From an employee in Paris to an employer in Karachi

Butt shuns rewarding job in France, founds logistics firm in Pakistan.

KARACHI:

Can someone, in the right state of mind, resign from a job, which pays €175,000 a year or €15,000 a month, to start his own business in Karachi – well known for its unsafe business environment?

And that, too, when he doesn’t belong to a business family or have a family business and when he is posted in Paris, arguably the world’s most romantic city, and travels to a couple of countries every week as part of his job.

My answer to these questions would have been a straight ‘No’, hadn’t I met Abid Butt, founder and chief executive of e2e (end-to-end) Supply Chain Management, a Karachi-based logistics company.

It must have been a bold decision back then as Butt, 30 at that time, was working for Geodis, France’s leading logistics’ company, and was married and had a child.

Six years later, Butt’s company, which he and his friend started by investing Rs1 million each, grossed Rs6.5 billion in annual revenues, proving the risk was well worth it.

The LUMS graduate, who also holds an MBA from Insead – one of the world’s leading business schools – got a perfect exposure to the international logistics industry during his two years at Geodis.

Butt founded e2e in February 2006 to tap what he foresaw was a “growing global market for movement of goods”. His international expertise helped e2e grow its topline by a massive 1,918% between 2008 and 2010.

As a result, e2e was ranked Pakistan’s fastest growing company by AllWorld Network, an international ranking that highlights growing companies in emerging markets to expand entrepreneurial economy.

“I always knew I can’t work for others for my whole life,” Butt told The Express Tribune. He said he encourages others to go for entrepreneurship using his favourite quote – Pan ki dukan ho, apni ho.

“There is unlimited upside for entrepreneurship in terms of economic gains,” Butt said, adding, “If the business clicks, there is no limit to how much you can earn.”

However, the success didn’t come easily as there were upsets and challenges that Butt had to survive to get where he stands today.

While working with Geodis, Butt had met with a shipping tycoon in 2005 during a visit to Pakistan. In that meeting, the latter offered him work, which Butt turned down.

“He could not afford me anyway,” Butt said referring to his salary at Geodis. The shipping tycoon then pitched the idea of creating a new company on a partnership basis.

Butt resigned from Geodis and started the new company End-to-End Logistics in May 2005. “I invested Rs6 million and he invested Rs9 million,” he said, refusing to disclose his partner’s identity.

The company recorded its first profit within six months, he said, but he and his partner developed differences. “I realised I could not work with him because of similar issues I faced in the past. He was showing too much authority.” Eventually, the partnership ended.

Butt’s partner intimidated him, saying he would ruin his career as the tycoon was controlling 50% of the total shipping business.

Butt’s friend, who had a freight forwarding company, advised him to start a new company and avoid his partner’s threat. In February 2006, the two friends partnered and started e2e Supply Chain Management from a one-room office in Zamzama.

Given Butt’s friend also had contacts in the shipping business, e2e was able to get some business. “We got initial boost from shipping by air and sea,” Butt said. They started developing good terms with shipping lines and got more business.

Starting from four employees, e2e now employs a workforce of 400 people. With 700 customers – both national and multinational companies – e2e has become a logistics giant, managing the entire pharmaceutical and textile sectors.

While investors are skeptical of investing in Pakistan, Butt had a different approach. He wanted to work in the market he understands the best.

“While at Geodis, I realised how local companies were winning over big firms in eastern European countries,” Butt said. That’s when he started thinking about Pakistan and what’s missing there.

In Pakistan, shipping companies were only shipping, trucking companies were only trucking, he said. There was no warehousing as such, “that’s when I thought about a company to do all of this and the name end-to-end (e2e) was coined.”

With its end-to-end strategy, the company is taking an initiative to solve supply chain problems facing the agriculture sector.

Currently, 40% of the country’s agricultural produce is lost because of bad logistics, Butt said. The e2e team is experimenting with a system to get produce from farms to markets with only three to four percentage of wastage, he added.

Responding to a question about e2e’s future, Butt said, “My mission is to make e2e not only the number one logistics company in Pakistan but also to make it number one logistics company in South and Central Asia.”

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