don't use AI
with Zeeshan Sikandar
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1:07:02 Why Ronin's founder bet on a Pakistan-built consumer brand
with Jahangir Munawar
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1:08:20 Why NSTP is the only science park in Pakistan that actually works
with Yaruq Nadeem
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1:47:53 Why most Pakistani real estate is a dead investment
with Fahad Lone
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1:25:15 Pakistan is still stuck in primary school on its economy
with Muhammad Ali Tabba
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1:51:58 Pakistan is stuck in cotton while the world has moved on
with Mussadiq Zulqarnain
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1:44:57 How Avanceon now charges a premium for being in Pakistan
with Bakhtiar Wain
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1:07:29 Pakistan's exports lose at the shelf, not the field
with Ehtesham Maqbool Elahi
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1:38:45 Why a banker of twenty years built a landscaping company and a fashion label
with Mohsin Ahsan
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1:56:24 Nobody had ever displaced a number one in classifieds
with Haider Ali Khan
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1:45:02 Why Pakistan's web series can't get past the campaign cycle
with Sami Rehman
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1:39:50 Pakistan does not have 240 million customers — and we made that number up
with Raza Matin
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1:44:45 Mina Salman built Bagallery from her couch — then learned how funding really works
with Mina Salman
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2:09:29 Why Pakistani founders glamorise the wrong half of a startup
with Awais Shafique
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1:30:47 Why Jaffer Haider never took the VC money for PosterMyWall
with Jaffer Haider
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1:13:37 The only startups worth funding solve a problem that already exists
with Aleena Nadeem
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1:16:51 Why smart money came into Pakistani startups when everyone left
with Faisal Aftab
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1:29:46 Why she left a global Cisco role to rebuild Pakistani charity
with Kanwal Cheema
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2:41:02 From copy-pasted Kindle books to a $16.5M Amazon exit
with Muhammad Naeem Sikandar
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1:53:41 What a metric-pass businessman taught a PhD about education
with Dr. Shahid Qureshi
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1:43:17 The anger that built a Dubai hospitality business
with Mahwussh Alam
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2:32:08 Why a Facebook engineer left Seattle to digitise Pakistani fashion
with Arif Iqbal
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1:39:06 Why a brand is a story you agree to believe
with Atiya Zaidi
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2:11:25 How Dawlance became a Pakistani engineering story
with Umar Ahsan Khan
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1:22:33 Why AI rewards problem solvers and could bring women back to work
with Mahe Zehra Husain
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The self-taught cheese maker feeding Pakistan's restaurants
with Imran Saleh
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The digital bank built from scratch in nine months
with Noman Azhar
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Pakistan could be a manufacturing powerhouse by 2050
with Yousuf M. Farooq
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Taimoor Akbar on why daily uploading changed everything
with Taimoor Akbar
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The Pakistani founder who bootstrapped three global startups
with Adeel Raza
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Why Ehsan Elahi built a time tracker to escape time trackers
with Ehsan Elahi
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Is America a diminishing power?
with Faisal Aftab
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The startup building loyalty tech for restaurants
with Yahya Humayun
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The slow brand: how Manto was built without a plan
with Salman Parekh
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The Pakistani who fixed a broken denim factory in Mexico
with A. Rauf Razzak Ganatra
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Why Pakistan's milk problem is really a policy problem
with Qammar Nawaz
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From a village with no electricity to Silicon Valley CEO
with Amin Sukhera
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The man who gave away an empire and started over
with Chaudhry Junaid Afzaal
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The logistics startup that solved payments first
with Muhammad Hassan Khan
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The CEO who got caught in a war before his career started
with Khaqan Sikander
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Pakistan's IT exports vs one Tata subsidiary
with Qasim Asad Salam
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How foodpanda became an innovation lab for delivery hero
with Ibad ur Rehman Ahmed & Syed Maz Hashmi
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The engineer who built Pakistan's first fiber network
with Wahaj Siraj
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Why freelancing alone will never make you rich
with Saddam Hasan
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Muzamil Hasan on going global and Pakistan's reform moment
with Syed Muzamil Hasan Zaidi
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How Salim Ghauri turned a $90,000 deal into $150 million
with Salim Ghauri
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Why Bilal Musharraf stayed in America washing his own clothes
with Bilal Musharraf
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How inDrive became Pakistan's no.1 ride-hailing app
with Hasan Ali Khureshi, Petrov Afinasé, Sidra Kiran
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Why Pakistan has less than 1% of merchants digitized
with Fawad Abdul Kader
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The event manager who paid his own LUMS fees
with Jahanzaib Shafique
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Shahveer Jafry on why you should never have a plan B
with Shahveer Jafry
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Nabeel Qadeer on being lost after Idea Karoron Ka
with Nabeel Qadeer
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1:55:00 Abdul Razak Dawood: a Memon village, Columbia, and building DESCON
with Abdul Razak Dawood
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Why Muhammad Raza Saeed keeps his holdco in Pakistan
with Muhammad Raza Saeed
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Pakistan's schools are built to give grades, not education
with Bilal Hameed & Asad Hashamali
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The man who built Pakistan's tourism startup through COVID
with Muhammad Komail Abbas
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Why Pakistan's fintechs are failing the masses
with Atyab Tahir
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The industrialist betting on South Punjab's future
with Anees Khawaja
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Pakistan's first female-founded VC fund on what's broken
with Kalsoom Lakhani and Misbah Naqvi
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Why skill always comes before money in digital marketing
with Ali Khan Swati
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The engineer who wrote to Pakistan's president about stents
with Prof. Dr. Murtaza Najabat Ali
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The man trying to fix Pakistan's broken food supply chain
with Rafael Llerena
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The AI engineer quietly building Pakistan's food future
with Atique Ur Rehman
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Why Karachi's housing crisis is a governance problem
with Humza Yaqoob Tabani
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The American who saw Pakistan before the VCs did
with Brandon Temensky
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Going from 700 employees to 7,000: Umar Javed's plan
with Umar Javed
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The Ericsson CEO who still lives in his village
with Amir Aasan Khan
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Food Panda's bet on Pakistan as its biggest market
with Muntaqa Peracha & Waqas Asar
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The doctor you couldn't find in three days
with Ehsan Imam & Asma Salman Omar
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The trucker's son who raised $17.5M to fix freight
with Muhammad Sarmad Farooq
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The VC who writes the first check in Pakistan
with Shehryar Hydri
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The 21-year-old fixing Pakistan's traffic lights with AI
with Muhammad Ahmad
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The ed-tech founder who started in a slum at 19
with Haroon Yasin
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Three bankruptcies before building a million-member community
with Sunny Ali
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The surgery that could end Muzamil's career
with Syed Muzamil Hasan Zaidi
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Pakistan is missing crypto's biggest opportunity
with Haseeb Awan
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Pakistan is a carbon gold mine. Here's the plan.
with Talha Khan & Hassan Anwar
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Pakistan's first premium pet food brand, made in Karachi
with Rafae Dossal
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The BNPL startup targeting Pakistan's unbanked majority
with Arif Lakhani
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1:01:54 The man who built Pakistan's startup incubator from scratch
with Parvez Abbasi
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1:17:06 Can consuming less tea solve Pakistan's forex crisis?
with Fahad Yousaf
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1:31:46 Pakistan's fintech gap: one in twenty unbanked people
with M. Mudassar Aqil
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1:46:14 How FAST-NUCES built a university on 10 crore rupees
with Dr. Aftab Maroof
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1:13:40 Pakistan's farms are top 10 in output, bottom 50 in yield
with Muhammed Bukhari
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1:22:10 Pakistan's first Google Developer Expert on building things
with Saad Hamid
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1:14:27 Jazz's CEO on why 4G for all beats 5G for a few
with Aamir Ibrahim
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1:02:43 Why Haseeb Khan quit fashion photography for a product brand
with Haseeb S Khan
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2:28:23 Why Krave Mart won't lay off anyone for 18 months
with Haziq Ahmed
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1:13:15 The 19-year-old who self-funded a Spider-Man film in Pakistan
with Saboor Akram
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1:50:05 The EdTech founder who left Nestle for a scholarship
with Muhammad Fahad Tanveer
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1:08:12 The designer who deleted Pinterest to find originality
with Areeb Tariq
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1:30:45 The FAST grad who nearly died and found the spirit world
with Syed Muneeb Hasan Zaidi
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1:19:27 The man building Pakistan's electric mobility revolution
with Mohammad Hadi
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52:36 Why Pakistan's BPO industry never scaled like India's
with Salman Wajid Mian
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1:04:02 The Pakistani gamer who turned down scholarships for PUBG
with Khan PUBG (Temour Ali Khan)
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1:44:42 Pakistan's cash economy and the fintech fixing it
with Omar Moeen Malik, Omar Aftab, Huzaifa Ahmed
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2:07:44 The ed-tech founder who started in a LUMS dorm room
with Ammar Ali Ayub
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1:34:06 Why Tabish Hashmi quit TBH to go to Geo News
with Tabish Hashmi
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58:38 The coworking space that started with a sublet
with Saad Riaz
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1:05:44 The startup trying to plan your wedding in three minutes
with Izzah Zaman and Neelam Shreyas
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1:34:50 The founder who built a company from a cold Upwork message
with Umair Majeed Rana
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1:08:53 The food YouTuber who started with a phone and no camera
with Rana Hamza Saif
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1:18:40 PakWheels wasn't revenue positive until 2022
with Suneel Sarfraz Munj
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1:22:01 The COO who took a 85% pay cut to join Careem
with Fatima Mazhar
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1:10:25 Why Meenah Tariq raised exactly $900,000 — not more
with Meenah Tariq
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1:23:24 The digital road to property ownership in Pakistan
with Jawad Nayyar & Abdullah Khan
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1:02:47 Pakistan's first payment gateway wants to kill COD
with Adnan Ali
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1:44:24 Pakistan's first IT stock listing isn't really an IPO
with Ali Naqi Shaheen
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1:02:58 The Pakistani startup designing EVs from scratch
with Shah Talha & Syed Najeebullah
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1:24:25 The CEO who took a demotion to join Unilever
with Amir R. Paracha
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1:17:10 Why an ex-Morgan Stanley PM left New York to build Abhi in Karachi
with Omair Ansari
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1:54:08 Why Pakistan's freelancers will be dead in three years if they don't transform
with Syed Arsalan Ali Shah
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1:03:32 Pakistan has 1,200 publishers for 200 million people
with Syed Umar Ameer
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53:13 Success without fulfilment is the ultimate failure
with Fahad Khan
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1:07:39 Luck favours the brave: how Shayan Mahmud built three companies
with Shayan Mahmud
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1:04:17 How Bookme quietly digitised Pakistan's bus market
with Faizan Aslam
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1:01:16 Pakistan's insurance penetration is less than 1% of GDP
with Siftain Jiwani and Hunain Kabaria
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1:26:40 Talha Ahad on building Asia's first video-only newsroom
with Talha Ahad
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1:29:52 Why Retailo is betting on Maksud bhai instead of dark stores
with Naukhez Sarwar
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1:09:08 Pakistan is the largest underserved retail market in the world
with Kamran Shaukat
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59:09 How to own a piece of an F-6 plot for one lakh rupees
with Asif and Altamash
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1:06:40 Why Monis Rahman won't charge sellers on Dukan
with Monis Rahman
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1:08:23 Why Pakistan's startup boom is a watershed, not a victory lap
with Zohaib Ali
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1:15:05 The mobile phone that ended a PMA career and started Bedaar
with Ijlal Khattak
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1:32:07 Why Finja lends to the kiryana store the banks won't touch
with Umer Munawar and Zain Bhatti
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1:05:00 Pakistan's kiryana dukan is the real disruption opportunity
with Saif Ali
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48:48 Why Pakistan builds boring buildings and how Danyal Shiekh wants to fix it
with Danyal Shiekh
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55:38 The American who moved to Pakistan to build a unicorn
with Jordan Olivas
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45:23 Pakistan's hologram industry is eight months of demos and no takers
with Oztech (Zabarthus & Yavar Khan)
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1:28:05 How Bilal Munir built VideoWaliSarkar from scratch
with Bilal Munir
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46:29 Naba Khalid on switching to architecture in week one, building a wedding-photography business by 22, and what the people about to inherit Pakistan actually think
with Naba Khalid
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