fireside | Dr. Umar Saif

Mr. Khuram Rahat, Director Business Development, Data as a Service & Cloud at Telenor Pakistan at Telenor hosted Dr. Umar Saif for a daftarkhwan Fireside. Dr. Umar Saif lived up to the legend: an enthusiastic and unfiltered Umar talked about his two biggest achievements as the Director PITB, his work as an entrepreneur himself and even mentioned a few major things the start-up ecosystem is lacking. Most importantly, he infused all present with an energy and mission to move the needle.

Khuram and Umar are old time colleagues and present time friends, so the whole talk had small inside jokes with a mix of serious ventures and future progress. Umar very passionately talked about two projects he successfully managed to execute as the director of PITB. He talked in detail about the work that went into by his team to digitise Punjab police. When I say Punjab police I mean traffic, motorway and in city police — the whole gang. For the general public this looked like an overnight project but as Umar came down to the details he explained the mechanics of the old system, plus the new plan he introduced in order to digitise the whole system. He explained how our police are now equipped to tackle a crime scene even with a partial print. I mean even with the full thumb sometimes my office biometric doesn’t work but Punjab police is equipped to track me with a partial print. Pretty impressive!

The other project Umar talked about was the project he did for the healthcare sector. The work with BHQ and THQ’s and their digitisations. He then furthermore pointed out the problem the people were facing with basic health units. They were everywhere but weren’t occupied with the right apparatuses nor human resources. With a few laws he successfully tackled the problem and within a few months after the law’s introduction there were more than a thousand doctors lined up for BHU’s.

On an ending note both the gentleman talked about the start-up ecosystem and how the government needs to make a fund of funds that up shorts foreign VCs who invest in Pakistan.

This was all in all a very insightful talk between two self-made, successful individuals that, at least for me as an audience member, opened our eyes to a key fact: it’s not the idea that works, it’s the execution. To watch the full discussion, check out the daftarkhwan youtube channel at Fireside | Dr Umar Saif