The year 2021 is turning out to be a banner year for Pakistani tech startups. At the end of the third quarter of the current year, technology startups have already raised $278 million, twice the funding raised in the previous 5 years combined. In per capita terms, this is still just over $1 per person, a lot less compared to neighboring India where startups attracted …

Pakistan's technology sector is in the midst of an unprecedented boom. It is being fueled by the country's growing human capital and rising investments in technology startups. A recent tweet by Swedish fund manager Mattias Martinsson captured it well when he wrote, "Have followed Pakistan for 15 years. Can't recall any time time when VC activity was anywhere near we've seen in the last few months.…

Pakistan's digital transformation is in full swing. Over three-quarters of Pakistanis living in the top three metros of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad are connected to the Internet, according to a report titled "Journey to Digital" produced by global tech giant Google and Kantara consultants. Researchers found that two-thirds of urban and nearly half of rural Pakistanis regularly use the Internet in…

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded one hundred years ago on July 1, 1921. The party has transformed China from a poor and backward third world country into a vibrant and prosperous industrialized economy. This rapid historic transformation has surprised everyone, including China's friends, but especially its western foes who now see the emergence of the Asian giant as a challenge to centuries-long western domination of the world. It has also earned the CCP high levels of…

Pakistan's technology exports are continuing to soar amid the Covid19 pandemic. Tech exports jumped 43% in December, 2020 and 40% in July-December 2020 period over the same period in 2019. This is a rapid acceleration from 21% increase in all of Fiscal Year 2020 (July-June 2020) over FY 2019. Tech exports (up 40%) far outpaced overall exports (up 5.1%) in this period. 

The modest 5.1% increase in Pakistan's overall exports is still commendable in the midst of the global economic…

Pakistani-German Sajjad Khan is leading German luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz's entry into the electric vehicle market with six new all-electric “EQ” models, according to media reports.  Sajjad Khan was born in Karachi and graduated from NED Engineering University with a degree in…

The COVID19 pandemic has been the biggest story in Pakistan and the rest of the world. It has complicated Pakistan's economic recovery as did the ever-present threat of political instability posed by the opposition parties trying to take advantage of the crisis. Gallup Poll data shows that 65% of Pakistanis are happy despite hardships of the coronavirus pandemic. On the external front, Pakistan faced India's massive global disinformation campaign against it. The year 2020 was a tough year…

Pakistan's technology export growth is continuing to accelerate with a 51% jump in November 2020 over the same month in 2019. The country's tech exports rose 39% in the first 5 months (July-Nov) of fiscal year 2021 over the same period last year. This came on top of a 21% increase in FY 2020 over FY 2019. …

CRISPR CAS9 is the latest revolutionary gene editing technology to take the world by a storm. Pakistan is among a select group of nations where scientists are publishing their work on CRISPR in international journals. In fact, Brazil, China, India, Iran and Pakistan are the only developing nations listed among the countries where scientists published CRISPR research in 2018. The rest of the list is made up of highly developed countries of North America, Europe and East Asia. A…

Five Pakistani-American information technologists have quietly been awarded $850,000, the largest ever award by US Congress, to settle discrimination and wrongful termination claims, according to the New York Times. Awan's accusers included President Donald Trump and the right-wing US media.  Recipients…

Pakistan’s IT exports increased by 44% during the first quarter (July, August and September) of the fiscal year 2020-21, according to a tweet by Razzak Dawood, Special Assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan. Pharmaceutical exports saw 22.6% increase in the same period over last year.  Pakistan's information technology and …

Pakistan's digital gig economy has surged 69% during the COVID19 pandemic, putting the country among the world's top 4 hottest online freelancer markets, reports  Payoneer, a global payments platform company based in Silicon Valley, in its latest report. Payoneer attributes it to government…

Pakistani-American serial entrepreneur and NED alumnus Dr. Safwan Shah has raised $100 million in Series C funding for his financial technology (fintech) startup PayActiv Inc. based in Silicon Valley, California. The round was led by Eldridge Wealth Ltd, a venture capital firm headquartered in…

Is US-China technology war heating with Huawei ban? Is it part of the larger geopolitical landscape pitting the US as the established superpower against China as the new rising power? Is the fight over Huawei 5G merely a symptom of it? How will it affect global…

Intel has recently fired its Indian-American chief engineer Venkata Murthy Renduchintala, who also served as Group President of the Technology, Systems Architecture and Client Group (TSCG), for failure to deliver 7 nanometer semiconductor technology on schedule, according to Reuters. …

Pakistan's computer services exports soared 26% in March, 2020 over the same month last year. This growth occurred in spite of the coronavirus lockdown that began on March 23, 2020. The nation's total services exports fell 17% in the same month.…

Securiti.ai has been named "Most Innovative Startup" at RSA Conference in San Francisco, according to media reports. It has been founded by Rehan Jalil, a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur of Pakistani origin who graduated from NED University located in Karachi. Jalil's startup is taking advantage of the growing global data privacy…

Hundreds of Pakistanis and Pakistani-Americans attended Pakistan Tech Summit 2020 at Draper University in San Mateo, California on February 15, 2020. It was organized by Arzish Azam of Ejad Labs with sponsorships from JS Bank, Netsol, VisionX, Pakistan IT ministry, Pakistan National IT Board and Pakistan Software Exports Board. This event came after a recent report in Germany's Deutsche…

About 200 Pakistani-American and other American investors met at Invest in Pakistan Summit in Silicon Valley on October 3, 2019 at San Jose Sheraton. It was hosted by the Pakistan Embassy in Washington DC. One of the sessions I found interesting dealt with the opportunities presented to Pakistan by US-China technology war sparked by US…

With 6,000 Pakistanis working on their PhDs in China, the two countries are enjoying rapid growth in scientific and technological collaboration, according to Journal Nature. Pakistan's scientific output is now growing at the fastest rate in the world. With nearly 3,000 papers jointly…