THE GROWTH OF CONNECTIVITY AND INNOVATION IN PAKISTAN.

Pakistan is on the verge of a digital revolution. This statement along with various stats has been the talk of Pakistan’s social media circles for a while now.

While most of us focus on statistics around Pakistan’s growing population size and its millennial and gen-z consumer base, there is a statistic that I want to make the basis of my thesis today.

Pakistan now stands at 54% internet penetration

This news made the rounds in 2021. A small part of the report by Google and Kantar, also stated that around 76% of consumers across Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad were also connected to the internet.

What did not happen, post this research, was people’s sheer excitement and understanding of this news.

We need to understand that Pakistan has crossed the halfway line and as such, we are now moving towards a digital dawn; where more and more people will shop online, use electronic transactions and expect services to be available online.

Managing Pakistan’s expectations

As more and more people expect essential services to be available online, the internet will transition from being a mere service to becoming a utility. That means people will expect access to broadband internet services in their homes.

They will rely on organisations that can promise reliable provisioning of internet services; which means more buried infrastructure needs to be put in place and support services need to be timely delivered.

When we improve infrastructure, we also need to provide services that use that infrastructure. Think of this as a vast highway of possibilities; a highway teaming with businesses and facilities for people to use.

At REDtone Digital Services, we spent a significant amount of time both laying and managing these internet super highways. We understood that the growth of connectivity and innovation would fuel Pakistan's next economic evolution.

Partnering for the Future

At REDtone we prepared for Pakistan’s digital evolution by building our Connectivity, Cloud, and Commerce offerings for our customers.

We spent a significant amount of time and resources, doing proofs-of-concept, demos, and educational sessions for our customers and building partnerships (Google’s official in-country focus partner for Pakistan, recipient of various digital transformation awards domestically). Our mandate was hardly monetary, it was more patriotic, where we needed our people to leap-frog towards a digital means of doing business.

This means that we can finally compete on a global front, as more and more of our people discover digital ways of doing business, build software and services for international audiences, earn exchange and transact globally, we will multiply our economic outlook million-fold.

Countries across the globe have been enabled digitally for quite some time now, and their people have taken their business stance to a global stage. We are now at a point in our existence, where the right amount of influence and attention to detail will help us go global. The rise in our internet penetration is an amazing sign, and as a business professional that has helped organisations grow, I feel by the grace of the Almighty, our moment has arrived.

Written By: Faisal Yaqoob (Director Sales - South, REDtone Digital Services )