Chapter
Karachi: the mini-MBA’s largest chapter, 2014 to today
The mini-MBA in Karachi grew from a Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa pilot into Peace Through Prosperity’s largest single project: seven neighbourhoods surveyed and taught in 2014 and 2015, a second, larger project in 2016, partnerships with local organisations from 2018 onwards, and coaching visits that carried on for years afterwards.
The mini-MBA is four days of teaching followed by three months of coaching, and the design was already proven in smaller towns and cities before it was brought to Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city. What follows is what ran there.
Karachi in numbers
666 direct participants recorded so far, across four dated phases
direct participants, 2014 to 2022
Across the 2014–15 project, the 2016 project, the TCF pilot and SAF’s own reported total of 140. The first three are matched to named participant records; SAF’s 140 is self-reported by SAF, in its own 2022 funding proposal, and has not been matched to named records the same way.
first Karachi workshop
The start of a chapter still running today.
waves of delivery
PTP’s own team, 2014 to 2016; then partnerships with local organisations from 2018.
Each figure below belongs to one dated project or partnership; only the 666 above is a running total for Karachi.
2014
The mini-MBA in Karachi: seven neighbourhoods, surveyed before a single class was taught
Early in 2014 PTP’s field team began surveying street vendors and cobblers across Karachi, working towards a target of 400 completed surveys. They visited Qayyumabad, Sultanabad, Chakra Goth, Bilal Colony, Hijrat Colony, Korangi No. 2 and Bangali Para, building trust neighbourhood by neighbourhood after an earlier NGO had taken Rs200 from each vendor for a survey and never returned. The first Business Growth Workshop in Karachi ran from 11 June 2014, drawing on 275 of the people surveyed.
How that trust was built, area by area, is in Transforming the Landscape. The selection process is in Mini-MBA gearing up micro-entrepreneurs, and the project is introduced in Peace building through micro-entrepreneurship development.
2014 to 2015
1,498 lives changed in the 2014–15 project
Between June 2014 and February 2015, PTP’s first Karachi project ran the mini-MBA and its coaching with 214 direct participants across the seven neighbourhoods, plus an estimated 1,284 people affected indirectly through their households: 1,498 in total for this project alone. Later phases (2016, and the partnerships with SAF and TCF from 2018) are counted separately, above and in their own sections below.
direct participants, this project
Vendors, cobblers, barbers and snack sellers.
indirect beneficiaries, this project
Household members reached alongside them.
total for 2014–15
PTP’s own report recorded double-digit revenue and profitability growth, 15 new jobs and financial independence for 76% of beneficiaries, set out in 7 communities, 1,498 individuals impacted and announced in Building small businesses, livelihoods and peace at the same time. A mid-project update found average profit up 80% in that batch, in 1,498 lives changed for the better, recapped with a revenue and profit chart in 2015: a brief recap.
In their own words
From one pushcart to two
Sajid, a vegetable seller in Hijrat Colony, had been losing money for four years before the mini-MBA; within months he had grown from one cart to two. Jameel Ahmed, a barber in Chakra Goth, raised his daily profit from PKR 200-250 to PKR 250-400 and moved his children into private school. Sher Bahadur, a fruit seller in Qayyumabad for 14 years, used his savings to buy goats, which his wife then milked and sold locally. Khalid, a vegetable seller in Bangali Para, expanded into supplying other shops wholesale. Anwar Khan, a street cobbler in Qayyumabad, moved from mending shoes in the open to owning a shop over eight months, told in a short film.
Group workshops and peer networks
Keeping the cohorts talking to each other
Once a cohort finished its classes, PTP kept running group workshops across the areas it had already worked in. A combined workshop in Bilal Colony brought together about 48 traders from Bilal Colony and Basmallah Stop, led by project manager Abdul Rasheed and trainer Babar Waseem. A later Quarterly Peace Group Workshop at the Karachi Press Club drew traders from several neighbourhoods to hear from PTP’s top-performing participants, with women’s trainer Naira Parvez, Babar Waseem and Abdul Rasheed speaking alongside co-founder Kubair Shirazee. An earlier combined workshop for Sultanabad and Hijrat Colony produced three filmed testimonials.
PTP also ran 9Others dinners, a peer-lending format that started in Qayyumabad and was repeated in Korangi No. 2: at one dinner, traders pooled cash for a member in difficulty, and a fruit seller lent stock on credit instead.
The team, and a second project
More neighbourhoods, in 2016
Ammad Aslam joined PTP in May 2014 as its social media editor and moved into fieldwork in Karachi soon after. In 2016 PTP ran a second, larger project across more Karachi neighbourhoods than the first. Team leader Nasir Shah and team supervisor Mashkoor, who covered Hijrat Colony, Masan, Sultanabad and Raitti Line, wrote up what they saw; project manager Abdul Rasheed and trainer Babar Waseem led the classes, with local political and social workers sitting in on the final day.
participants trained and coached
average revenue growth
average profitability growth
2018 onwards
Partnering to scale: Rehri Goth and Korangi
From around 2018, PTP began partnering with established Karachi organisations to bring the mini-MBA to more neighbourhoods without growing PTP’s own team. With the Shahid Afridi Foundation (SAF), PTP trained and coached micro-entrepreneurs in Rehri Goth, a fishing community on Karachi’s coast, starting with a cohort from November 2020; by June 2022 the mini-MBA had been established in five SAF schools. With The Citizens Foundation (TCF), PTP ran a pilot mini-MBA cohort at the Korangi campus from 4 to 7 July 2022, followed by group coaching workshops that September and October, with a second cohort planned. Both partnerships followed the same shape PTP uses everywhere: teach the mini-MBA, coach for months afterwards, and train the partner’s own people to run it themselves over time.
TCF’s pilot cohort grew participants’ average revenue by 95% and average profitability by 98% over a four-month coaching period. SAF’s first cohort, coached in Rehri Goth from November 2020, grew participants’ average revenue by 4.64% and average profitability by 51.21% over a similar length of time. SAF has since expanded the mini-MBA into four more schools, but this original cohort is still the only one with matched before-and-after figures. SAF’s own 2022 funding proposal to Lufthansa puts its total reach at 140 micro-entrepreneurs trained across seven workshops in different Karachi locations, a self-reported figure, not yet matched to named participant records the way the 2014–15, 2016 and TCF figures above are. At TCF, Fiza, Manzoor and Tauqeer worked alongside PTP’s Haani J Khan, Asma Danish, Abdul Rasheed, Imran Siddique, Arsalan Siddique and M. Kazim to bring the programme to Korangi.
After the classes end
Coaching visits, and Karachi in later years
Coaching did not stop when the classroom sessions did. Muhammad Nawaz, in Chakra Goth, took months of weekly coaching visits before he saved enough to start a second business, in poultry. Haji Younis, a samosa and pakora seller in Korangi, opened a second stall and took on a helper on PKR 500 a day. Muhammad Anwar, who sold chana chaat for PKR 150-200 a day in 2014, now runs his own shop, earning PKR 600-800 a day.
Karachi work is still recorded years later: PTP’s 2023 annual report for Pakistan found stitching businesses in Wadoodia Muhallah, Karachi, reaching a 170.16% profit margin and embroidery businesses 91.71%, among 119 participants trained across Pakistan that year. Every cohort by place and date is listed under past programmes; the current shape of the programme is on the mini-MBA page.