Deen Sheikh On the road less travelled.....

It would not be incorrect to say that we live in the age of social media, the effects of which can be seen very prominently in the world around us. Social media tools such as Micro blogging site Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have become a part of every day life and they have entirely changed the way millions  of us interact and engage with the wider world around us. Facebook in particular has been a real game changer with over a billion years world wide. Social media has provided an extremely effective medium of marketing and public relations for businesses both big and small as it allows them to participate in two feedback with their desired audiences. The real power of social media however lies in its ability to allow its users to not only communicate with multiple users, but also share, create and broadcast content with wider audiences and achieve mass penetration. The youth in particular has been a major driving force that has fueled and accelerated the growth of social...

  Very recently on a flight back from Lahore, I had the opportunity to interact with a seasoned entrepreneur. During that conversation, we did have a chat on business and the rules of the game, especially as far as service is concerned. The conversation ended with his golden advise that business is not just about making money but it also about building good relationships with all your stakeholders. The advise of the entrepreneur may not be something unique, it is something that every one who has ever attended business school can relate to, however what is really disappointing is a significant absence of efforts for relationship building in the service and hospitality sector in Pakistan, what makes it worse is that we as stakeholders (customers or recipients) have little or no expectations with regards to receiving efforts from the other for building and developing relationships. A lot of us have the everything goes, we are fine with what get attitude. I am at times...

FatBurger FatBurger FatBurger. That's right people, you read correctly, FatBurger is the name of the California based chain that recently opened up in our very own beloved city by the sea. A great personal achievement is that after a very long time Karachi beat Lahore to it when it came to the first Pakistani store of a foreign franchise. In the last many many years now, most foreign franchises have preferred Lahore and opened up in the northern city, owing either to the relatively better security situation in the city or because of Lahore's reputation as being the food capital of Pakistan. Without a doubt the city of Lahore is a food lovers paradise but our city of 20 million by the sea does not deserve to  be ignored like this. The last time we had something grace our city first from foreign shores was KFC in the mid to late 90's with its first store near NIPA in Karachi's Gulshan e Iqbal area. McDonald's the world's largest chain graced Lahore before ...

We live in an age of social media. All around us the buzz is all about social media and its impact on our world. It would not be wrong to label ourselves the social media generation with hundreds of millions of users worldwide for social media platforms and tools such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr Pinterest and Google plus. Though social media is not something that debuted in the last year or so, it has been around for over a decade. Even though Orkut back in the day was somewhat of a pioneer in Social Media, it wasn't until the advent of Twitter, YouTube (now owned by Google) and Facebook that the social media revolution really kicked off. Facebook has been the biggest player and the real game changer in the equation, from its humble beginnings in the Harvard dorm room of its founder Mark Zuckerburg, it has gone on to become not just the largest used social media site, but also one of the most visited websites of all time with over a billion users worldwide. These socia...