LAHORE: Pakistan’s technology industry is having a moment. IT exports have been growing at double-digit rates, technology has become the country’s largest services-export category, and the government is betting that software and digital services can become a much larger source of foreign exchange.

But Salim Ghauri, 71, made that bet three decades ago, when there was little evidence that Pakistan could build technology companies for the global market.

In January 1996, Ghauri returned to Lahore after more than two decades overseas and started NetSol.

His ambition was specific. He did not simply want to build another software house. He wanted to create a company that could represent Pakistan’s technology industry to the world.

When we sat down with Ghauri for Pakistan TV Digital show “Money” earlier this year, he took us back to 1995, when he returned to Lahore with an idea that was still ahead of Pakistan’s technology industry.

“The basic idea when I started this company was to build an entity, an enterprise which represents Pakistan IT industry globally,” Ghauri said.

At the time, Pakistan had talent, but few global technology brands to point to. Ghauri had spent years working in the Middle East and Australia as an IT professional and said he rarely saw Pakistan represented in the international technology industry.

He returned to Lahore with limited resources. What he had was a conviction that Pakistan could build for the world.

Three decades later, NetSol has customers across international markets, software used by major automotive and financial businesses, operations outside Pakistan and a listing on Nasdaq.

The journey from Lahore to Wall Street is remarkable. But the more interesting part of Ghauri’s story may be what he was trying to build along the way.

First global customer

The early years were about proving that the idea could work commercially.

One of NetSol’s earliest international customers was Mercedes-Benz in Thailand. What began as a services engagement developed into a longer-term relationship and eventually expanded across multiple markets.

For Ghauri, the significance was bigger than landing a prestigious customer.

A company operating out of Lahore had convinced a global brand to trust its technology.

NetSol’s business evolved around financial and asset-finance software, eventually building products for the finance and leasing operations of major automotive groups.

Ghauri says the company now has software being used across markets including Australia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, India, Indonesia and South Africa. BMW and Toyota are among the global names he cites as customers.

That is where NetSol’s story begins to depart from the conventional narrative around Pakistan’s IT sector.

Pakistani talent

For years, Pakistan’s technology-export story has largely been associated with services: software development, business-process outsourcing, freelancers and engineers working for international companies.

Ghauri wanted to build something different.

“We are not a services company,” he said. “We are a product development company.”

Instead of simply selling the time and expertise of Pakistani engineers, NetSol develops its own software, owns the product and sells it internationally.

“We design our own software,” Ghauri said. “We develop it, we design it, and then we export it to the world.”

The software carries a label that, in his telling, matters almost as much as the product itself: Made in Pakistan.

“People buy from us, not our people,” he said. “Not just services, but our software product, which is designed, developed, and which has a label of Made in Pakistan.”

That distinction goes to the heart of Pakistan’s next IT opportunity.

A country can export its engineers. A more valuable proposition is to export the intellectual property those engineers create.

Ghauri compares the model with companies such as Microsoft and Oracle. The comparison is not about scale. It is about ownership: building technology rather than simply providing the people who build it for someone else.

Building for the world from Lahore

The geography of NetSol’s business is perhaps the clearest expression of Ghauri’s original vision.

The company was founded in Lahore, but its customers and operations spread far beyond Pakistan. China became one of its important markets, with NetSol establishing centres in Beijing and Tianjin and employing Chinese engineers there, according to Ghauri.

There is an irony he clearly enjoys pointing out.

“Whole of Pakistan imports from China,” he said. “While we export technology to China.”

For Ghauri, that is what a mature technology-export industry should look like: not simply selling labour overseas, but selling something created in Pakistan.

The company has spent decades building that model. Ghauri says software sales generate tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue for the business, while NetSol has continued to expand its international footprint.

A product can be developed once and sold repeatedly across markets. Its value is not simply tied to the number of people employed to deliver it, but to the intellectual property embedded in the product.

That is the model Ghauri believes Pakistan needs more of.

Pakistan flag at Times Square

The ultimate symbol of NetSol’s international journey came with its listing in the United States.

Ghauri remembers another moment with particular pride: ringing the Nasdaq opening bell.

For an entrepreneur who had started a technology company in Lahore with limited resources, the symbolism was difficult to miss.

The Pakistani flag was displayed in Times Square.

“We have a Pakistani flag out there,” he said. “We were there.”

For Ghauri, the achievement was not simply that NetSol had reached American capital markets. It was that a company from Pakistan had become visible on a global stage.

The Wall Street moment was the culmination of a much longer bet: that a Pakistani company could build technology that international customers would pay for, trust and continue using.

That bet had begun three decades earlier, when Pakistan had barely established itself as an IT-export market.

Before NetSol

Ghauri’s technology career began long before the company.

He spent around 22 years overseas, first studying in Europe, then working in the Middle East and later spending a decade in Australia.

His first IT job was in Riyadh in 1979. By the time he returned to Lahore, technology had already been the defining thread of his professional life for more than two decades.

His connection with Australia continued after his return. According to his professional profile, Ghauri has served as Australia’s Honorary Consul in Lahore since August 2007.

He describes his career as roughly 45 years of software development, software design and building systems.

He has since written two books, including From Nothing to Everything, his personal story, and Impossible Is Nothing, which focuses on leadership and building an enterprise.

He also teaches as a professor of practice, lectures at universities and mentors young entrepreneurs and startups.

The message he tries to pass on is simple.

“If Saleem Ghauri can do it, anybody can do it,” he said.

Different Pakistan

The country Ghauri returned to in 1995 is not the country he sees today.

Pakistan’s IT exports have expanded significantly, and technology has moved from being a relatively niche sector to one of the country’s important sources of services-export earnings.

More importantly, Ghauri believes the global perception of Pakistani technology talent has changed.

“It’s now recognized in the world that Pakistan does have some very good quality resources,” he said.

He points to Pakistani engineers as skilled, intelligent and creative, and says greater international recognition makes it easier to sell Pakistani technology.

He is particularly encouraged by young technology companies that are scaling quickly. Ghauri says he has seen companies grow to around 1,000 employees within a few years.

For him, that is evidence that the ecosystem is becoming more mature.

He believes IT can become the backbone of Pakistan’s economy over the next five years.

That is an ambitious prediction. But ambition has been a recurring feature of Ghauri’s career.

He made his first bet on Pakistani technology when there was little global recognition of the sector. Three decades later, the country’s biggest challenge may no longer be proving that Pakistani talent exists.

It is figuring out how to capture more of the value that talent creates.

From exporting people to exporting intellectual property

That may be the broader lesson of the NetSol story.

Pakistan has spent years building an export industry around people: engineers, developers, freelancers and service providers.

The next stage could be about products: companies that own their software, build their intellectual property in Pakistan, sell it globally and generate recurring export revenues without increasing headcount at the same rate.

That is the model Ghauri has spent 30 years pursuing.

His pitch to international customers is straightforward.

“We have the resources, we have the skills, we have the knowledge and we are up to date,” he said.

He believes Pakistan can build mission-critical technology for global businesses at a competitive cost while keeping pace with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.

“We are ready,” he said. “Come to us.”