Inside Pakistan’s Growing Tech Ecosystem

Transcript

• [00:00] Ana: Hi and welcome to Emerging Markets Today. My name is Ana Paula Picasso, and this episode is about Pakistan. We’ll be talking about where the opportunities are, how government support is shaping the market, and which companies have the best shot at scaling globally. To talk about all that, I’m here with Alexander Piskunov, an investor and advisor with experience working on innovation in emerging markets, especially Pakistan. Welcome, Alex.
• [00:36] Alexander: Hi Ana Paula. Great to be here.
• [00:42] Ana: I’m very excited because I’ve never had an episode about Pakistan. I’ve had episodes about India and Bangladesh, which were really interesting because I got to learn more about those markets. So when you said you wanted to talk about Pakistan, I thought, yes, let’s do that. What’s your relationship with Pakistan? How did you come to work there?
• [01:28] Alexander: My relationship with Pakistan started some time ago when I was giving lectures and seminars on the Executive MBA programme at the University of Cambridge, where I used to study. One of my students at the time was a minister working in the innovation sphere in Pakistan.
• [01:50] Alexander: He originally invited me to participate in the National Council for the Development of AI. At the time, I was the only foreigner and the only person with an investment background. Since then, that arrangement has expanded into a number of other projects, including helping them set up investment funds and working on different advisory and innovation programmes across the country.
• [02:22] Ana: I want to start with a brief comparison between Pakistan and India because, like probably many people listening, I’m not very familiar with Pakistan’s tech ecosystem. What makes Pakistan interesting at the moment?
• [02:53] Alexander: First of all, I would be quite careful about treating Pakistan as a smaller version of India. India has a much larger domestic market and a much more established startup funding ecosystem.
• [03:18] Alexander: An Indian company may be able to grow substantially just by selling at home and potentially become a unicorn in its domestic market before it even has to work out how to sell abroad.
• [03:42] Alexander: For a Pakistani company with big ambitions, the international question becomes much more important much earlier because the local market may not support the scale the company needs. The founder therefore has to think about international customers almost from the beginning.
• [04:12] Alexander: A company might have a product that works well in Pakistan, but its first customers in Europe or the US might expect very different payment terms, sales processes or levels of customer support. The founder also has to be very clear about where the company is incorporated and how an overseas investor can actually invest in it.
• [05:08] Ana: Just a quick disclaimer: we’re not giving investment advice. This is purely an educational discussion. So, to recap, India has such a large domestic market that companies can grow considerably without necessarily looking abroad. In Pakistan, if a company wants to reach significant scale, it may have to think internationally much earlier.
• [05:48] Ana: You also mentioned government-backed investment. How does that work in Pakistan, and what can public capital realistically do to help startups attract private investors?
• [06:29] Alexander: I’ve worked quite heavily with different Pakistani ministries on areas such as AI policy, research and development priorities, and helping the population develop better technology skills. Another issue is helping researchers understand how research can actually be turned into businesses.
• [06:57] Alexander: In 2025, Pakistan approved a fairly broad national AI policy. That includes things such as a national fund to support early-stage entrepreneurs, research centres and various training programmes.
• [07:28] Alexander: But with government innovation policy, just because something has been approved doesn’t mean every part of it is already operating. What it does show is what the government wants to achieve.
• [07:55] Alexander: One issue I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about is what happens between an idea and a customer, because there is often a large gap there, especially in emerging markets.
• [08:18] Alexander: Researchers in Pakistan might develop something promising, but they still need access to equipment or data to test it properly. They also need to find out whether anyone outside the university actually has the problem they’re trying to solve, and then learn how to pitch that solution.
• [08:52] Alexander: In Pakistan, where there aren’t as many established private investors, the government still has an important role to play in facilitating that process, including educating entrepreneurs about fundraising and pitching.
• [09:21] Alexander: Part of my own work on the Pakistani National AI Fund involved looking at routes to commercialisation as well as technology skills. You can train more people to become technically skilled, but you also have to ask where they are going to use those skills.
• [09:59] Ana: I like what you said about these not necessarily being first-world problems. With many emerging markets, there’s this common denominator that you have to be resourceful and work with what you have.
• [10:18] Ana: You mentioned AI and technology. I’m very curious about how Pakistani tech is perceived abroad, particularly in the US, where you’re now based.
• [10:39] Alexander: I definitely wouldn’t claim that there is one single perception of Pakistani technology in Europe or the US.
• [10:54] Alexander: From my experience as an investor, there are different groups to consider: investors, corporate buyers and companies looking to hire software teams. Pakistan, like India, is well known for having talented programmers who provide useful services to startups and larger corporations overseas.
• [11:26] Alexander: But a young Pakistani product company asking for a long-term contract or investment can face a different set of questions. Investors start asking practical questions about the business: who owns the company, where the contracts are held, how customers pay, whether it can hire and retain the people it needs, and what happens when it needs its next funding round.
• [12:16] Alexander: A promising conversation can very quickly become a discussion about those practical details. Investors have many opportunities available to them, and sometimes relatively small details can turn what looks like a promising opportunity into a red flag.
• [12:49] Alexander: Founders can sometimes interpret those questions as judgments about themselves, their product or their country. I think that is often a mistake. It’s business.
• [13:09] Alexander: Political or economic headlines may influence somebody’s first reaction, even when they say very little about the individual company. That happens not only with Pakistan but with many emerging markets.
• [13:37] Alexander: If I were advising a Pakistani founder, I wouldn’t recommend spending the whole meeting arguing against that perception. Bring the conversation back to the actual business. Let the investor speak to customers. Show that people are paying for the product and whether they renew.
• [14:33] Ana: My next question is about which companies are most likely to succeed. In Pakistan’s case, we’ve talked about the importance of looking abroad to scale. Which types of companies do you think have the best chance of growing globally?
• [15:21] Alexander: One major industry in Pakistan is software. I would look closely at software businesses that already understand how to work with overseas companies, either because they have partnered with them or sold directly to them.
• [15:53] Alexander: Pakistan’s technology services exporters have spent many years working with international clients. That teaches teams what customers complain about, what jobs still take too long and what customers are actually prepared to pay to fix.
• [16:30] Alexander: I’m particularly interested in founders who can take something they learned during a corporate or services career and turn it into a sustainable software product.
• [17:35] Alexander: The challenge is that product companies have to learn which customer requests to turn down. Otherwise, they can easily end up selling the same customised services under a new name.
• [18:20] Ana: SaaS is already a very saturated market, and now we have the huge AI wave disrupting everything. Pakistan also has initiatives around AI, so how do you see AI in the context of the Pakistani technology sector?
• [18:46] Alexander: Pakistan is still trying to find its niche in the wider technology world, particularly in AI. But not many people, even in places like the US or China, can confidently say exactly where AI is going or which technologies will dominate three or four years from now.
• [19:28] Alexander: When I speak to Pakistani founders who want to build AI companies or integrate AI into existing products, I’m much less interested in pitches saying Pakistan needs to build its own version of every large AI company.
• [19:59] Alexander: I’d rather hear about specific jobs that customers currently find too expensive or too slow, which AI could improve. Maybe a business spends hours reviewing routine documents, or a customer service team struggles to handle requests in several languages.
• [20:31] Alexander: If a Pakistani company can make that process significantly faster or cheaper without introducing endless errors, then you potentially have a good business case. And it’s something the company can demonstrate to a customer anywhere.
• [21:18] Ana: Beyond software and AI, there’s fintech. I write quite a lot about fintech, and I know more about India and financial inclusion. So I’m very curious about Pakistan. What does the fintech scene look like there?
• [21:40] Alexander: Pakistan has a relatively large and rapidly growing population, and purchasing power is increasing. For fintech companies, that creates an interesting environment because many people previously didn’t have access to sophisticated financial products, microfinance or other financial services.
• [22:08] Alexander: So the market is ripe for innovation. In some cases, the regulatory environment is also less restrictive than in places like the US, which can create more opportunities to innovate.
• [22:37] Alexander: Pakistan is also a Muslim-majority country, so it can benefit from trends such as Islamic banking. That potentially allows Pakistani companies to develop products that could also be relevant in the Middle East, Indonesia and other markets.
• [22:52] Ana: So there’s a lot of room for growth around financial inclusion, providing services and credit to people who are unbanked or underbanked, and also potentially to small and medium-sized businesses.
• [23:11] Alexander: Absolutely. Fintech is one of the areas where quite a few Pakistani entrepreneurs are doing interesting work. Of course, from an investor’s point of view, there are still many questions you would want to ask.
• [23:26] Ana: Regulation is always a long conversation as well. That was a really useful overview, Alex. Before we finish, is there anything else you’d like to add? And if people want to reach out to you for advice or a conversation, where can they find you?
• [23:46] Alexander: I’m quite active on LinkedIn, so if people want to reach out for advice or a conversation, I’m happy to hear from them.
• [24:02] Alexander: One thing I would say to Pakistani entrepreneurs, or businesses trying to grow in that region, is that an idea is important, but an idea by itself is worth almost nothing. It’s all about implementation.
• [24:32] Alexander: Think carefully about how you plan to scale your solution, at least until your next fundraising round. In many cases, companies won’t be able to survive purely on grants, and corporate financing is still too restrictive in many emerging markets.
• [24:48] Alexander: Don’t try to chase several verticals at the same time. Get a product that works and sells well to one customer niche first, and then see how you can scale from there.
• [25:02] Ana: Great. Thanks, Alex. That was a really good overview of Pakistan. If you want to reach out to Alex, I’ll share his LinkedIn details in the episode description. And don’t forget to subscribe. Emerging Markets Today is available on all major podcast platforms, and you can also watch the video on Spotify and Substack. Thanks again, Alex. See you next time.
• [25:51] Alexander: Bye-bye. It’s been a pleasure.