Bucking trends, Teradata invests in Pakistan

CTO believes Pakistanis are more agile with technology than Indians.

KARACHI: Pakistan was not on the radar of global technology companies back in the day when they rushed into India in search of affordable and competent human resources.

But Teradata was an exception. An American company, which provides analytic data solutions like integrated data warehousing, big data analytics and business applications, Teradata invested heavily in Pakistan despite reluctance from within the company, according to Chief Technology Officer Stephen A Brobst.

“I was one of the people pushing for (investing in Pakistan). Everybody was running to India, which is bigger and certainly more advanced technologically. But Pakistanis are more agile with technology compared to Indians,” he told a select group of journalists on Monday.

The first client of Teradata in Pakistan was the government itself. It helped the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) build a repository of data for all citizens, which is now being used for multiple purposes.

With a staff of over 500 people in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, Teradata now maintains a “significant presence” in Pakistan, says Brobst.

“Almost all the telecom companies, major banks and beverage companies are our clients. If you think of a company, which has lots of customers and lots of data, it is probably a Teradata client,” he said, while refusing to share actual revenues the company generates from Pakistan every year.

Teradata’s revenues from its global operations in 42 countries were $2.3 billion in 2011. The company’s website says the number of its implementations worldwide is in excess of 2,600.

“The number of Teradata implementations in Pakistan is in tens, not hundreds. We target only the largest banks, telecoms, airlines, etc,” he says.

But have Teradata’s revenues from Pakistan been tapering off because profits of both telecoms and banks are no more increasing as rapidly as they were a few years ago?

“Don’t confuse their revenue growth with our revenue growth. When the times get tough, they need analytics even more,” Brobst observes, adding the years following the global financial crisis, which wreaked havoc on big banks, were Teradata’s best growth years as far as its clients from financial services are concerned.

“When everything is going well, nobody has to do anything different. It’s when the times are tough, they need to get smarter. And to get smarter, you need data. So tough times are generally good for our business,” he adds.

Brobst says businesses that are highly competitive in nature – such as telecommunications and banking in Pakistan’s case – generate revenues of analytics companies like Teradata.

“I have friends in Pakistan who have three SIM cards and they rotate them within a single handset. It’s not something done in most economies. That’s extreme competition, and that’s very good for us,” he says.

Teradata also manages its Afghanistan and Bangladesh operations from Pakistan. “We are focusing on growing Bangladesh now. Sri Lanka is a potential next step. We’re doing some business in Afghanistan already, but it’s not nearly as mature as Pakistan,” he says.

Brobst is one of the 12 Americans appointed to Barack Obama’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, which is tasked with giving recommendations on where and how the government should make investments to improve the quality of life for American citizens.

Citing his experience of serving on the council, he says the use of data to improve the quality of healthcare is insufficient in both Pakistan and the United States. “Healthcare costs are increasing faster than GDP, and having sophisticated data is the only way to have higher quality healthcare at a low cost,” he says.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 26^th, 2012.