Muhammad Farooq Naseem started his entrepreneurial journey with the establishment of a television assembly plant that has since diversified into different businesses. With a turnover of $150 million, his DWP Group now employs around 5,500 people in its four business verticals: home appliances; MEP or mechanical, electrical, and plumbing services; cement; and information technology (IT) services.

“It was our collaboration with Samsung that threw us into a bit more prominence,” the founding chairman and chief executive officer of DWP Group told Dawn in an interview, reminiscing about how his “small company was discovered” by the Korean brand he helped establish in Pakistan back in 1999.

By the time a legal dispute forced him to exit his partnership with Samsung, he had already formed a new collaboration with one of the top, globally reputed Chinese home appliance manufacturers, Gree, to locally assemble a whole suite of consumer electronics.

“In the last five years, we have invested heavily in localisation that has created a very large value addition. We have complete manufacturing facilities because we are now component manufacturers for a lot of things,” Mr Naseem noted. “It has given us a big competitive advantage over our local competitors.”

Global evolution in the energy paradigm, the rise of digital technology and automation, and the extensive use of data could make or break countries like Pakistan in the near future

That said, the journey hasn’t been without difficulties, with the most formidable challenge being Pakistan’s recurring macroeconomic upheavals. The latest round of the ‘bust cycle’ that hit the country back in 2022 has been the worst he has ever seen.

“It was a........

© Dawn Business