Dr. Shoab Ahmed Khan
Chairman, P@SHA
Dear Members,
In 2014, I took over as Chairman of P@SHA from Saleem Ghauri Sahib. P@SHA was small and still finding its feet, and Pakistan’s IT exports stood at around $400–500 million. Our secretariat was in Karachi, led by our President, Jehan Ara, a remarkable woman who was rightly known as the face of Pakistan’s IT industry. I was in Islamabad without staff or budget. My assistant, Ms. Khola, a deeply committed soul, carried the entire load of the secretariat with me: minutes, action items, proposals to three boards (PSEB, TDEF and the Services Council), events, and repeated trips to Karachi and Lahore. Much of it was paid from my own pocket. The Minister of IT then, Ms. Anusha Rahman, was another strong leader, so I had the privilege of working alongside the two strongest women in Pakistan’s IT sector, with a third holding everything together behind the scenes.
Those were defining years:
• We took a firm stand on the Cyber Crime Bill, raising our concerns while continuing to work with the government.
• We presented the industry’s case against the withholding tax before the board the government had constituted.
• With dedicated funding, we launched NEST I/O, one of Pakistan’s first tech incubators.
• We worked with the Ministry on a technology park, for which the government sought $50 million in financing from the Export-Import Bank of Korea.
• We won the bid to host APICTA 2015 in Pakistan, until the attack on Karachi airport led the APICTA EXCO to move the event to Jakarta.
Every gain was hard-won, and the industry fought most of its battles alone.
Ten years later, everything has changed. Our exports have grown roughly tenfold, to a record $4.6 billion in FY2025-26. More than 34,000 IT and ITeS companies are now registered, and our freelancers earn over $1.7 billion a year. The challenges have grown tenfold as well, but so have the opportunities.
The biggest change is that we are no longer alone. The government has set a national goal of $15 billion by 2030-31, tripling our impact through exports, import substitution, digital transformation and AI adoption. For the first time, every stakeholder is pulling in the same direction as our industry and is ready to support every layer we depend on:
• Digital infrastructure
• Policy and regulation
• Skills for the AI age
• Ease of doing business
• Made in Pakistan and import substitution
• The innovation and startup ecosystem
This is an extraordinary moment, and we must not let it pass.
I believe this target is achievable if the four strands of Pakistan’s IT DNA, namely industry, academia, government and community, work together toward one shared goal. That growth must also be inclusive, diverse and sustainable.
Our ambition must go beyond the numbers. We must:
• Build Pakistan’s sovereign AI stack, combined with leading commercial AI platforms where it makes sense.
• Rethink digital transformation, not just digitize it. Turning paper processes into web forms and portals is not enough. With agentic AI, we can redesign how government services, healthcare, education and finance work, on a foundation of self-sovereign digital identity.
• Create sandboxes with the government, where our companies can build and test solutions. This will give the government the confidence to remove tender and RFP clauses that keep local companies from competing in their own country.
• Work with the chambers and the government so that AI adoption and digital transformation are supported across every industry, creating a large domestic market for our members.
• Partner with academia so that our graduates are ready for the AI era and our researchers focus on solving Pakistan’s problems and seeding innovation.
My role as Secretary of NCEAC, working closely with HEC, the Ministry of Education, MoITT, PSEB and Ignite, gives me a direct bridge between industry and academia, and I intend to use it fully.
This year, I had no intention of standing for Chairman. The push of veterans I deeply respect, and the trust of almost the entire elected CEC, brought me to this position unopposed. I am humbled and grateful. I pray that I prove worthy of the trust placed in me by industry, academia and government.
I have spent time with our new CEC and found a team that complements one another, with real synergy. Together we will serve you, our members, in what matters most to your businesses:
• Growth and facilitation
• Branding and networking
• New markets
• Strong product portfolios
• Real opportunities to deploy your solutions in government and industry
My request to every member is simple: let us move as one. Align your company’s plans with the national effort, take part in P@SHA’s committees, and hold us accountable to the targets we set. We all start from a stronger position than ever before, and what we build in the next five years will define Pakistan’s place in the global technology economy for decades.
I seek your prayers, your support and your candid feedback, and the support of our diaspora, as we take this journey together.
With gratitude and resolve,
