GDG Live Pakistan hosted HERstory: Google IWD 2025, an online webinar that brought together industry leaders and government officials to discuss the digital empowerment of women in Pakistan. The event highlighted ongoing efforts to bridge the gender gap in technology and promote inclusive growth in the digital economy.

Google’s Vision for Women in Tech

In his keynote speech, Farhan Qureshi, Google Pakistan’s Country Director, reaffirmed Google’s commitment to enabling Pakistanis—especially women—on a global scale. “Google is working on initiatives to enable Pakistanis, especially women, on a global scale,” he stated. He outlined Google’s investments in digital literacy programs and collaborations with local partners to equip women with essential tech skills, ensuring they can thrive in an increasingly digital world.

Government’s Roadmap for Digital Inclusion

Federal Minister for IT & Telecommunication, Shaza Fatima Khawaja, underscored the government’s dedication to digital inclusion. She emphasized that artificial intelligence (AI) is not a threat to jobs but a tool to create an AI-enabled workforce across industries. “AI will not replace jobs; it will create AI-enabled people in all sectors,” she asserted.

Minister Khawaja detailed several key initiatives aimed at empowering women in tech, including:

• Digital Pakistan & ICT for Girls – Providing digital skills training for women.
• Smart Islamabad Project – Integrating smart technology for better accessibility.
• Digiskills Program – Offering free online courses to enhance digital literacy.
• Women-led Incubation Center – Supporting female entrepreneurs in tech and e-commerce.

She also highlighted that nearly 50% of Pakistani women now own a mobile device, showcasing a significant rise in digital adoption.

Industry Leaders Share Success Stories

The webinar featured inspiring contributions from successful women in tech, including:

• Tahreem Rasul – Senior Machine Learning Engineer.
• Kanwal Ahmed – YouTube creator and entrepreneur.
• Khadijah Shahzad – Creative freelancer.

Each speaker shared insights into their journey, emphasizing the importance of digital skills and mentorship in breaking barriers for women in the industry.

The Path Forward

The event concluded with a call for stronger collaboration between the public and private sectors to sustain and expand digital empowerment initiatives. The insights shared by Google and the government outlined a promising future where women play a central role in Pakistan’s digital economy, driving innovation and economic growth.

With continued investment in technology, education, and inclusive policies, Pakistan is making significant strides toward a more diverse and digitally empowered workforce.

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Alibaba Group that operates from China is one of the most famous e-commerce companies of China.
Recently, a delegation from Alibaba Group visited Pakistan. Before this the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met the Chairman of the Alibaba Group, Jack Ma at World Economic Forum 2017. There Jack Ma had shown great interest in investing in eCommerce of Pakistan.

Now, during the meeting with the Finance Minister of Pakistan, Mr. Ishaq Dar, and the delegation from China representing Alibaba Group confirmed that the Chairman of Alibaba Group, Mr. Jack Ma, is interested to start a new e-commerce platform in Pakistan.

The delegation was led Max Bittner. The meeting was held at Islamabad and other officials were also present at the meeting.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar in a meeting with the delegation of Alibaba group in Islamabad on Friday. PHOTO: PID

During their stay, the members of Alibaba Group developed a positive image of Pakistan regarding the efforts and contributions of Pakistan towards e-commerce and IT development. They were very impressed by the way Pakistan has made progress in the fields of IT, Telecom and Broadband penetration.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar shared that he believes that e-commerce has a great contribution towards economic development. He said that he believes in promoting small business so that these businesses can grow to a great level and can give maximum benefits to the country and its economy.

According to the Minister,

“e-commerce has been doubling in size every year and is projected to surpass US $ 1 billion in 2020. He also remarked that Pakistan has 3G, 4G technologies and more than 11% people are using mobile banking solutions for financial transactions.”

The Minister also said, Pakistan has an adequate ICT infrastructure in place for facilitating fast developing e-commerce sector and there was exponential growth in mobile broadband access to nearly 26 million people.

Expanding the e-commerce would promote socio-economic development and provide employment to many people including women.

We also heard, Alibaba group is interested in acquisition of Pakistan’s largest e-commerce store daraz.pk. Lets wait  for Alibaba Pakistan the big news in coming days soon.

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Alibaba Group Holding Limited is one of the global e-commerce giant. It seems quite interested in the information technology market in Pakistan. Why not? The information technology in Pakistan is growing rapidly and many young and talented people are getting associated with this field. This is making Pakistan a very HOT DESTINATION for investment.

Alibaba is also impressed with the growth of Pakistani economy and specially e-commerce sector, taking the advantage of the correct time and circumstanced Alibaba intends to invest in Pakistan. Before it does so, it is testing the response of the market by launching some of its ventures.

Though recently, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group met where they discussed about World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in which the premier invited Alibaba to explore the growing e-commerce opportunities in Pakistan, the new initiative has nothing to do with it.

It is not the result of meeting but an interest that has developed in Alibaba’s authorities to invest in Pakistani market after observing its current status.

Alibaba has already launched a UCWeb last year in Pakistan. It is a mobile internet company that provides mobile browsing service with the help of UC Browser. The initiative was launched formally.

There is another venture that is no yet formally launched but it has set its step in Pakistan and that is AliExpress. It is an e-commerce ancillary that works in the retail segment in different countries.

AliExpress seems to be a great success already. It has managed to bag 15,000 orders per day in Pakistan. The group keeps looking forward for more opportunities, which is the reason it has recently signed an agreement with local company. According to the agreement the local company intends to provide vendors for smooth operations in Punjab’s first and second-tier cities initially.

The training sessions and work on necessary infrastructure is yet not completed and is in process that is the reason AliExpress has not been launched in Pakistan formally.

Andrea Huang is the Mobile Business Group Head of Marketing in Emerging Markets of Alibaba. According to her UCWeb has acquired 25.3% market share in Pakistan, second after Google Chrome and Firefox.

Huang during an interview over Skype has said,

“We have decided to fully market our product here as we are successfully leading in China, India and Indonesia with a global customer base of 420 million active users. The immense growth in 3G and 4G connections in Pakistan, coupled with a population of over 190 million, was the biggest attraction for formally launching the group’s product.”

Huang also said during the interview,

“It is not easy to penetrate Pakistan’s market in the presence of other web browsers; the biggest challenge is to widen the user base and provide users the best available services within the browser.”

She further added,

“For this, we are investing in our product to keep finding the demand and better services. At present, we don’t have a formal office in Pakistan, but once we expand out of Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, we will hire a team and open up offices in Pakistan.”

The cloud computing technology was introduced by UC Browser. It became the first ever mobile browser to do so. They took this initiative back in 2004. Huang remained silent about the plans of authorities of UC Web that include Pakistan but she assured that they will keep investing in the upcoming years.

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eBay is one of the largest online shopping stores. The CEO of eBay, Devin Weing; has recently said that Pakistan is a ‘HOT DESTINATION’ and he is hopeful that a good profit can be made in Pakistan through online shopping stores and greater and better services can be provided.

He also said that Pakistan is one of fastest growing e-commerce markets in the world.

Devin has been reported to have said,

“It’s the fastest growing markets we have around the world. Anywhere where wealth is growing and technology is being adopted, e-commerce is being adopted like crazy.”

When he went live on Facebook, a question was raised about Pakistan’s prospects in online shopping space and about the newly introduced markets. To it he made the response declaring Pakistan as ‘Hot Destination’.

Pakistan no doubt is moving towards a better stage but there are still many products in international market that are not available for the people of Pakistan. This makes Pakistan a really suitable country to  introduce such online stores that provide products that are not available on shops. With the increasing hunger for new products Pakistan can benefit many investors. This is the reason the Mr. Devin made a prediction about the wealth expected to be generated in Pakistan through online shopping stores.

He was of the view that, “The success of online shopping in Pakistan is poised to change all that.”

Here it is important ti share that the interest in online shopping is increases and causing an increase in mobile adoption rates. The increase is estimated to have been in 3G and 4G users amongst Pakistanis. The rate was about 36 million and still continues.

This makes Pakistan a suitable and beneficial place for big international stores like Amazon, PayPal, eBay and many more to sow the seeds.

AliExpress is being used continuously and the recent Black Friday sales were great success. Big stores like Daraz made huge profits. Daraz claims to have made Rs. 1 Billion during the sale.

Another question was asked that if Pakistan is such a beneficial country than why is eBay not in Pakistan?

To this he answered, “Even though eBay did not have a version geared for buyers/sellers from Pakistan, the service was still extensively being used by Pakistanis on various eBay sites.”

At the end he made hinted that eBay is to launch in Pakistan sooner or later.

He said,

“We absolutely encourage you to shop, and we will get our goods and services in Pakistan for sure. Go and use eBay in Pakistan.”

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Amazon.com Inc. is planning to buy a Dubai-based online retailer Souq.com FZ for about $1 billion in a deal.

The news broke out when Middle East e-commerce site initially planned to sell a stake. This could be a mere rumor, but it has shaken the stoke market. Initially the news was about just selling a stake but then the news got expanded declaring that Amazon is interested to buy the whole of it.

A spokesman for Souq.com declined to comment. A representative for Amazon didn’t respond to calls and an e-mail seeking comment.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was given the responsibility of finding a buyer for a share of company by Souq.com. It was also heard that the company’s existing investors — Tiger Global Management and South Naspers Ltd. were also planning to sell their holdings some said that they are already in talks with buyers.

Souq.com is online retailer and sells about 1.5 million products to United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, according to its website.

During an interview Chief Executive Officer Ronaldo Mouchawar said, “The Company would be open to selling shares to the public in the future.”

No decisions have been made but as soon we get the news we will share it with all users.

Don’t know if the news is authentic or just another rumor but its strong enough to open your eyes wide.

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