Dining with 9 Entrepreneurs of Circumstances — A Karachi Dinner That Delivered
Entrepreneurs of circumstances are the informal economy’s invisible workforce: street cobblers, fruit vendors, hawkers, and barbers who trade twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, with no access to business networks, peer support, or formal financial services. Pakistan’s informal economy accounts for an estimated 36–40% of GDP and over 70% of total employment (ILO). These are not people on the margins of enterprise — they are its foundation. Peace Through Prosperity’s work begins here.
Another short trip to Karachi with a full on agenda; a conference to speak at, SCRUM & Kanban trainings to deliver, a Mini-MBA curriculum to review, patrons and board members to catch up with, bureaucracy to on-board, politicians to win over and plenty to catch up on.
All of that aside, the most interesting engagement had to be hosting 9others second dinner in Karachi, a dinner with a difference. The usual suspects at any 9others global dinner are tech heads, startups, lawyers, soon-to-be movers and shakers of a multitude of sectors — most using technology platforms as the basis of their empires to be, all meeting up with the common goal of gaining the aid of others for their own successes and extending their assistance to aid the success of others.
9others is undeniably an awesome concept and over the years has created a helpful and powerful community. It is about time the power of that network was introduced to entrepreneurs who need it the most: entrepreneurs of circumstances that Peace Through Prosperity (PTP) is engaged with. The question was whether a format built for tech founders could serve entrepreneurs of circumstances just as well.
Who Are Entrepreneurs of Circumstances?
Mobilising was a challenge, for our guests were alien to the concept of 9others as well as networking to help grow their businesses. These are individuals who work 12–14 hours a day, 7 days a week plying their trade on street pavements as cobblers, hawkers, fruit and vegetable vendors or street barbers. They get little time if any to network with their peers and have little appreciation for peer-sourcing solutions to their business challenges.
Having said that, Nasir Shah the SCRUM Master and team leader for the PTP field team, and Abdul Rasheed the project manager for the Mini-MBA programme, did a superb job at convincing and gathering 9 entrepreneurs of circumstances for the dinner.
On arrival our guests were amused at the principle of the invitation — it is rare for them to be invited to a restaurant without occasion. More amusing still was the notion that it would be beneficial for their businesses, most of which they have been struggling with for years if not longer. There was some element of mistrust: unlike the usual 9others dinners, as hosts we were picking up the tab — and if anything, these folks know there is no such thing as a free dinner.
Nasir, who also happens to be a linguist with 5 local languages in his toolkit, did well to set the scene and explain that we wanted nothing more than them to attend, try it out — and at worst they will be dined at our expense, and at best they will gain a peer network.
The 9Others Model Meets the Informal Economy
The 9others model — ten loosely curated entrepreneurs sharing one challenge and one success over dinner — has been deployed in Baghdad, Sierra Leone, Papua New Guinea, and Myanmar. What Peace Through Prosperity brought to Karachi was a straightforward adaptation: applying that same peer intelligence framework to the informal economy, to the traders and tradespeople that formal entrepreneurship networks have never reached. Grassroots entrepreneurship in Pakistan has never lacked talent or tenacity. It has lacked connection — and that is precisely the gap that entrepreneurs of circumstances face every single day.
The trades in attendance were four fruit vendors, one vegetable vendor, two juice vendors and two street cobblers — all from Qayyumabad in Karachi, Pakistan. To begin with our guests were trepidatious, then shy. Shehzad Khan, a 50-year-old fruit vendor, found the whole thing a little amusing — though there was more scepticism there than amusement. The rules were laid down: share your recent successes, your upcoming challenge, and let’s help each other overcome the challenges and learn from the successes of others.
What a £2.40 Day Taught Us About Success
It was a struggle to draw out successes — our guests saw none worthy of being shared — until Anwar, a 33-year-old street cobbler, broke the ice. He said he had a bumper day a couple of weeks ago when he managed to earn 400 rupees in a single day. That’s £2.40. That’s $4. And with that we had a benchmark for success, and the rest followed with their own tales of tremendous weeks, months and more.
The challenges part had to be curated. Some of our guests assumed that since there was a free dinner on offer there might also be free capital on offer — we had to interject and make it clear we were there to help them help each other, and there was no capital on offer. We could assist them in obtaining micro-finance loans, but only after they had completed the Mini-MBA programme and proven that they were capable of growing their businesses, cutting down on expenditures, developing new services and increasing their margins. With that established, the nature of the challenges being aired changed. Though they may seem insignificant to us, they are mammoth if we stand in their shoes.
With Katie and Matthew’s blessing, Peace Through Prosperity shall be hosting a 9others dinner for entrepreneurs of circumstances in Karachi every fortnight across the seven neighbourhoods where the Mini-MBA programme is being delivered, for the six selected street-based trades. You can learn more about 9others here, and about Peace Through Prosperity here.
Lastly, if you got value from what I have shared please consider giving back by contributing towards Peace Through Prosperity.