Owais Mughal
Measuring success is a relative term. A type of success where most people seem to agree is the success in one’s profession. Pakistan’s public universities and colleges, inspite of their little known world status, have repeatedly produced people who have excelled at all world forums. We have one such recent success to report where members of Pakistani diaspora; all with education from a public university of Pakistan; have excelled in their profession internationally.
The sucess story is of a hi-tech company in US which went public yesterday and got listed at NASDAQ. The Company’s name is Cavium Networks. It was co-founded in 2000 by Raghib Hussain, a graduate from NED University of Engineering and Technology Karachi. After the initial set-up, Raghib was joined by Amer Haider and Imran Badr; also the graduates of NED; who helped in establishing the marketing and software departments for the company respectively.
While many years of hardwork brought the success to these gentlemen and their team, the point to be noted is their roots of technical skills and education which was imparted to them in public institutions of Pakistan. I read it at PASHA (Pakistan Software Houses Assosiation) website that it is the story of people who are making it big from the corridors of NED university to Wall Street.
Up until 18-20 years ago, the three main characters of our success story, probably oblivious of each other’s existence, were studying at three different Government owned pre-engineering colleges of Karachi. 
Raghib went to Karachi’s Delhi Science College.
Photo to the left is a satellite image of Delhi College Karachi.
Amer Haider went to DJ (Dayaram Jethmal) Science college and Imran Badr went to Malir Cantt college. Good grades in their HSC exams got these gentlemen an admission into a public sector university (NED). Raghib was two years senior than Amer Haider and Imran Badr and went on to graduate as a Computer Systems Engineer in 1993.Amer Haider graduated as a Mechanical Engineer and Imran as an Electrical Engineer in 1995.
Despite graduating from the same university the paths of these three?gentlemen were still very different. Raghib started his career working at Zelin (Pvt.) Ltd., and then ITIM Associates in Karachi before moving to US.
Amer Haideralso started his technical and management career in Karachi with Wavetech and other local concerns before moving to the US.
Imran Badr worked in Karachi for 4 years with local companies and Reuters before moving to the US.
In US the newly founded company brought these gentlement together and the talent produced by Pakistan’s public sector educational institutes blossomed. Today Raghib is the company’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and VP for Software Engineering. Amer Haider is Director of Strategic Marketing and Ecosystem Development and Imran Badr is the Lead Software Architect.
In the photo above the three gentlemen standing from L to R are Amer Haider, Imran Badar and Raghib Hussain
Along the way,few more NEDians have been joined the team; specifically Faisal Masood, Syed Saadullah Hussain in Software and Sabahat Ashraf the lead technical writer. The total work force strength of the company has now grown up to 177.
Yesterday was a big day in this company’s history as it went public and we wish all the stakeholders good luck. We would also like to hear more stories of succes from you where Pakistani diaspora coming from Public institutions have done well in their profession. Please share your thoughts and experiences below.
Acknowledgements: Special thanks to iFaqeer who provided me with background material and two photos for this article.
iFaqeer, Sikandar: I am working in a high-tech US company’s R&D center in Pakistan. The company has its development centers in India as well as in Pakistan. The engineering cost in Pakistan is half than that in India and the company is greatly appreciative of the performance of Pakistani engineers.
When this US company with all its executives from US can have an R&D center in Pakistan, why Cavium Networks can’t have. I hope Cavium people will think of opening its next offshore R&D center in Pakistan.
I also want to mention that folks are missing the basic point here. What makes Cavium Networks unique for Pakistan and NED is that it is the first company in hi-tech sector which went public and had Pakistani Founder from NED.
Jinni, you are confused. It is equally an Indian and Pakistani success story. As I said earlier Raghib and Syed Ali are the ONLY two FOUNDERS. Syed is business leader (CEO) and Raghib is the technology leader (CTO). If you live in Silicon Valley you will realize that people here think above religious and national difference. This is one of the key reasons for their success.
Qaisrani, the basic principal of business is to make the decisions in the best interest of the business. I know Cavium team and they will never make decisions with personal preferences. This is one of the key reasons that Cavium is a successful company. I am also aware that Raghib has funded at least three independent R&D houses in Pakistan in three different product areas with his personal money and not associated with Cavium Networks. Note that it is a matter of discipline to keep business interests independent from personal preferences.
Kamala, you are comparing glass with diamond. There is no comparison between Wordwalla and Cavium Networks. I am not saying that Wordwalla was a complete flop but its exit was more of an asset sale where as Cavium Networks achieved the highest success a startup can achieve which is a successful
IPO. You probably missed their presentation at retailroadshow.com and have not gone through their website. Today, Cavium Networks has a market cap of about $700million. Cavium Networks is not only the leader in
security sector but is also a leading supplier of “the state of the art technology” to “Who-is-Who” in the Networking and Communication Industry.
Desichef, you have a good point but do you know that most successful people are very busy and endowment funds that alumni members contribute to are a result of independent organization’s campaign. I hope NED Alumni can do something like that. I have no doubt most of these successful engineers will contribute. Do you know that Raghib is also one of the original founders and supporter of Koshish Organization, a non-profit organization focused to providing educational resources to people in the less privileged parts of the world? check http://www.koshish.org for their projects in Pakistan.
There is a big confusion in this artical. No offense to the person who provided this information but he seems to be biased towards Amer Haider and Imran Badr. I know this company right from the first day and I know that Syed Ali and Raghib Hussain are the only Founders. Other two folks mentioned in the artical did not even join the company until after funding. We should pay some respect to the founders. For those of you who do not know, founders are the original people who start the company and most of the time work initial months without any pay. These are the original visionaries and take most risk and therefore deserve a big credit for the success.
I wonder why the company does not have any offshore offices in Pakistan but rather in India ?
I think that you raise teh exact right issue here… there are actauly lots and lots of sucessful Pakistanis all over teh world and in Pakistan itself but we really do not have a tradition of giving back to our institutions… My respect for these guys will happen when I see them giving back something to their country
adil