Pakistan to host regional IT and Telecom show in November

Lahore's hotels, including the Pearl Continental shown here, will welcome visitors to the IT and Telecom show in November

I just got back from GITEX Dubai a few days ago and still have to share my views on that show with you. I saw plenty of interesting stuff, so I do intend to do a couple of posts on that topic…

But, to tide us over in the meanwhile, here’s some good news about Lahore hosting a regional IT and Telecom show. The event will be held on the 17th and 18th of November and features executive presentations by local and international executives.

Here’s more from TradingMarkets.com:

As muslim countries progress, why do so many in the west react with anger and jealousy?

A futuristic classroom at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. KAUST is becoming a jealousy magnet.

TechCrunch just published a piece about the inauguration of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology(KAUST). This institution is absolutely marvelous by all accounts. Not only does it have a $10BN endowment, one of the largest of any institution in the Islamic world,  it also has state of the art facilities, ranging from the world’s 15th most powerful supercomputer (Shaheen), to a nano tech fabrication lab  and the world’s highest resolution immersive visualization display. And these wonders are just the beginning. A lot more lies in wait for students and researchers. Shaheen, for example, will continue to be upgraded and will climb the world supercomputer rankings rapidly. Last but not least, the campus itself, built on 30 sq km, is beautiful.

So, when TechCrunch sent a correspondent to cover the launch of the University and King Abdullah’s inaugural address, I expected that the event would attract the right sort of attention; folks interested in education, and happy to see progress and development. Unfortunately, the reactions on TechCrunch have been largely ugly, to say the least.

Times Square in Lahore: Hydra of Abu Dhabi teams up with DHA Lahore on $1.4B project

A preliminary design shows Lahore's upcoming Times Square - 17 skyscrapers between 29 and 42 stories tall!

Let the good times roll! The KSE is rocketing north once more, foreign exchange remittances by Pakistanis abroad are hitting all time highs and property deals are happening left, right and center. The Pakistani economy is booming, baby!

I was thrilled to see a recent announcement by the much respected Defence Housing Authority, Lahore, concerning their partnering with the now-famous UAE based property development group, Hydra. They are embarking on a massive undertaking that will contribute positively to Lahore’s rapid development, and to jobs and economic opportunities in the city.

The KSE is making a rapid recovery – what does the future hold?

The Karachi Stock Exchange has outpaced both the rising NASDAQ and the bullish Dow Jones during the past 6 months.

The Karachi Stock Exchange took a beating late last year and early this year, as did most of the other international bourses. Over the last six months, though, it has staged a rally that has exceeded the much talked about bull run on Wall St. While the crisis that the global economy has been in during the past two years has not yet withered away, the increases seen in the last six months on the KSE are definitely food for thought and a welcome topic of conversation. Why has this happened and what does the future hold?

The rally can definitely be ascribed, in small part, to the improvement in international indices. However, only to a very small degree. There isn’t enough co-dependence between the KSE and other bourses for more profound synchronicity. The big reasons, in my opinion, are:

VCs making a comeback?

VC firms are fertile grounds for Jackass watching. But entrepreneur-investors like Andreessen who have actually built a business, are the saving grace that prevents the Wrath of God from obliterating the VC industry.

The Wall Street Journal, reporting on authority of VentureWire, seems to think that VCs might be making a comeback. The entrepreneurial environment, apparently, is improving. This sort of flies in the face of the investment data from Q1 ‘09. But, 42 VCs seem to think so, so all argument ends right there… I mean, it’s not like VCs are ever wrong, what? The key index being used to spread news of this joy is the, “Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index“. The long name notwithstanding, “Venture Captialist” and “Confidence” so close in the same title almost seems to discredit the whole thing… But maybe I’m just biased. After all, I did just recently write two pieces on why Venture Capital may never be the same again. If you haven’t read them yet, you may find them anywhere in the mildly amusing-interesting range.

For the record, I am not anti-VC. In fact, of late, I’ve been pretty enthused about Marc Andreessen – who I consider to be an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur – getting together with Ben Horowitz and organizing his investment practice more formally. What entrepreneurs need is more investors like Marc, who have actually started companies and built worthwhile products with their own hands. That’s valuable experience that no army of non-operational Powerpoint and Excel jockeys can come close to matching.

MySpace India staff getting the axe; China and Japan offices in-tact

Home page is still ok. 41% of the workforce? Not so much.

MySpace has had its share of troubles recently. Unlike Facebook, they don’t seem to believe that it’s OK to raise hundreds of millions of dollars and never make a cent. But what do I know? Clearly, Smart Investors seem to love Facebook’s business model and their $10 Billion valuation. Previously, Even Smarter Investors couldn’t get enough of the $15 Billion valuation and just had to put in a$240 Million to prove their Smartness. I can just hear the lead investor… “We’re actually 350% positive on this one as compared to an equally sized investment in the Moscow Bourse!”

Anyway, MySpace under News Corp is being downright old world. Believing they need to get their costs in line with their revenue and actually buckle down in the recession. Pshaaaw! How non-dot-com can you possibly be? In pursuit of this dated (like steam-punk dated!), albeit common sense strategy, MySpace is cutting back on the fluff… and about 75% of their international staff. This comes on the heels of their earlier announcement about a 30% reduction in their US headcount.

Pakistan jumps 10 places on A.T. Kearney’s list – BusinessWeek recognizes Pakistan as one of the world’s leading IT destinations

The Centaurus rises in Islamabad. A huge, almost $400M infrastructure project that will be completed next year. Rapid construction in progress.

BusinessWeek just published an article about Pakistan’s rapidly rising stature as an international information technology outsourcing destination. The article cites A.T. Kearney’s May 2009 report which places Pakistan at number 20, up 10 places from the 2007 ranking of 30. This is despite all the rhetoric and nonsense in the media that doesn’t deserve much attention here – but Sepoy can introduce you to the “Talibothra” rubbish I’m talking about.

You have to be completely blind and devoid of any intellect to not recognize the progress that has been unfolding with great rapidity in Pakistan. Granted, the positive news and media glorification you would expect if this were happening in, say Brazil, has been found lacking. Quite the contrary, the NY Times, and the fast-failing industry it represents, has still not quite gotten over the decade old obsession with the Church of the Flying Talibothra Monster.

So, humour me for a moment and subtract the malevolent sensationalism from the discussion. What you’re left with is the story of a country whose GDP continues to grow despite the global recession, where infrastructure is being built and expanded at a frantic pace, a country that has seen its stock exchange go up by 30% this year, a country that is significantly increasing development spend and bringing alternate energy projects online, developing new dams, increasing high-technology exports and expanding its universities.

Pakistan’s forex reserves rise to $11.15B, KSE rockets 24% since Dec 31st 2008

Karachi rising!

It was only back on the 30th of January that we covered the foreign exchange reserve position. At the time, the reserves stood at $10.2B and we had projected that this number would continue to rise very rapidly due to import reduction, healthy export performance and other expected inflows. Well, our projection has been borne out to quite some degree. In only 90 days, Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserve position has improved by $1B and it currently stands at $11.15B.

In addition to the progress on the forex reserve front, the Karachi Stock Exchange, Pakistan’s largest stock exchange, has also been staging a healthy recovery from the bearish trend it succumbed to during the second half of 2008. The KSE is up 24% from its Dec 31st close. And this is after a recent technical correction; the KSE actually peaked at 7,902 or a 36% increase over the Dec 31st close.

Venture troubles worsen in Q1 ‘09; investments down by 50%, funds getting smaller

The piggy bank should now be the primary source of funds for most tech entrepreneurs

We recently covered the trials and tribulations of the Venture industry and hypothesized that perhaps it is curtains for the VC industry as we’ve known it over the past few decades. Well, here’s some more on the same. In a new report published by Dow Jones’ VentureSource, new investments are down 50% . In Q4 2008, investments were already down 71% from a year ago.

The number of new IT deals is plummeting. They’ve gone from 370 deals in Q4 to only 231 deals in Q1 2009. Moreover, even though the number of deals is substantially more than half, the amount of funding received by these 231 companies in Q1 is only half of what was invested in Q4. This also means that deal sizes are getting smaller. This gels pretty well with my earlier submission, where I had argued that capital is no longer a very important component for many IT companies.

6,000 Pakistani companies operating in the UAE. Pakistanis have invested 6.7B Dirhams in Dubai real estate.

Emaar UAE's Pakistan subsidiary is building Crescent Bay in Karachi

There is little doubt in the fact that the UAE and Pakistani economies are increasingly inter-twined. On this very blog, we’ve talked about substantial UAE investments in Pakistan, in particular in real-estate, Banking and Telecommunications. And of course, in one of the most important new projects under construction in Pakistan, the $5BN Khalifa Refinery.

This, however, is the flip side of that story. Economic integration comes when you have a symbiotic relationship. And that’s where Pakistan and the UAE are headed. According to statistics published in The News today, Pakistanis have already invested Rs. 190BN in UAE real-estate, and over 6,000 Pakistani companies are now registered and operating in the United Arab Emirates. A few months ago, we alerted you to Netsol’s (a Pakistani software company) listing on the Dubai Stock Exchange. Looks like there will be a lot more of this happening in future!