Maria took a final glance at the company accounts, then closed her laptop. On New Year’s Eve of 2022, she had mixed emotions reflecting on the journey of the past two years. In just fifteen days, it would be Merafuture's two year anniversary as a registered company. 2020 and 2021 were anything but normal for the world, and it was no different for Merafuture. In August 2021, after struggling for the first year and a half, the company began to show .....more

On New Year’s Eve of 2018, Amjad Dar, head of Brics Online, is considering alternatives going forward for operating Brics Online, a business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce arm of Brics Pakistan (Brics). The main decision to be taken is whether Brics Online should be operated centrally (through a dedicated warehouse) or merged with stores to allow for decentralized operations. Centralized operations in the first year of Brics Online produced considerable .....more

In 2022, the manager of Hyundai Nishat Motor (Private) Limited was ambitious to expand the company in Pakistan and continue its hard-earned growth. His first step was determining whether the expansion plan was worth it. But how could he estimate the cost of equity of a privately held firm? Although the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and dividend discount model (DDM) were most commonly used to calculate the cost of equity, neither of those models .....more

Over a decade ago, Jazz, Pakistan’s largest data operator, embarked on a transformative journey toward fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within its organizational culture. Spearheaded by the vision of the chief executive officer and supported by a dedicated leadership team, Jazz undertook initiatives to create a gender-inclusive workplace. The organization introduced programs to support married women, women with children, and women .....more

On January 2, 2018, the chief executive officer of a private company in Karachi, Pakistan, Imaam Spinning Mills (Imaam), was planning to expand the company’s product line and enter the weaving business by setting up a new weaving plant. He asked his chief financial officer to conduct a financial evaluation financial evaluation of the project. To do so, she needed to calculate the weighted average cost of capital, using the comparative method to calculate .....more

On March 17, 2018, the founder and owner of Memon Lubricants, a Shell Pakistan Limited distributor located in Sukkur, Pakistan, was trying to find the best recruitment process to hire a new sales team. Memon Lubricants had just opened a second location in Khairpur, approximately 30 kilometres south of Sukkur. Several constraints that affected the process included a tight budget, limited availability of skilled and qualified candidates, and pressure .....more

The state of Uttar Pradesh was India’s leading producer state of mentha. The state’s small and medium-sized enterprises and trade entities were involved in the processing, distillation, crystal manufacture, and export of mentha. After 2017, there had been a deep decline in mentha oil futures trading, which wiped out liquidity and led to several market participants withdrawing from the Multi Commodity Exchange of India Limited (MCX). The MCX had long .....more

A new entrepreneur planning to start a new exports and/or imports business is confronted with the issue of managing and mitigating various risks in international trade. Risks are inherent to any business, be it domestic or international. However, when business becomes international, the dimensions, complexities, and quantum of risks get amplified. This technical note discusses the nuances of various risks faced by the exporters, such as; credit risk, .....more

Emaan Modaraba, a Shariah compliant publicly traded modaraba based in Pakistan, made an investment in shares of Indus Motor Company Limited, a listed company assembling Toyota vehicles, in July 2020 – whose shares were designated to be Shariah Compliant and included in the Pakistan Stock Exchange’s KMI-All Share Islamic Index. In August 2020, Indus’ annual report disclosed that the company increased its short-term investments in interest-bearing instruments .....more

In February 2021, the owner of Anwal Gas Traders, a liquefied petroleum gas distribution company based in Sakesar, Khushab District, in the province of Punjab, Pakistan, was considering whether to invest in expansion. It would be the first significant expansion for the company since its founding in 1998. Based on data provided by a consultancy firm performing capital budgeting techniques, the company would integrate backward to take advantage of perceived .....more