Building Pakistan with Benje Williams

For our final episode of this season, we have an extremely special interview with Mr. Faisal Edhi and Ms. Bllquis Edhi of the Edhi Foundation.

Of course, this is one organization that needs no introduction, founded by Pakistan’s most beloved humanitarianist, social entrepreneur, and role model, Mr. Abdul Sattar Edhi, who dedicated his entire 88 year life towards the development of this country.

He started with just two paisas that his mother would give him each day, and from this small beginning, eventually opened a 24-hour dispensary in Mithadar, Karachi, where he would sleep on the bench in order to serve patients. Eventually he saved enough to purchase an ambulance, one of only 2 or 3 in the entire province, and drove through out all of Sindh responding to emergency calls.

From there, he kept working and over 60+ years developed the largest NGO in Pakistan, with nearly 2,000 ambulances, 350 fully serviced health centers, over 3,000 employees, nearly 50,000 midwives or nurses trained, and becoming a compass to hundreds of millions just through the way he lived his life.

And although he passed away in the holy month of Ramadan in 2016, his vision and work lives on, specifically through the leadership of his son Mr. Faisal Edhi, and his wife and partner, Ms. Bilquise Edhi.

Ms. Bilquise, of course, has been supporting him since the very early days, not only working alongside of him day in and day out, but also bringing a light in a world that Edhi sb said was often full of darkness.

And together they raised their family, including Mr. Faisal Edhi, who learned alongside Edhi sb as a child, worked along side him after finishing his higher studies, and with Ms. Bilquise has helped succeed the Foundation after Edhi sb’s passing.

Although it’s a bit long longer than usual, we wanted to share as much richness from this conversation as possible.

Together, Ms. Bilquise and Mr. Faisal Edhi share Edhi sb’s belief that the only way to change society is through our work, they share his hope that bad things happen quickly but eventually fade away while change comes slowly but lasts for a long time, and they share his conviction that we each have a role and responsibility to play in bringing about the long lasting change that the world so desperately needs.

*Building Pakistan is brought to you by the team at Amal Academy (amalacademy.org), with support from +Acumen (plusacumen.org) as our distribution partner. Illustrations and production editing are by Awais Farooq (Amal Academy). Music is provided by Danny Roberts (dannyroberts.com), Lydia Cole and Ryan Baxley.

Mr. Hussain Dawood is the Chairman of Dawood Hercules, a holding company that has ownership of institutions such as Hub Power, one of Pakistan’s largest independent power producers, and Engro Corporation, which is one of the largest fertilizer manufacturers and the parent company of Engro Foods, which it sold a 51% stake to a Dutch company last year for over $450 million dollars, closing one of the largest foreign investments in Pakistan to date.

Mr. Dawood is also Chairman of both Hub Power and Engro Corporation, and is the cofounder and Chairman of the Karachi School of Business & Leadership, which he launched in 2012 through a strategic partnership with the University of Cambridge.

He’s involved in too many other things to mention, but one thing fascinating about his journey is how he started as an intrapreneur for almost 30 years within his family business, learning critical lessons and developing his entrepreneurial skillset and mindset until the opportunity presented itself to venture into the world of entrepreneurship.

His journey of 74 years so far contains so much richness and insight and we were thrilled to explore a few of these in this conversation.

*Building Pakistan is brought to you by the team at Amal Academy (amalacademy.org), with support from +Acumen (plusacumen.org) as our distribution partner. Illustrations and production editing are by Awais Farooq (Amal Academy). Music is provided by Danny Roberts (dannyroberts.com), Lydia Cole and Ryan Baxley.

Ms. Sultana Siddiqui is the Founder and President of HUM Network and Moomal Productions.

She started HUM in 2004 with a 24-hour entertainment channel, HUM TV and has grown it into one of Pakistan’s fastest-growing entertainment companies, adding channels like HUM Masala, HUM Sitaray, eventually HUM Films, several magazine productions, and are now working to launch HUM News.

In 2016 alone they brought in over $34 million in revenue, and are one of the only entertainment companies publicly listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange.

Her career is fascinating for many reasons, and of them is how she has found a way to marry her artistic and creative passions with her entrepreneurial skill. She initially started as a producer for PTV in 1974 and eventually realized a need and opportunity to create quality content or shows for the channel. So she launched Moomal Productions, where she produces and often directs award-winning shows like Yeh Zindagi and Doosri Dunya and more recently Zindagi Gulzar Hai

One of the secrets to her success seems to be a skill of both identifying and then bringing out the best in people, and she used this to introduce some of the country’s most talented actors, such as Mahira Khan, Fawad Khan, and Kubra Khan.

What’s fascinating is how she has done all of this this initially as a single parent, how she has used her platform to help stir the conscience and actions of a nation through the messages in her shows, and how she has become a shining role model for women and men, kids and adults, entrepreneurs and artists, and so much more.

*Building Pakistan is brought to you by the team at Amal Academy (amalacademy.org), with support from +Acumen (plusacumen.org) as our distribution partner. Illustrations and production editing are by Awais Farooq (Amal Academy). Music is provided by Danny Roberts (dannyroberts.com), Lydia Cole and Ryan Baxley.

The New York Times has called Mr. Syed Babar Ali not just an institution builder in Pakistan, but an institution himself: helping to build industry when the nation was just born by starting some of the country’s first and most successful companies.

Some of those institutions include the first and now largest packaging company, Packages Limited, one of the first milk processing companies, Milk Pak Limited, which later became Nestle Pakistan, the largest food processing company, and of course, LUMS university, which the NYT has called the Harvard University of Pakistan.

He has also profoundly matured Pakistan’s business ecosystem by bringing in various multinationals through joint venture partnerships, including Tetra Pak Pakistan, Siemens Pakistan, Coca-Cola Pakistan and Sanofi-Aventis Pakistan.

And in addition to all of this, his social work also includes Ali Institute of Education, Naqsh School of Arts, Ali Institute of Technical Education, and Sydenwala Schools. He is also one of our investors and advisors at Amal, and supports various other education institutions like Aitchison College, Kinnaird College and Lahore School of Economics.

We couldn’t be more grateful for the unspeakable work he has done to build this country and it’s people, for his never ending curiosity to learn from others and to believe in their journey, and for the example that he’s set for each of us on what it means to live a life of purpose.

*Building Pakistan is brought to you by the team at Amal Academy (amalacademy.org), with support from +Acumen (plusacumen.org) as our distribution partner. Illustrations and production editing are by Awais Farooq (Amal Academy). Music is provided by Danny Roberts (dannyroberts.com), Lydia Cole and Ryan Baxley.

Ms. Seema Aziz is the Cofounder and Managing Director of SEFAM, where she took one small fashion retail shop she started in Shadman Market Lahore in 1985, and built it into of Pakistan’s largest fashion retailers with over 450 outlets throughout 3 different regions of the world and currently 12 different brands, including Bareeze, Leisure Club, Chinyere, Working Woman, Minnie Minors and 7 others.

She has done this while also starting and growing CARE Foundation into one of Pakistan’s largest education NGOs, blossoming from one school that she planted in 1991 to over 860 schools that they are operating through out the country today.

She’s a true serial entrepreneur who has done an unbelievable amount for this country, despite all the odds and the skepticism and the discouragement and the challenges and the frustrations. And she is still plugging away, meeting each day with a relentless work ethic and faith, facing road blocks with her beloved smile her and infectious energy, and continuing the journey with a never take no perseverance, and there’s really so much to love, admire and learn from her.

*Building Pakistan is brought to you by the team at Amal Academy (amalacademy.org), with support from +Acumen (plusacumen.org) as our distribution partner. Illustrations and production editing are by Awais Farooq (Amal Academy). Music is provided by Danny Roberts (dannyroberts.com), Lydia Cole and Ryan Baxley.

Mr. Salim Ghauri is Founder and CEO of NetSol Limited, one of the first and now largest software houses in Pakistan.

What's incredible about Salim Saab and NetSol is not only that they have helped catalyze an entire industry in Pakistan, but the way in which they've done it: through both strategic insight and perhaps providential circumstance, they built an invaluable product when most emerging tech companies in Pakistan were just focused on services.

The product was initially a financial tool they built for Mercedes Benz to provide better financing to their car buyers, but somehow NetSol was able to maintain the rights for this product and now sells it at over $20 Million USD per license.

NetSol was also one of the first Pakistani companies to go public on Nasdaq, and then weathered the dot com crash, managing to not only survive but eventually thrive into 1,800+ employees, $100M projects and a pretty amazing story that we dig into with Salim sb.

*Building Pakistan is brought to you by the team at Amal Academy (amalacademy.org), with support from +Acumen (plusacumen.org) as our distribution partner. Illustrations and production editing are by Awais Farooq (Amal Academy). Music is provided by Danny Roberts (dannyroberts.com), Lydia Cole and Ryan Baxley.

Ms. Nasreen Kasuri is the Founder and Chairperson of Beaconhouse School System, and formerly served as CEO for almost 30 years.

She has built Beaconhouse into one of the largest private schools systems in the world, and in this podcast, we will discuss her evolution as a lifelong learner over Beaconhouse's 42-year history: from the initial days as just a project and in her role as a parent just trying to give her own kids a good education, to her transition as an entrepreneur burden with conviction and opportunity, to her evolution as a CEO building Beaconhouse into the institution that it is today, and finally into her role now as Chairperson.

(And of course, all along the way being a spouse, being a parent, being a friend, being so many things to so many people).

It’s an incredible story of how she has managed to do it all – and still does so much – and there is a tremendous amount from which we can learn.

*Building Pakistan is brought to you by the team at Amal Academy (amalacademy.org), with support from +Acumen (plusacumen.org) as our distribution partner. Illustrations and production editing are by Awais Farooq (Amal Academy). Music is provided by Danny Roberts (dannyroberts.com), Lydia Cole and Ryan Baxley.

Dr. Amjad Saqib is the Founder and CEO of Akhuwat, Pakistan’s largest Islamic microfinance institution. It is also one of the few social enterprises that has managed to cross the chasm and reach incredible scale, becoming a north star for so many entrepreneurs in the social sector.

Their team of 5,500 employees has reached over 2.5 million households across their 700 branches in just 16 years, and today we will dig into how they have managed to do this. We’ll also talk about phase 2 of Akhuwat, which is the exciting work they are doing in education through Akhuwat University, Akhuwat College, over 250 schools that they’ve adopted, and a lot more.

Dr. Saqib is aslo not a typical entrepreneur, in that his background is as a civil servant officer, and so we’ll also get to understand more about what makes Dr. Amjad Saqib Dr. Amjad Saqib: some of his spiritual beliefs, practices and rituals, and the inspiration behind his work and his journey.

*Building Pakistan is brought to you by the team at Amal Academy (amalacademy.org), with support from +Acumen (plusacumen.org) as our distribution partner. Illustrations and production editing are by Awais Farooq (Amal Academy). Music is provided by Danny Roberts (dannyroberts.com), Lydia Cole and Ryan Baxley.