In the recent Asia Pacific ICT Awards (Apicta), the P@SHA (Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT & ITES) delegation bagged seven merit awards (the Apicta silver equivalent) out of the 16 categories. We caught up with Jehan Ara, president, P@SHA, to discuss the awards and the future of the IT industry in Pakistan.

What are the Apicta awards and what is their significance?

The Apicta awards is an international awards programme which provides networking and product benchmarking opportunities to ICT innovators and entrepreneurs from 16 countries in the region including Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Vietnam and Sri Lanka, among others. The programme is designed to stimulate ICT innovation and creativity, promote economic and trade relations, facilitate technology transfer, and offer business opportunities.

What was the nomination process and the judging criteria of these awards?

All nominees for Apicta have to be winners or runners-up in their own local ICT awards. For the past seven years, P@SHA has been running its own national awards to select the best applications in all 16 Apicta categories.

The judging criteria is very simple. The product has to be for the most part developed in your home country. It is judged on its uniqueness, and on the problem it is solving for a business or community or government. It is also judged on innovation, quality, market potential and its ability to be implemented in other markets and regions.

How will these awards affect Pakistan’s ICT industry as whole?

We have always known that Pakistani technology companies are doing great work for customers in Pakistan and globally. This is simply an acknowledgement of their hard work and credentials at an international level by an international panel of respected judges.

International recognition of this kind puts the Pakistan’s technology industry right up there with the best in the region and benchmarks local technology applications against those developed in high-tech markets. It creates for Pakistan the image of being a knowledge-based country, proficient in creating cutting-edge software applications both for domestic and the international market.

What has been the growth rate of the Pakistan’s ICT sector in the last three years and where do you see it going in the next five?

The Pakistan ICT industry had been growing at a rate of between 30 to 50 per cent regularly for about six years until the economic downturn just over two years ago. Since then, our growth has been very limited and most companies have consolidated and managed to survive the downturn.

The market is on a growth trajectory again and so we now need to re-focus our marketing efforts on markets where our products and services are in demand or where we can create a demand. Our strategy this year and over the next few years will be to grow our business in our traditional markets but also to start entering new, more lucrative markets for our products and services—especially in the Middle East and Africa.

The security situation makes new customers nervous even though our companies have shown over time that regardless the challenges, customers’ deadlines have not been affected and there has been no down time.

We see the next five years to be growth years despite the challenges the country is going through right now. This is also the time that the government needs to up the pace of automation and outsource the work to local companies ensuring that the projects are done by large companies with the help of smaller ones so that the expertise is shared and transfer of knowledge and processes takes place.

Do you think these awards will increase our ICT exports?

The awards will and have done one thing: showcase the level of technological expertise and products available in the Pakistan’s IT industry. We need to talk about this a lot more and make sure the word gets out to every corner of the world.

Then there is no reason that people will not buy these products and the exports will no doubt increase—not as a direct result of the awards but as a by-product. We need to market the fact that the products are superior and we need to showcase them on every government and private platform. This is where our embassies and our media can help.

What is the future of ICT in Pakistan especially with regard to the region?

The future of the Pakistan’s ICT sector is bright. It is a dynamic sector with some of the most brilliant and talented minds being a part of it. It is a young, knowledge-based sector that can change the landscape and economy of this country. It has already started changing the image of Pakistan in the eyes of all those who have been a part of the various Apicta awards that we have participated in.

We have seen the respect with which we are now viewed as an industry. This has taken time to happen but a transformation has taken place. Partnerships and joint venture discussions are taking place. Some investments may also come in from the region. Some companies have already started building a customer base in the Far East, the Middle East, the Asia Pacific region and Africa. We expect this to grow significantly over the next few years.