Entrepreneur
A person who creates a new business with his/her innovative ideas to make value for the customers by taking risks and enjoying profit and rewards.
Simply entrepreneur is an innovator of new ideas, goods, services, business, and procedures. The process of setting up a business is known as entrepreneurship.
There are so many entrepreneurs in the world but only some of them become successful in their journey. Likewise, I have shared here the story of a successful entrepreneur "Monis Rahman" from Pakistan who has gone through a long path to be listed among the successful entrepreneurs of Pakistan.
Monis Rahman was born in Lahore but spent his life in the United States and Saudi Arabia. He comes from a very education-oriented family. Monis picked up the profession of computer engineer. While in college in the United States, he got an internship at the biggest tech company (Intel). His skills were polished because of the wonderful environment in the company.
Introduction of the business career
Monis has picked up a lot by sitting around the brightest minds in the company (Intel) and setting up his Chip- manufacturing company in California. At that time, he was 27 and quite doing well for himself even though Monis was ready to take the next step of exploring all the possibilities.
In 2003, Monis decided to sell his business and moved to Pakistan to set up the foundation of Naseeb.com. He was inspired by the site Friends.com which was about finding friends or spouses, but he decided to change the idea because of the Pakistani culture. The idea of Naseeb.com was to connect young, educated, professional Muslims through networks of friends by providing a safe and trusted environment and platform.
Furthermore, the human capital was also a reason behind Rahman's moving towards Pakistan because the running cost of the company in Pakistan could have been 1/18th of what it could have been in the United States.
Problems that Monis faced in his journey:
As we know problems are part of our lives and everybody faces problems in his/her life journey. Likewise, Monis has also faced several issues in his entity.
Finding the right talent
Initially, it was a big challenge or problem for Monis to hire the right person for his business. He could post an ad in the newspaper, but it was too costly. At that time one job ad in the classified section in Dawn roughly cost PKR 850,000 which was too much.
Solution
Monis quickly made a website (Rozee. pk) in two weeks and put his ads on it there. A miracle we can say, happened at the time that other people jumped in Rozee. pk and started posting their ads and that thing just went viral. Now Rozee. pk was getting more traffic than Naseeb.com because several people started to use it, posting jobs, and getting hired.
By analyzing the rapid growth ratio of Rozee.pk Monis decided to turn it into his primary business completely in 2008.
Problem of raising funds for Rozee. pk
It was not a huge problem for Monis and the team to raise funds for Rozee. pk because of Naseeb. con was somehow profitable. But then the offers started coming in and Monis started considering the possibilities.
Finally, Monis and the team decided to take funds from very well-respected VCs in Silicon Valley (Draper Fisher Jurveston (DFJ) and E-planet capital, the same VC who invested in Skype, Hotmail, and Baidu).
COVID-19 and freezes of income
As we all are familiar with the virus COVID-19 (a pandemic situation almost all over the world). Every organization and business was closed, and it was a huge challenge for the entrepreneurs to run business at that time.
Likewise, Monis also faced several issues in the situation of COVID-19 in that the income was frozen. The organizations were no longer posting jobs, and nobody was getting hired at Rozee. pk. Even some organizations were not paying charges for their previous work due to the account deficit because of COVID.
One positive point of COVID-19 for the business of Monis was that people were focused on the internet.
Future
Every entrepreneur has a future for his/her business So, Monis also has some future that he has discussed in an interview.
Integration of SMS Network
As Monis told in his interview most of the people approached him for help or the notifications of updates So, he got involved in the plan.
According to the interview, Monis thinks that SMS can be integrated with anything like schools, clubs, restaurants, etc. Now Monis is trying to integrate SMS with Rozee to give out SMS job alerts etc.
Plan to cover the most
Monis thinks that going international too soon for local entrepreneurs is a mistake, so he is planning to cover the whole of Pakistan. That's why he is focusing now only on Pakistan. He also shared his work-in-progress plan (Mehnati Platform) which is Rozee's skinned in Arabic, especially for the people in UAE.
Conclusion
It's the beauty of the business that you start with a different shape and less investment and ends with a huge amount in a different shape like Monis started with Naseeb.com and is currently on Rozee.pk having a huge figure of profit and popularity.
In my point of view, his plan for an SMS Network is the best one, in which people are getting a more reliable feature of receiving notifications directly on their phone about jobs and hiring, etc.
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