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ISLAMABAD: Pakistani expatriates living in Saudi Arabia have hosted a networking event in Riyadh for Pakistani tech companies, which participated in the recently concluded LEAP 2025 tech conference, in a bid to enhance Pakistan’s IT exports to the Kingdom, the organizers said on Friday.
The fourth edition of LEAP, recognized as Saudi Arabia’s award-winning global technology event, opened on Feb. 9 and will continued till Feb. 12, for which entrepreneurs, investors and startups converged in Riyadh from around the world to present their innovative products and tech solutions.
This year, Pakistan had one of the largest delegations ever at LEAP, with over 100 tech companies and more than 1,000 delegates participating in the four-day event, which offered Pakistani firms a platform to collaborate with stakeholders, explore business opportunities and showcase Pakistan’s diverse IT exports, including software development, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, fintech, gaming and robotics.
On Friday, Majlise Pakistan, a professional forum of Pakistanis based in Saudi Arabia, said it had hosted the networking event to help these Pakistani IT firms and professionals with business development, talent requirement, collaboration and join-ventures in the Kingdom.
“Saudi-based Pakistani investors, businessmen and professionals vowed to collaborate with new IT companies entering the emerging market of the KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia],” Majlise Pakistan Patron-in-Chief Saqib Zubair said in a statement.
“Pakistani entrepreneurs are also willing to invest in Pakistani companies and startups along with their Saudi partners to enhance the footprint of Pakistani companies in the KSA.”
Pakistan recorded the highest-ever monthly IT exports of $348 million in Dec. 2024, up by 15 percent year-on-year and 12 percent month-on-month, according to official data.
Tufail Ahmed Khan, president of the Pakistan Freelancers Association (PAFLA), said Pakistani IT entrepreneurs and companies could provide practical insights to Pakistani investors coming to the Saudi market due to their experiences and networking.
“Expatriate Pakistanis are well aware of the policies and authorities of the host country, which are very important for new entrants to adopt for settling and growth,” he added.
Pakistanis are the second-largest expatriate community in the Kingdom, with over 2.5 million living and working in Saudi Arabia, according to Pakistani authorities. These Pakistani workers serve as top source of remittances to the South Asian country.
Saad Shah, CEO of the Hexalyze IT consultancy firm, said Pakistan’s professional community could provide a strategic partnership to Pakistani IT and tech companies for setting up operations and development of business in Saudi Arabia.
“Pakistani IT companies could hire IT professionals residing in Saudi Arabia as consultants and employees to scale up their businesses in the host country rather than continuing with the costly option of relocating staff from Pakistan,” he suggested.

KARACHI: A sign hanging on a tree reads: “We do not have Wi-Fi. Talk to each other. Pretend it’s 1995.”

This is Mazi Cafe, set up in the backyard of an old house in Pakistan’s commercial capital of Karachi as a haven for people eager to spend more time off the digital world, reduce screen time and establish real-life contact. There is no Internet connectivity and visitors are encouraged to have conversations over a cup of coffee or tea, or to read books from the cafe’s collection. 

The setting is also quite serene and adds to the cafe’s nostalgic charm: trees towering over a dimly lit backyard in an old house built five decades ago by the family of the owners, Asif Jalil, a doctor, and his wife Aqsa, who opened the cafe in October last year. 

The Jalils say the cafe, whose name means ‘the past’ in the Urdu language, is more than a cafe but has evolved into a community hub for people of all age groups seeking to disconnect briefly from the commotion of Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, with a population exceeding 20 million.

“The idea was generated by both of us because we both, as a couple, loved coffee,” Aqsa told Arab News. “When we would sit in this backyard of ours, we thought why not create a place where we cannot use mobile phones and instead of that, we can talk to each other and we can always sit in a peaceful and calm environment and just look at the trees and hear the noise of the birds chirping.”

Aqsa said it really bothered her that people always took pictures of their meals to share with others on social media, which inspired her to create a space where people could put their phones away as they enjoyed coffee and chatted. 

“They automatically just put their mobile phones in their bags or in their pockets, and they just talk to each other when they are here,” she said.

“We have customers of all age groups at our cafe and surprisingly the younger generation are more interested to not use mobile phones than the older generation.”

The coffee is also great, said Jalil, who sources beans from Redberry Roasters, a high-end coffee bean and equipment supplier in the eastern city of Lahore.

“We have probably one of the best machines, one of the best grinders, and one of the best baristas in Pakistan,” he said. “I just happen to be lucky that I have a combination of all these three.”

There is also a collection of books to read if you happen to come alone. 

“If someone doesn’t have a companion, we have company for them, which is a bunch of books,” Jalil added. “So we have fiction, non-fiction, politics, biography, pretty much everything.”

The response has been surprisingly positive, with patrons describing the cafe as a much-needed relief from an ever-connected life full of notifications.

Arham Lodhi, a 21-year-old computer science student, described Mazi Café as a “refreshing departure” from conventional coffee shops.

“This café is different from others in the sense that its ambiance is quite natural. If you look at other cafés, they don’t have this kind of atmosphere, most of them are renovated and modern these days,” he said. 

“But this place has an aesthetic that brings back old memories.”