US is providing $80 million to create multiple VC and PE funds in Pakistan. These funds will be run by professional fund managers who will be required to manage and raise additional money from other sources to start multiple funds. US Embassy in Islamabad told Express Tribune that they expect that "there will be substantial interest from local, regional and international investors”.



Polish Model:…

Negative stereotyping of Prophet Mohammad has been the preoccupation of generations of Western writers from the time of the Crusades to the

present day. Among those who have engaged in highly offensive portrayal of Islam's prophet are Italian poet-philosopher Dante Aligheri (1265-1321), Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos (1325-1450) and European "Enlightenment" leader François-Marie Arouet Voltaire (1694-1778).

More recently, there have been attempts by Salman Rushdie…

US venture investor Tim Draper, Swiss food giant Nestle, and American beverage titan Coca Cola are investing heavily in Pakistan's agribusiness.



Silicon Valley private equity investor Tim Draper, a well-known international venture capitalist, is quietly investing in Pakistan's agribusiness, the largest provider of food commodities in the Middle East, according to San Francisco Examiner.



The…

 "...a major battle the

west of the Beas would end in the destruction of the Indian Army and

thereafter allow the enemy (Pakistani) forces to push to the gates of

Delhi without much resistance." 1965 WAR-The Inside Story by R.D. Pradhan                                    

As Pakistanis honor the memory of  their 1965 war heroes on Defense of Pakistan Day today, let us review some snippets of how the war looked from the…

A spate of incidents targeting various minorities including Christians and Hindus as well as members of the Muslim Shia community have raised serious concerns in Pakistan.…

A team headed by Professor Sohail Khan, a British Pakistani researcher at Loughborough

University, won $60,000 second place prize for developing a

toilet that converts human waste into biological charcoal, which

can be burned, and clean water. The prize was announced on August 14, Pakistan's…

Indus Motor Company earned Rs. 4.3 billion in net income on sales of Rs. 75 billion in 2011-12, representing an increase 57% in net income and 25% in total revenue over previous year. The company that is 37.5% owned by Japan’s Toyota Motors sold over 55,000 cars during the financial year that ended on June 30, 2012, its highest ever for a single year. Both revenues and profits were the highest in the company’s history in Pakistan, according to…

Several prominent Indian journalists and writers have visited Pakistan in recent years for the first time in their lives.  I am sharing with my readers selected excerpts of the reports from Mahanth Joishy (USIndiaMonitor.com), Panakaj Mishra (Bloomberg), Hindol Sengupta (The Hindu), Madhulika Sikka (NPR) and Yoginder Sikand (Countercurrents) of what they saw and how they felt in the neighbor's home. My hope is that their stories will help foster close ties between the two estranged South…

As the West frets about population growth in the developing world on World Population Day today,  it's also important to understand the impact of growing obesity on the planet.



Asia has 61 per cent of the world's population but only 13 per cent of the world's weight. In contrast, Americans make up only five per cent of the world's population but account for a third of the world's weight due to obesity, according to a…

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt recently visited Pakistan and wrote the following post on GooglePlus after his return:

Pakistan, a Muslim country, has spent about half of its independent life under military governments. Today, Pakistani leadership celebrates the ruling coalitions success in almost finishing the first five year term in history (previous leaders…

There are now more Asians migrating to the United States than Hispanics,  reflecting a  decline in illegal

immigration as American employers increase their demand for

high-skilled workers. About 430,000 Asians, or 36 percent of all new immigrants, arrived in

the U.S. in 2010, according to the latest census data. That's higher than 370,000, or 31 percent, who were Hispanic.…

Commenting on corruption allegations against Rafi Peer Theater group in Pakistan, American Comic Stephen Colbert quipped that Sim Sim Hamara “was our most successful deployment of a puppet in the region since Hamid Karzai”. Colbert, in his inimitable satiric style, is…

Social media revolution is well underway in Pakistan. The new media are coming of age, and trumping the traditional commercial media. Many of the top journalists in the mainstream media knew about Arsalan's Iftikhar's massive corruption but it was through Youtube that the world first learned about it. The same pattern repeated itself when Duniya TV's incriminating off-air video…

Since the middle of the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution has transformed the world. Energy-hungry machines are now doing more and more of the work at much higher levels of productivity than humans and animals who did it in pre-industrial era.  In recent years, the rapid growth in computers and mobile phones spawned by the Information  and Communications Technology (ICT) revolution has further increased demand for energy. Currently somewhere between 5-10% of 

electrical…

Hundreds of Pakistani-American entrepreneurs met on Saturday, June 2, 2012 at Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum for this year's annual conference called OPEN Forum held each summer. It's organized by the Organization of Pakistani-American Entrepreneurs (OPEN) in Silicon Valley.  The conference had a large number of sponsors, including dozens of

Silicon Valley companies founded or managed by Pakistani-Americans.…

As of 2010, there are 380 out of every 1000 Pakistanis age 15 and above who have never had any formal schooling. Of the remaining 620 who enrolled in school, 22 dropped out before finishing primary school, and the remaining 598 completed it. There are 401 out of every 1000 Pakistanis who made it to secondary school. 290 completed secondary school  while 111 dropped out. Only 55 made it to college out of which 39 graduated with a degree.…

The U.S. Census Bureau  has recently reported that the United States has reached a historic tipping point -- with Latino,

Asian, mixed race and African American births constituting a majority of

births for the first time. Minorities made up about 2 million, or 50.4%, of the births in the

12-month period ending July 2011. The

latest figure was up from 49.5% reported in the 2010 census.…