Exclusive Interview with Haroon Kanth – Country Head Teradata Consulting
Tell us about yourself, how did you reach there
I’m Haroon Kanth, Country Head Teradata Global Consulting Center Pakistan. I come with 20+ yrs of business and technology consulting experience. I am where I am due to my strong faith in my ability and divine help, love what I do and people around me and strong passion to do better and make a difference.
How do you see Technology is changing our Lives
It’s the enabler in everything we do in our lives from basic communication to as complex as building and maintaining relationship. It is inevitable to see any activity where technology will not be a key enabler. What we need to worry about it the exponential impact it has on time and value.
What are your best accomplishments
I have learned we all are positively different but we lack the patience to understand each other without bias. Patience and humility with downgraded egos can only help us collaborate and live in harmony.
What is Disruption for you?
Change of any sort is disruption especially if it effects your daily activity. It can range from having a changed functionality of your car indicator to gauging your customer sentiment using new data insights.
What is the future of E-Commerce you see in Pakistan
Its Booming. It has to have improved feature description, timely delivery, warranty claims and refunds
What is your Vision & Goal
Live to inspire human being and make this world a better place
How can we become a digital country?
The government needs to lead the change. The rest will fall into place.
What inspires you?
My faith.
How do you see Industry Academia gap?
It’s big built on huge egos on both sides. If we need to progress the guards have to be lowered and collaboration has to start NOW.
How do you see Startups in Pakistan?
They are the only seeds of innovation in Pakistan. Our ecosystem needs to mature to attract the significant game changing idea startups with regulatory framework around investments and IPR.
What should Government take steps to make country digital
The government needs to start from self.
Why businesses fails in early stage in Pakistan?
Business fail everywhere in early stages. This is normal. We need to learn to fall to rise up …. Success is s struggle and failure is the water for its growth.
What is the future of online selling in Pakistan?
It has a high potential with internet and smartphone penetration increasing across Pakistan. We are under utilizing the potential of cell phone penetration in Pakistan.
Why we don’t prefer local vendors in software & ERP
This is tricky and controversial but I will attempt. Top 3-4 reasons.
Off the shelf solution are preferred and our companies don’t have mature, scalable and industry specific tried and tested solutions unfortunately.
Govt projects are huge and require financial guarantees which become difficult to provide.
Our local Tech sector is not large enough yet. We find rare collaborations among local companies to build JVs for large project deliveries.
PPRA rules are complex.
What is the future of Cloud Computing in Pakistan?
It is THE future. It ahs made access to tech and infrastructure easy and scalable.
What are the 5 top things you think we are behind from rest of the world?
- Regulatory framework eg IPR, data privacy laws etc.
- Ease of doing business
- Specialized technology zones
- Industry academia collaboration
- Govt spending to enable itself technologically
What are the best 5 things you think we are better from other countries
- Cost effective
- English Language skills
- Technically strong with shorter learning curve
- Amazing culture
- Adaptive
How do you see youth of Pakistan?
A ticking bomb. We have a healthy 44% population between age of 15 – 45. This is prime age to learn and earn. We need to skill them and groom them NOW to become contributors or they will become liability financially with other negative impact on society.
