IT sector of Pakistan was brought in front of the world when ten fastest growing IT companies  (among 25 companies from Pakistan) broke AllWorld records for high growth challenging eight countries in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

Around 100 companies competed for a spot on the Pakistan 25.  Only the fastest growing private companies made the list.  All the twenty-five companies are credentialed by AllWorld based on strenuous international standards.  Of the 30 companies that made the Pakistan 25, Lahore had the most number with 12 winners and Karachi came in a close second with 10 winners.

Amongst the top 25, the top 10 were IT companies. Who are not only growing rapidly but are also contributing towards employment opportunities for the masses.
The Pakistan Fast Growth 25 is a program of the AllWorld Network in partnership with Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter and was launched in collaboration with JS Bank Limited.  Joining the Pakistan 25 were Nominating Partners P@SHA,FPCCI, Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce & Industry, TiE, and Knowledge Partner Mishal (Pvt.) Ltd.

The Pakistan Fast Growth 25 is a program of the AllWorld Network in partnership with Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter and was launched in collaboration with JS Bank Limited.  Joining the Pakistan 25 were Nominating Partners P@SHA,FPCCI, Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce & Industry, TiE, and Knowledge Partner Mishal (Pvt.) Ltd.

The Pakistan Fast Growth 25 companies have grown an average of 81% a year for the past three years.  They paint Pakistan in a new light, suggesting that Pakistan is a strong country for entrepreneurship, said the Press Release.

Leading the Pakistan 25 growth rankings are companies in High-Tech and Telecommunications, and Agriculture and Textiles.  Many of these rising Pakistan 25 companies are not just serving local markets, but are competing on a global scale .

Joining the Pakistan 25 were Nominating Partners P@SHA,FPCCI, Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce & Industry, TiE, and Knowledge Partner Mishal (Pvt.) Ltd. You can view the lists on the following links

Pakistan 25 Ranked List

Pak25 Complete Winners List

The  top Ten Brilliant IT Companies are as follows

Arpatech

The uphill struggle and ardor of the employees at Arpatech was rewarded when it was ranked 3rd among the top 25 fastest growing companies of Pakistan.Arpatech is a leading global technology company that provides software development, back office operations, customer support/contact centers, and network/security systems support for some of the largest companies in the world.

Jamal Khan, CEO Arpatech, said that his strategy was to develop a small number of anchor relationships and grow with those firms.

“I am an optimist, about Pakistan’s potential and its people. Pakistan is a compelling market with a tremendous resource pool of talented engineers and entrepreneurs. Arpatech develops innovative solutions for complex problems, and they do this by aligning themselves closely with their clients. Arpatech seeks to grow by focusing on incubating ideas and taking those to market. They are also looking at setting up a second office in Malaysia or the Middle East.”TradeKey

At Number 5 was TradeKey.com which is the world’s fastest growing online trading platform. It connects over 4.9 million importers, exporters and traders in more than 240 countries including USA, UK, China, Germany, France, India, Pakistan and the Middle East. Aiming to make “doing business easier”, TradeKey.com was founded in 2005 and within a short span of just over 4 years. It is now ranked among the top 5 online B2B marketplaces of the world.

Junaid Mansoor, the CEO of TradeKey says that his vision for the next 5 years is to make TradeKey a name that would be trustworthy and well known to Worldwide SMEs and will become a core part of their business process. TradeKey will reach out to 20,000 different cities of the World by forming partnerships with local entrepreneurs, and provide a kick-start environment to nurture entrepreneurship.

Sofizar

Sofizar stands at number 6, a B2C Internet Marketing company with development and operations based out of Lahore. Sofizar is aggressively pursuing a very rapid growth path with its experienced management, excellent team and a great track record since its inception in April, 2004. While Sofizar has worked with premier clients such as government agencies and large multinationals, for exporting its technologies, their focus has been marketing directly to consumers. After clocking high growth rates over the past 3 years, Sofizar has annual sales of over $20 Million in 2009 through its Live Events Vertical Search Engine as well as its Events Tickets Business. Sofizar continues to be profitable by maintaining healthy margins as well as by rapidly growing its top line revenues.

Zafar Khan, CEO of Sofizar, said ‘our vision is that Sofizar will be the global leader in Search Engine based E-commerce and Lead Generation. They intend to be Pakistan’s first internet marketing billion dollar capitalization company.

Nayatel

NayaTel (Pvt) Ltd. (NTL) is a sister concern of Micronet Broadband (Pvt) Ltd. (MBL), www.dsl.net.pk the premier and leading DSL broadband service provider in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. It was founded in 2004 and has grown to have over 500 employees.

Covering over 90% areas of Islamabad and business areas of Rawalpindi Cantonment, Nayatel’s network offers ultra broadband Internet, modern telephony and digital video services to business and home users centers. This state of the art fiber wiring serves 6,000 home and company users, and is key to providing the country’s capital city with a robust telecom infrastructure.

“Nayatel looks forward to supporting many IT entrepreneurs, expanding our services to other cities, and providing the country with a robust and reliable telecom infrastructure.” said Mr. Wahaj us Siraj, co-founder Nayatel.I2c Inc.

i2c Inc.

i2c Inc. is an experienced and trusted payments solution provider that helps card issuers and program managers deliver profitable prepaid programs.

Mr. Amir Wain, CEO of I2c Inc. states his vision: We have built a very scalable application and service delivery infrastructure to service a high growth market. We are growing very quickly and are well positioned to be a global leader in the Payments industry.Abacus Consulting

Abacus Consulting

For over 22 years Abacus Consulting has been offering cutting-edge business solutions helping organizations to transform their visions into realities through a combination of latest business methodologies and technological tools.

Abacus Consulting is one of the largest Professional Services firms in the region with over 2000 employees and offices in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Dubai.Mr. Asad Ali Khan, CEO of Abacus Consulting said, “the company’s vision is to be the transformation partner of choice for companies determined to succeed in the rapidly changing world.

Folio 3

Folio3 is focused on helping entrepreneurs and small enterprises successfully build and manage an offshore software development presence.

Folio has incubated offshore teams for a number of their customers, who have executed on a number of successful development, testing, support and marketing projects. They have also worked with larger clients, including Fortune 500 companies, to successfully implement project based work.

Adnan Lawai, CEO of Folio 3 would like Folio3 to be a globally recognizable name in Outsourced Software Product Development, and be the leading technology company in Pakistan.

Corvit Networks

Founded in year 2000 as a supplier of networking products, services, trained human resource and training, Corvit has rapidly evolved into a trusted business technology advisor and strategic partner with solutions spanning the entire spectrum of Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

Corvit has achieved the highest partnership levels with industry leading global technology vendors and is known for its ability to integrate end-to-end solutions and tailored services to meet the unique requirements of their operations. Corvit delivers distinctive and innovative yet practical solutions.

CEO of Corvit Kashif Haq aims to increase his company’s revenue from the International business to around 30% with regional offices in Saudi Arabia and Dubai.

Multilynx

Multilynx is a Systems and networking solution providing company that came into existence in 1996 as a result of the partnership between Mr. Nuaman Mazhar and Mr. Hamid Chaudhry.

In a time span of 14 years, Multilynx is recognized as an icon in Pakistani IT Sector. Their strategic move to become a solution integrator from a hardware vendor lent to its success today.

They are keen on understanding the customer’s business demands and offer products and services in sophisticated and advanced IT domains like Mission- Critical Data Centers, ERP and CRM Application Integration, Enterprise Information Portals, Messaging and Collaboration Applications, IT Infrastructure deployment, maintenance and management.

Rozee.pk and GCS Pvt Ltd were highlighted as Companies to Watch.

The fastest growing IT sector of Pakistan has many companies competing and struggling to reach the top tens. Let’s wait and watch which companies rank the highest in the coming years

A couple of days back, we decided to go back i n time with the help of Way Back Machine and bring in front of you the most famous websites looked during their initial days. So here we go again on a trip to Pakistan’s most important and most visited Websites. This is how they appeared

The most visited website MOBILINKGSM in 2002, looked like this,

P@SHA’S Website in 2000

Website of State Bank of Pakistan in 2000,

The Bank of Punjab in 2004 had an entirely different look,

Back in 2001 flights, PIA, were booked and checked in an entirely different way,

Dailytimes has made many improvements since the past few years as a newspaper, but its website never had a chance of growing further. In 2002 it looked like this,

Lever Brothers (Pakistan) Ltd decided to remain the way they were. With no changes whatsoever ever in appearance their website, in 2003 looked exactly the same as it does today,

Meet Systems Limited in 2002,

]]> http://www.codeweek.pk/2009/09/homepage-time-machine-part-2/feed/ 0 http://www.codeweek.pk/2009/09/psha-ict-awards-nominate-your-product-now/ http://www.codeweek.pk/2009/09/psha-ict-awards-nominate-your-product-now/#comments Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:47:43 +0000 Admin http://www.codeweek.pk/?p=849

Contributed by Rafaeel Akbar Chaudhry

The P@SHA ICT Awards is the flagship event of Pakistan Software House Association (P@SHA) that highlights innovation being done by the IT industry in Pakistan.

The P@SHA ICT Awards, which are now in their 6th year, aim to provide recognition to software and service applications that have been developed in Pakistan, by providing companies an opportunity to gain local, regional and international exposure through on-going promotional activities. Hence, it is meant to acknowledge creativity, innovation and excellence in the Pakistan Information and Communication Technologies sector.

Objectives

The objective of the P@SHA ICT Awards is to provide recognition to software and service applications that have been developed in Pakistan. It is meant to acknowledge creativity, innovation and excellence in the Pakistan Information and Communication Technologies sector. This annual Awards program also provides an opportunity and an ideal environment for companies to gain local, regional and international exposure through on-going promotional activities, and through participation at the international Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA).

Benefits of the Awards Program:

• Stimulate innovation and creativity.
• Provide recognition and a platform for the benchmarking of innovations in the industry.
• Create an opportunity for the top winning companies to represent Pakistan at the Asia Pacific awards.
• Provide participants with networking opportunities so that strategic business alliances can be formed.
• Winners to be brought to the notice of venture capitalists and investors.
• Create a larger pool of knowledge workers that is essential for the development of the ICT industry.
• Increase the general awareness of the development in the ICT industry.

The top winners of the P@SHA ICT Awards (only product categories) will be nominated for representation at the annual Asia Pacific Awards. Last year, out of 145 products that were showcased at APICTA from the Asia Pacific region, three out of the 16 winners were from Pakistan. It was a truly glorious moment for the Pakistani IT Industry.

Nominations for 2009 Awards are open now. Do go ahead and nominate your product in any one of the categories. There are also a few service categories that companies can nominate themselves for – these include Best in Operational Excellence, Best in Service Innovation, Best in System Integration and Best in Brand Development. Deadline for entries is September 24, 2009.

The event would be held on October 14, 2009 at Hotel Sheraton, Karachi, Pakistan. For more details, you can check out http://pashaictawards.org

About the Author:

Rafaeel Akbar Chaudhry is a telecom engineer by degree. He’s a serial entrepreneur, a social media analyst, a pastime blogger and an IT consultant. He’s also currently chairing the Lahore chapter of IEEE Graduates of the Last Decade (GOLD) and has won IEEE Region 10 Leadership Award during his student life.