Change Takes One Individual with a Vision; Sajid Shah Story of a Pakistani Entrepreneur
Hailing from a humble background in Swabi, Khyber Pakhtunkhwah, Syed Sajid Shah Chief Executive officer of Empower Pakistan tells us about the importance of starting small and significance of self-reliance. Shah calls himself “an engineer who was never inclined towards machines or circuits but solving real life problems.” Having made it to top 500 influential business owners in The Power 500 list of ROZEE.PK he says, “Our hymn has been creating more business owners by empowering youth of Pakistan with digital skills and then accelerating them to a point where they can create jobs.”
He graduated as an electronic engineer from International Islamic University back in 2009 but couldn’t find a job. Looking for an occupation in our wasteland of an economy, he was financially desolate. For two long years, he battled with being unemployed while his colleagues were working for meager salaries. “These two things left a huge impact on me.” He narrates that it was in that time of utter despair and helplessness that he stumbled upon digital employment platforms like ODesk and Elance and the first gig he got was for a Data Entry assignment for $5 but this didn’t disheart him. He went on and created a technology based start-up called Ohyrus and co-founded another called Silk Route.
There were thirty people working under him one of them was Yasir Ali who was from a remote village from Swabi. Sajid Shah witnessed how Yasir’s life transformed through digital economy from earning $30 per month to $15000 a month. “That was basically the ‘Aha’ moment of my entrepreneurship career”, he reminisces. He decided to explore the ‘Social’ aspect of freelancing and to empower the youth of Pakistan through digital economy. This is when empower Pakistan was born with the mission to eradicate unemployment and underemployment through digital literacy.
Shah strikes as one of those people who truly want to take responsibility of fixing the problems in the system and benefiting the community. He states “Pakistan’s unemployment issue is grave and is growing. Unemployment forces youth to engage in activities like extremism as they have no sense of purpose in life.” He establishes an apt correlation between unemployment, terrorism and crime.
Empower Pakistan has devised this very unique strategy to empower our youth. In the first level, they teach them digital skills through workshops and create skilled individuals. In the second level they train them how to monetize their skills. That is how self-employed individuals are created. These individuals are then trained how to build a team and by the end they are job creators who are trained over the course of time to start their own products and become entrepreneurs and solve a pressing problem of Pakistan that is unemployment.
“Our robust and very end to end solution is what makes us unique and we are all set on our course to create 100,000 digital employment opportunities by 2020.” He says while running a finger over his mobile phone screensaver that holds picture of a toddler. The passion with which he addresses both areas of domesticity and workplace, he appears to be an impeccable amalgamation of leadership and fatherhood as reflected by his role in his company and his son’s life.
Dressed almost always casually in a T-shirt and faded blue jeans in an office with a singular plank wood table with a laptop on it, he is a perfect example of simplicity and light heartedness. He narrates an incident where was called for an interview on a morning show at Pakistan Television in Ramadan. Having slept in the office after sehri, too lazy to go home and change, he showed up at the studio in the same clothes he slept in.
