Muhammad Umar Waqas
Pakistan’s IT sector may be celebrating record export numbers, but according to Mazher Noor Muhammad, the country is ignoring a far more dangerous issue: the lack of digital adoption within its own economy.
Speaking on the future of Pakistan’s digital landscape, Mazher Noor Muhammad said public conversations around the IT industry have remained stuck on the same themes for years; exports, freelancers, PayPal, brain drain, and IT parks, while the real structural problem continues to go unnoticed.
“We have spent fifteen years optimizing the supply side of our IT industry,” he said. “We trained developers, built freelancers, created technology zones, and chased foreign clients, but we almost completely ignored the demand side at home.”
Mazher Noor Muhammad leads Digiown, a Karachi-based digital marketing and digital transformation company that works closely with startups and SMEs across Pakistan. Drawing from his experience in the field, he argued that millions of local businesses still operate with outdated systems despite generating healthy revenues.
“Pakistan has more than five million SMEs contributing significantly to the economy, yet most still run on paper,” he said. “The textile exporter tracks orders through WhatsApp screenshots, the auto-parts trader manages inventory in registers, and clinics still rely on handwritten prescriptions.”
According to him, the issue is not poverty, but the absence of a functioning domestic digital market. He believes Pakistan’s business ecosystem has failed to create trust, awareness, and accessibility around digital transformation for small and medium enterprises.
“Every day we meet business owners who do not have a Google Business Profile, cannot interpret a Meta Ads dashboard, and have never considered SEO a serious investment,” he explained. “Many are also discouraged after bad experiences with unqualified freelancers or unreliable agencies.”
He added that for many small businesses, a single failed experience with a digital service provider is enough to push them away from technology adoption for years. As a result, traditional business owners continue relying on manual operations despite increasing internet penetration and smartphone usage across the country.
Mazher Noor Muhammad warned that this lack of digitization is damaging Pakistan on two fronts. Local businesses are losing competitiveness against regional markets like India, Bangladesh, and the GCC, while Pakistani software houses, SaaS startups, and digital agencies struggle because there is little local demand for digital products and services.
“We have built an export-only IT industry on top of a domestic economy that still runs on paper,” he stated. “If even 30 percent of our SMEs went digital, Pakistan could unlock a multi-billion-dollar local technology market.”
According to him, the country’s digital economy cannot sustainably grow if local businesses remain disconnected from technology. He argued that Pakistan’s startups are forced to chase international clients from day one because the domestic market remains too underdeveloped to support innovation at scale.
“The irony is that we have a generation capable of building world-class digital products, but very few local businesses are actually using them,” he said.
Mazher Noor Muhammad emphasized that solving the crisis does not require more conferences, expos, or technology zones, but practical reforms aimed at enabling SMEs to digitize confidently and affordably.
He called on institutions such as PSEB, P@SHA, and SBP to treat SME digitization as a national economic priority. He also stressed the need for transparent rating systems for digital agencies and freelancers so that business owners can identify reliable service providers.
“SMEs should not feel like they are gambling every time they hire a digital partner,” he said.
He further highlighted the importance of accelerating Raast-based merchant onboarding and simplifying online payment systems for small businesses.
“The freelancer payment debate matters, but the bigger issue is that many local businesses still cannot seamlessly accept online payments or operate digitally,” he added.
Highlighting gaps in education, Mazher Noor Muhammad criticized the way digital disciplines are treated in Pakistan’s universities and training institutions.
“Digital marketing, data analytics, and e-commerce operations must be treated as serious career disciplines, not weekend bootcamp skills,” he said.
Concluding his remarks, Mazher Noor Muhammad stressed that Pakistan’s digital future depends not only on exporting technology, but on helping local businesses embrace it.
“The next chapter of Pakistan’s digital economy will begin when the kiryana store, the clinic, the tailor, and the trader finally come online and when they do, Pakistan’s digital industry must be ready to serve them.” Mazher Noor Muhammad, CEO & Founder of Digiown tells The Financial Daily.
