IT GOES without saying that the concept of venture investments has positively proved its worth in the wake of remarkable growth and development in the modern world. Ranging from the ordinary sector to the science and technology, information, defence areas and even the space programmes have now started witnessing the major role of venture investments. Particularly, India, China, Korea and Japan are the rising nations who have registered a remarkable progress especially in the fields of information technology and science and technology through venture investments on a massive scale and the physical progress they have now achieve needs no words to explain. The idea of venture investments had hit the world around 30 years back when universities in developed states like United States, Britain, France and Germany devised their plans to sell their business and entrepreneurial projects to interested small and big entrepreneurs. This idea clicked as within no time they were successful in entering joint collaborations with mega business groups. However, in the case of Pakistan, materialising this initiative is still a distant dream as whatever steps have so far been taken are like a drop in the ocean. Presently, thousands of skilled Pakistani brains are associated with the world renowned business groups and have business proposals in the sectors particularly ICT RandD, higher education and science and technology, and are positively willing to come back to their homeland with established business feasibilities. But they could find hardly few investment projects (capital investments). The recent example of two leading US based Venture Capital firms – ePlanet Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) – providing funds to Naseeb Networks, speaks volumes of the trust placed in the potential of the Pakistan IT industry by foreign investors. Naseeb Networks is a leading provider of online recruitment (rozee.pk), social networking and related services in Pakistan. Similarly, the US has recently invested $500 million in Pakistans broadband and WiMAX infrastructure increasing the internet penetration upto 16 per cent. A reasonable number of firms do exist in Pakistan which could fetch investment uptil recent years, but this constitutes a very low percentage when we see our neighbouring state of India making huge progress by grabbing international investments. Pakistan, which is continuously facing brain drain, desperately needs to promote venture capital and private equity investments opportunities. The country has the potential to unleash funding of new profitable ideas in small and medium size entrepreneurial businesses for significant returns to investors. But all this demands a mature and professional approach. While the efforts of the government and CSF are laudable, the real impetus will come from the successful outcome of VC investments in companies.

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