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Pakwheels the hottest community site in Pakistan revolving around cars is reaching a big mile stone of 100,000 Registered Members, We will be reviewing this portal and what makes it tick. We would mostly be focusing on the site itself and some reasons of its success and not at this time about the business and revenue model.

For those of you who are un ware of the site (and seriously the only way you have not come across this would be that you did not google for cars in Pakistan either new or second hand in last five years) pakwheels is a highly active portal catering to every one who is interested in cars from any perspective, be it for buying/selling used cars, getting the latest prices of new cars, or just looking around for classics in cars and mods people do. Some of the impressive stats of the portal are:

Pakwheel has a pageview number of 10 million per month, its in the top 100 sites visited from Pakistan according to alexa. There are about 300 bikes and cars submitted for sale every day!! and the already mentioned figure of 100,000 registered users (just about).

Site was created in 2003 initial focus was to get together car enthusiast to gather together and discuss any thing on wheels, it is said to be founded by Mr Hanif Bhatti. And soon it became the single place for every thing related to wheels, from used cars

Content wise if you have any queries about cars in Pakistan there is rarely any question which will be left un answered, I was impressed by the details placed on the site, I casually had an encounter with the site 4 years back when i was looking for a car for my self, and no  doubtt helped me reach a decision then (I bought a Hyundai Santro new for those who are curious ) based on some reviews, but now when i get back to the same section it gives out impressive details of even the size of rim and tires, weight torque etc. Technically speaking the kind of information available on the site no single person or organization can keep updated.

The success behind Pakwheels is its very active community, the members not only actively visit the site, they meet physically there have been numerous pakwheels get together in all major cities of Pakistan, they have successfully organized rallies featuring rides of members.

There can be multiple reasons for such a successful community based site in Pakistan (I have yet to see another site claim this title), Technically speaking these things are viral in nature but some of the things that might be (again even if you ask the social networking gurus there is no set formula for successful community based site, there are few dos and dont’s and that’s all that exist),

* The openness of the site i don’t have to be a member to benefit from the rich content, this is a good thing if i like it enough and if it fuels my passion I can become a member but until then there are no close doors for members only (posting on a forum is one but all else is open).

* They have very successfully taken the online community and built an offline community which meets on regular basis has races rallies and other activities, the offline branding is pretty strong too with pakwheel T-Shirts and car stickers moving around in town raising curiosity.

* They have picked a niche which had enough passion in it to drive the members to take it on its own, they are not trying to be every thing and nothing, they are clear very clear to their visitors what they are and what content the members can find on the site.

Over all its the most successful execution of community based site i have come across in Pakistan to date, It would be great to see some other sites replicate this community based.

Ohh bye the way i guess some one at Wateen also is trying to copy this check out http://autos.wateen.com but again for community sites the catch up can only happen if you can gather a mass of of followers.

TechCrunch today announced number for India’s Twitter Like SMS Gupshup . They have grown to an impressive 26 Million you can go for the details here.

We also have here two such efforts which revolved around the same idea, the first one was Mango which was later bought re branded by UFone and became a UFone Centric VAS as SMS Buddies, the second one which is headed by none other than our own Dr Umar Saif, who has also been a catalyst for some other startups like   Bumpin and the recently funded SeeNReport.

From an opportunity stand point we have a similar ground to play or in fact a better one, the mobile phone Subscribers in Pakistan are a whooping 94.3 Million (Source PTA ) which is an impressive 58% penetration. Compared to that our Internet Penetration is standing at only 5 million (source ISPAK) so the PC to Mobile ratio we have is much higher than what’s in India.

I could not get Number for Mango or Ufone Buddies but Chopaal announced in August that their monthly traffic has exceeded 1,000,000 SMS. How many total SMSes travel our network each day would be a very very high number in my estimate.

I am a very non sms type of mobile phone subscriber but even for me the SMSes I receive and send cross 50 daily (including all the forwarded messages i receive), and I am sure our teenage group who is always clicking on their cell phones even when they are having dinner or talking to you, they send a lot more.

In my opinion Chopaal has a better opportunity of Growth at this time as Mango is already sold, and our Telecom Operators have a tendency to only focus on one VAS at a time so they don’t spend any marketing budget on a VAS few months after the launch (When was the last time you saw an add or mention of Ufone Buddies). Mango Party was rebranded with UFone and Confiz (the creators of the product) work on a revenue sharing model with them, also according to the interview on CIO (Thaks Adil for pointing it out) they have another deployment with Zen telecom, Chopaal as i know is still going solo, only time will tell which business model is more appealing and revenue generating usually in mobile space the services with telco tend to take off earlier but we have also seen products like twitter disrupt the market without any dedicated telco support.

The only issue that i see facing both of these services and any other which is out there is awareness in masses about existence of such a service.

I am 100% sure that the day I tell my younger sister that there is a service out there which will enable her to broadcast one sms to multiple people with the cost of sending only one sms, she will jump on it without thinking for a second. also the type of user base which is target market for this will not even care if they receive a couple of Advertisement for the cost that they save through this.

From an advertisers point of view this is pure gold, if i can send specific marketing messages to specific people and not just send it out to all this is a value proposition that they would pay a premium for, go tell an Internet Provider that they can send text to a specific age group in a specific city for student discount, and see how they drool, so I am sure that getting revenues for this would not be an issue.

And for any such service at this moment the barrier to entry is very low, who ever moves fast and grows a sizable community will have the advantage. The core to success of any such service (Or any social network for the matter is) to grow as fast as they can. I am sure any one can make a twitter clone today but no one can create a user base of that size.

UPDATE:

As noted by our readers and from other sources, i was mistaken in my earlier assumption of Mango being bought by UFone the post is updated, thanks for every one who pointed this out/

Mobile application development is emerging in our local Industry at a break neck speed.  Every week i hear a new company entering the domain or setting up a mobile phone development department.

The success of iPhone apps has made a lot of local firms wanting to dip their feet in this new market where barrier to entry is not much compared to services projects no long list of successful projects or satisfied clientage required to win your next work. and the success stories are like fantasies, if you hit the right spot the gains are almost un ending.

FiveRivers Technologies which initially branched out as a software development out source from ClearCube (manufacturer of the blade systems) and were responsible for handling the software end of ClearCube. They started and did some exciting local projects with clients such as the remote desktop solution for  mobile phones Foneitall for  ufone.

Recently they launched another subsidiary pepper.pk which would be responsible for launching mobile phone products, they have started of with launching three daily use products for blackberry app, and if my sources are to believe this is just a start of product portfolio they are working on here is a link to the press release for their BerrySnooper app for black berry.

BerrySnooper Finds Lost and Stolen Blackberries, Protects Corporate and Personal Data from Theft

Good luck to them!!

If you guys have been following TechCrunch 50 (and who in the world interested in Tech Entrepreneur ship doesn’t)  you might have noticed that oDesk won an award at Demo Pit for enabling managers or customers to monitor their development efforts online and from iPhone. For those of you who are un aware of oDesk, its an outsourcing platform like Elance where the the skills are offered through bidding etc. what oDesk does differently than Elance is to enable the buyer to monitor activities of service provider at a deeper level, taking a detailed log of what they have been up to on their PCs plus detailed hour logged in.

Here is the TC article announcing the win of oDesk at demopit, if you go through the article a lot of emphasis is placed on how oDesk enables monitoring through iPhone.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/tc50-demopit-winner-odesk-launches-a-real-time-work-stream-for-your-iphone-and-desktop/

another TC article which covers the app is here

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/29/with-odesks-iphone-app-bosses-can-now-monitor-workers-from-the-beach/

Now most of you if you follow TC regularly would have read through these posts, how ever what most of us are not aware of is that the iPhone app for oDesk was designed right here in Lahore by Geni Team.

This in my opinion is a great achievement in its own regard as it shows the technical expertise our friends in the local industry are growing into, imagine this there are 354,416 providers listed on oDesk as i write this article, (off course all of them are not iPhone developers but i am sure a lot of them are) they picked Geni Team out of so many available options, and not only did Geni team deliver they made them win in TC 50 Demopit which in it self is a tough challenge i am sure the people at TC would have evaluated the quality of the app.

here are the excerpts from oDesk’s own press release

“The access and support we found through the oDesk API Center was fundamental in developing the oDesk iPhone application,” said Khurram Samad from GenITeam, an oDesk provider who developed the oDesk iPhone Application. “oDesk gave us the tools to turn the vision into reality.”

Great job Geni Team, I have heard rumors that they have plenty of more good news coming their way.

Over the last few years I have seen a tremendous rise in interest in entrepreneurship. Surprisingly, a large number of early stage entrepreneurs keep making expensive mistakes which are completely avoidable. One of the reason for such mistakes is the lack of access to seasoned entrepreneurs who can be a source of learning. I previously wrote about the startup guide written by Naeem Zafar. That guide laid out the necessary steps one needs before starting a new venture (you can get a free copy of the book by signing up at Startup-Advisor.com). As a followup to that, Naeem has recently published an eBook called The Definitive Entrepreneur’s Guide to Lawyers.

As any experienced business person and entrepreneur can tell, legal matters are extremely important. It so happens that law firms can be intimidating to many and legal matters also tend to be costly. Naeem’s book helps entrepreneurs to get educated about the whole process and to get the maximun value out of your legal spending. The book provides many little-known facts, secrets, techniques, and tricks which can make life easy for a startup team.

Some of the important points Naeem touches upon include:

• The different things lawyers can (and cannot) help you accomplish.
• The inner workings of a law firm, and how to use that knowledge to lower your legal bills.
• Choosing the right lawyer for you.
• When you should first contact a lawyer.
• Why you might want to choose a large law firm over a small one—or vice versa.
• When you may need to create a legal entity (incorporation), and what options you have.
• How to leave your current employer in a way that causes minimum trouble later.
• How to protect your ideas.

Naeem stresses the need to educate yourself and to start a relationship with attorney, even if you don’t hire them right away. This is what I have done and I can tell you that it is a very good strategy to get started. As you go along you educate yourself through books, online resources and from others. Then when you are ready and you need help with a particular legal document, you know what to do and where to go. So do your home work and read this book.

A version of this post appeared at TelecomPk.net

If you are any way tied to local startup scene or are interested in whats happening around you must have read or heard the news that SeeNReport recently got series A funding

you can read their official press release here. SeeNReport is a place where the community is responsible for generating the news. what they do is allow users to create news by sending in through their mobile emails and on the site, also they the content can have multimedia like videos and pictures.

It was an initiative from 2` compliment  with active help from Dr Umar Saif (Who is another Icon for our local industry). Other people in the founding team includes Sharjeel Ahmed Qureshi, Yaser Awan and Adil Saleem. If you meet these all beside Dr Umar Saif would make you feel really old as these guys are young and now have some thing to show for their efforts

So now that we are done with the basic intro of what SeeNReport does and people behind it. lets analyze what does this funding mean for a lot of other struggling and aspiring entrepreneurs in our country.

First and foremost thing is that this funding strongly dispels the common fear that no one is ready to fund a local startup, and that you need to have an office in a western country to secure a funding. So if you go all out and prove your mettle the opportunities are there, off course its hard to get seed funding and for that you only have scarce resources of your relatives or friends but once you get going and have some thing to show for your self you get required attention and now this proves that you get funding too

Second most important thing coming out of this funding is that the focus of SeeNReport was completely local, when rozee was funded it was after showing a strong growth and business model for a product which was completely tailored for local market, some pessimists brushed it aside by saying it as a once in a blue moon thing. but if you analyze there is a pattern emerging, SeeNReport also has a completely local focus with all of its news being generated by local people and completely local aspect, still it got out and was funded.

You have to realize that Our country is the sixth most populous region in the world, with internet penetration still under 10%, does any one realize what happened when the telcos came how much mobile usage we had then and now, its a phenomenal growth, do you by any chance think that big communication giants don’t realize the potential of growth, with things like EvDO coming in Pakistan and internet rates going down this below 10% figure will rise, and some day we will have a huge market to capitalize on in our own back yard.

This is the fact that is being realized slowly, the local market offers great potential and opportunities, off course the local population might not be spend thrift as US market but the revenue from advertisement is there, no body would like to pass on such a huge population. Plus if you are successful in demonstrating you potential in Pakistan the road towards east (Gulf and Middle East) are always open, their culture closely matching ours and with abundant cash flow you can easily migrate some thing made for Pakistan for those countries.

So if you have an idea that solves a local issue or provides a facilitate our young and internet savvy upcoming generation try it out doing it locally is cheap, if you still have doubts go through the success stories of SeeNReport, rozee.pk and choopal.pk and others that i might have forgot

And again lots of Congratulations to the SeeNReport team not only for getting funded but for making all of us realize that local opportunities do exist and are up for grabs for who ever makes a try.