Despite the image that has been portrayed worldwide, Pakistan is dearly recognized and admired for its remarkable skills and talent in different sectors. Our unique sense of mind, critical thinking and exceptional enthusiasm and that thrive to make our dreams a success is celebrated greatly across the globe. There exists a great number of example to prove our unmatchable ambition i.e. Zia Yousaf CEO Street line Inc. a global leader in smart city technology he founded $65 million application, then a proud example of Riaz Haq who is the pioneer of the PC and mobile businesses and has held senior management positions in hardware and software development of Intel’s microprocessor product line. He is the founder and president of Pakalumini worldwide and he was recognized as the “person of the year” by PC Magazine for his contribution in 80386 programs. We have Ashar Aziz, founder of cyber security firm “Fire Eye” which stopped advanced cyber-attacks and advanced malware which bypassed traditional defenses.
Sadly though, the contribution made by these remarkable individuals Pakistan still hasn’t made much success as it was expected. If we look into the statistics of the technological industry Pakistan is lacking behind our neighbor country India. However, entrepreneurship culture in Pakistan did saw a rise in previous years like LCE Lums Centre of Entrepreneurship was founded in 2014 which was supported by big names like Razzaq Dawood, Syed Babar, Osama Javed, Khurram Zafar etc. and initially in that year 8 entrepreneurship startups were debuted. LCE took various steps to support and facilitate the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Pakistan and in return asked for varying degrees of equity from 2.5% to 7.5%.
It is pretty much agreeable fact that entrepreneurship is not as easy as it seems, the personnel running it do not strike gold every time. Pitching the idea to the business investors and to entice them is real big of a deal. But we are extremely proud to share the news of Umaima Mendhro; she is one of those lucky entrepreneurs whose business idea made success on the every first try. But behind this success there is a lot hard work and struggle involved, her first pitch was not a piece of cake and this is totally believable because success does come at a cost. It was like a dream and her childhood ambition. Like any other determined individual in Pakistan she was motivated to build a respectable multi-national company of her own. From the very young age she sat the plans and strongly believed in making dreams a reality. She was very well aware of the limitations and restrictions that would come across to get her venture off the ground in Pakistan but she never backed up.
“Coming from part of the world, and specifically part of Pakistan, where I didn’t have schools around, I grew up with the idea of building my own path… Because of that, education became something I was truly passionate about.”
Therefore she started making efforts to hit the mark slowly and gradually by getting herself into Harvard University to make her dreams a reality one day. After completing her master’s degree in business from the prestigious university she turned her head to fulfill the real objective-creating her own company. She pitched her start-up idea to Google venture and seeing her and and strength of mind they agreed to fund VIDA offering her $1.3 million in seed money. Her idea was one of its kinds, she wanted to combine art and commerce where artists can share their designs and merchandise from all around the world. The end-consumers can buy the designs online and the sellers would 10% of the revenue share. Even in the presence of all odds she stroked the stereotypes behind for good.