Entrepreneurship In Pakistan | Scope, Trend And Stats

If we talk about today's world, the common view about entrepreneurship is undertaking innovation and bearing risk. Entrepreneurship is vital in any country because it can improve living standards as well as create wealth. However, entrepreneurs can develop a cascading effect by creating new products and services, which ultimately will lead towards economic growth, especially in developing countries.

Entrepreneurial activities can easily influence economic performance like new products, methods, ideas, production processes, and by boosting competition and productivity on a larger scale. When such activities are conducted, new opportunities will be offered to the society, including the poor. Also, we can observe high growth rates well.

Pakistan is considered to be having a youthful population. Therefore, conventional creation of jobs and opportunities would not be enough to absorb the growth in the labor force. There is a requirement of step by step change from the existing model to the new model in which we should emphasize on entrepreneurship, innovation, new ideas, and creativity.

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However, the government is not responsible for producing entrepreneurs in the country but can and should provide regulatory and policy frameworks. Along with this, business attitude should also be changed by paying attention to consumer preference. As long as livelihood is concerned, there is a need for promoting entrepreneurship and self-employment in Pakistan. 

The scale of risk is always massive in entrepreneurship; at the same time, it is pressurizing also. As we all know, the risk is still there in business, especially if it's a new start-up. We can minimize the risk through the right strategy implementation and decision making, but we cannot eliminate it. It is never easy to be an entrepreneur in Pakistan. The reason is that there are many loopholes in government laws and market dealing. It requires a lot of time, patience, effort, finance/capital, and you have to be watchful of every step. 

Scope Of Entrepreneurship:

Technologically advanced countries like Japan, China, UK, etc. tend to encourage entrepreneurial activities. On the other hand, the developing countries, particularly Pakistan, highly discourage it.

Entrepreneurs such as Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and many more, became the iconic personalities for their countries and symbol of success in the whole world.

At the same time, it isn't easy to recognize business entrepreneurs in Pakistan. Because of this unconvincing approach, people of Pakistan are highly discouraged, especially the young generation from becoming the “Self-made star” to inspire others.

Thus, there is a low-level of entrepreneurship in Pakistan. Still, some notable names are there as entrepreneurs and influencers for others.

• Such as Zia Imran, the co-founder of VahZay Pvt. Limited (a software service company).
• Mr. Taseer, who launched a private wireless telecommunication business, named WorldCall, established Pace Shopping Mall located in Lahore and worked in the media industry as well by launching Business Plus and Daily Times.
• Dr. Faisal is a biologist and founder-director of the Institute of Integrative Biosciences (IIB) at CECOS University.

In Pakistan, the policy has always seemed to be biased towards the elite or the large scale sectors. The result is that this sector has developed on the incentives of rent-seeking rather than entrepreneurship. The characteristics of entrepreneurship somehow reflected to some extent in the development of small scale sectors. It is difficult for Pakistan to attain innovation and economic growth. Not because of insufficient resources or poor policies but more of an unsupported culture. The excessive involvement of the government has directed towards rent-seeking rather than entrepreneurial activities.

Trends Of Entrepreneurship In Pakistan:

Entrepreneurship means an initiative that an individual takes to launch a new business to enhance one's innovations that can generate income. Honestly speaking, 9-5 jobs are really exhausting and may not pay you the deserving amount. If you want to be your own boss, then all you need is a unique idea that doesn't require your kidney to start.

Although entrepreneurship heavily depends upon the country's economic policies. The world is using the internet as frequently as possible. The increasing trend of online buying and selling and social media marketing has brought home different ideas of entrepreneurship. Because it gives easy access to the customer living miles apart. There has been a drastic increase in this trend since the last decade. Therefore, in Pakistan, like other business institutes, it is making an effort to promote entrepreneurship in a separate discipline.

The universities and colleges of Pakistan are emphasizing on teaching the tricks and techniques to be successful entrepreneurs to the students studying business.

A subset of productive entrepreneurs, those who create high-growth firms, make a significant and critical contribution to development. Most entrepreneurs start small and don't even bother to enhance their business. Small entrepreneurs who create rapidly growing companies (sometimes called “gazelle” firms) play an important role in social development through job creation, industry revitalization, and philanthropic activities. Because of this reason, high-growth firms have the space to form (in both urban and rural areas), and it becomes an important social priority to develop resources accordingly.

One of the biggest trends of entrepreneurship in Pakistan followed in the year 2016 by CIPE. Pakistan Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Report has been developed by CIPE so that invest2innovate can be launched. The highlights of the report suggest that by taking some actions like raising the local entrepreneur leaders, changing the policy environment, increasing the range of supportive organization, accessibility of incubators and accelerators for entrepreneurs, etc., can provide ways for entrepreneurial activities.

Stats Related Entrepreneurship In Pakistan:

There has been some research conducted related to entrepreneurial activities in Pakistan. The following are some interesting insights into a recent international dataset that was assembled by The Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute (GEDI), The World Bank (WB), and Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM).

• Pakistan ranked 109th in the GEDI dataset, which means that it performed poorly in all the entrepreneurship indicators.
• According to the World Bank, Pakistan ranks 10 to 20 times lower than other countries in the number of limited liability companies. 
• As per the new business density indicator of the World Bank, the number of new companies, as a ratio of per 1000 population aged between 15 to 64, is 0.04 in Pakistan. At the same time, other countries have a ration that ranges from 0.29 to 2.88.
• According to GEM, in 2012, total early-stage entrepreneurial activities are 11.6%, which is relatively better than other countries but still lower.
• As per the latest wave of Labor force data, only 57% of individuals in Pakistan are paid employees. It means that a decent 43% are either employers, self-employed persons, or contributing family workers, all of which by standard definition fall under the category of entrepreneurs.
• According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's Report in 2010, 80% of the fresh graduates aim to get a highly paid job. And only 20% of graduates think out of the box by launching their own services.
• Startup Pakistan Community initiated PM’s Youth Program, entitled to develop a national startup ecosystem in which youth will be trained for entrepreneurship and to launch 10,000 startups in the next five years by 2023.

Conclusion:

Keeping in view the plethora of opportunities Pakistan offers, we can always strive to become a developed nation. Unfortunately, because of internal and external threats and mismanagement of available resources, it seems to be complicated. Every individual is responsible for promoting a positive image of Pakistan. As far as the government is concerned, it needs to devise pragmatic policies so that the resources can be easily explored and utilized efficiently and effectively to promote entrepreneurial activities in the country.