As someone who has lived and grown up in England through the development of the internet, it’s been a fascinating time. I’ve seen the internet and home computing essentially go from being something a select few had basic access to to something that is now present in 84% of households within the country.
The internet has changed the way we live. Whether you actively use it or not, that’s the reality of it. It’s been life changing.
It’s therefore more than a little intriguing for me to see the development of the internet and home computing in Pakistan. In many ways, it’s like reliving the past 20 years all over again.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel
At the turn of the millennium, for example, just 1.3% of the Pakistani population had internet access. By 2004 this had grown to 6.2% and as of 2013, it stood at 10.9%.
Although still a small percentage in comparison to the UK’s, what you do have to consider is the population size – 84% of the UK population is around 54 million people, but just 10% of the Pakistani population is over 18 million people. That’s roughly a third of the UK’s internet users.
With the technology sector being one of the fastest growing within the country, there are an abundance of opportunities for entrepreneurs – and what’s even more fascinating is that many of these opportunities have already happened in the past elsewhere, meaning a little bit of replication could be all that’s needed to see success.
Take grocery delivery as an example. There’s a great read on TechInAsia.com about how the online grocery market in Pakistan is simply waiting to be capitlalised on. The piece does openly state there are some obstacles that would need to be overcome in terms of consumer habits primarily, but it also highlights some aspects that surely make it a clear route to success – one hour waits at supermarket checkouts, for example.
A thriving industry in the UK and many other parts of the world, the blueprint for online grocery shopping success is already laid out in a variety of different styles, and in many ways, it will simply take some entrepreneurial flair, vision and investment to benefit from this ‘ready-to-go’ industry.
And this is just one example, albeit a very real one that is waiting to be acted upon. There are many, many more – subscription services, such as graze for food snacks or Pact for coffee, for instance.
Give the audience what the want
Look at the former as another scenario. A delivery service that provides snacks on a daily or weekly basis, in just five years graze grew from a seven person startup to a £52 million turnover company employing over 350 staff. There was a clear niche in the market, the company spotted it and capitalised on it perfectly.
Whilst such a company may or may not have a market in Pakistan, it’s not about replicating it directly, but instead looking at how the approach can be used.
Think of the popularity of tea drinking in Pakistan. Consuming approximately 1KG of tea per head, per year, surely there is an audience in the country crying out for quality tea to be delivered directly to them at home or work, each and every week or month?
As has been shown, the subscription service works perfectly – it’s affordable for the consumer and scalable for the company – and it therefore makes it an ideal option for Pakistan’s growing digital audience.
Huge successes, minimal risks
We’ve all heard of the dot com bubble bursting, when the ‘internet economy’ essentially collapsed after a massive boom in the late 1990s. A devastating time for many, it was largely because companies were being invested in that didn’t have sustainable business models. Money was being thrown at companies left, right and centre.
But as the internet was a new resource, nothing had been tried and tested. The money was being invested on “we expect” and “this is likely to happen”, instead of “we know this will take place”.
As such, Pakistan is in a fantastic position whereby such a bubble burst is very unlikely, if not practically impossible, to happen. Whilst the internet may still be a burgeoning resource in Pakistan, it’s been a staple of many people’s lives around the world for two decades, which in reality means for Pakistani entrepreneurs to see success with minimal risk in the country’s growing digital industry, they could do a lot worse than learn by the mistakes of others and mimic what has happened elsewhere already.