Venture capital and Pakistani information technology industry

Venture capital is financial capital provided to early stage, high risk, high potential, Growth start up companies. Venture capital is a branch of private equity. Venture capital funding was the main reason for the success of many internet companies. United States of America grew venture capitalists because of which Silicon Valley is what it today is. Another country is Israel that fostered its venture capital industry by providing many incentives to venture capital investments. Today there are as many as 70 venture capital funds in Israel and 220 international venture capital funds that actively invest in Israel. Israel’s thriving venture capital industry is the force behind booming high-tech industry.
According to many studies venture capital backed firms produces more jobs, and grow faster in revenue and exports.
Pakistan currently does not have enough private equity venture financing. Government can help venture capital investment by providing incentives to venture capital firms, government of Pakistan can also take initiative like what Israeli government took in 1993. Israeli government started “yozma” program. According to this program government offered many tax incentives as well as offered to double any investment with funds from government.
Pakistan has 20.43 million internet users in 2009 according to world factbook. The growth rate of internet users is one of the fastest in the world. Pakistan has huge potential for starting up internet companies. Till now Pakistan has many successful internet companies including rozee.pk, naseeb.com, tradekey.com, kalpoint.com etc.
Venture capital firms should grab this opportunity of investing in high-tech Pakistani companies as Pakistan has huge population. Although Pakistan has small proportion of skilled man power but still skilled man power is more than population of many European countries. There are many success stories of venture backed Pakistani firms like rozee.pk, 2B technologies, yEvolve limited, applicationXS limited, post amazers limited. Technology companies can also get funding from international venture capital firms like what rozee.pk did.