Logging In! -The Netxpress Adventure
Netxpress Media, kicked off its journey in the latter half of 1999, when at the time only three other IT magazines existed in Pakistan. Computerworld Pakistan which was the oldest, Spider which had been recently launched in 1998 and Netmag which had come about in 1996. With the burgeoning and fast moving IT space in the country that was raring to go E, Netxpress became the fresh entrant round about just when Y2K never happened. Meaning circa Jan 2000, the first tech tabloid of the country came into being. Coming out once every two months it first came out in newspaper size and a few issues later we turned it into a tabloid and then many things happened in quick session.
Our team which averaged barely 20 years of age with some including myself still just out of college and having founded a research business a year prior, I happened to run into a bunch of people who were as crazy as I was. Not only did Netxpress happen, but shortly thereafter a Punjab Edition came about, a kids tabloid called Kids@IT, which then was followed by magazines E-Doers Digest, The E-Minute, Bandwidth, Tech Ed and finally little Bits&Bytes which later actually became a TV show on Samaa TV.
Netxpress did stuff which none of the other larger media houses owned brands ever could. We introduced the concept of media partnerships for tech magazines. We went like Star Trekkers where no one had gone before. We not only partnered with IT events across Pakistan and actually went there physically riding trains and buses, we collected stories which no one ever did.
From doing a 14-city tour hunting stories in tech in conjunction with Intel and Cybernet, we launched Pakistans first teachers training program for tech called Netxpress Teachers@IT with the British Council. We followed this by our own Journalists training program also with Intel, Intrasync and a few others where we recruited young students from school level to come and learn the tech rag trade. We also did a tonne of other tech media. Including producing special publications for PSEB for Gitex and another event in Saudia Arabia. Both under the E vestment name. Similarly we did special publications and tech show dailies for almost all exhibitions across Pakistan. We worked with CSP, PASHA and PSEB. So much so that PSRB called us in and asked us to consult with them on branding Pakistans tech industry. We worked closely with them to produce some of Pakistans first international content for the industry and put out stories in the region as well as produced Pakistans first proper tech show called Ufone Tech Talks on Geo TV, a tech show on a scale that still hasn't been mounted again since. We worked with and were swamped by requests from several electronic media outlets to produce for them too. From Geo to ARY to HumTV to Indus to Business Plus to CNBC, Samaa, APNA Khi 107, FM 89, 91 and others we worked with everyone.
We also ended up owning the franchise for ThinkQuest Pakistan which we converted into a nationwide tech roadshow for schools and colleges, another first in Pakistan. This allowed us to take the Netxpress train across the country to places we would never think of going otherwise and almost no other Tech journos ever did back then.
There's a lot more we did and would have continued to do but six years later we had done and expanded more than we should have which gave us the opportunity to bring brands like CIO, PC World, MacWorld, DEMO and others from the IDG network into Pakistan. Netxpress ran online till 2010 though we discontinued all print 2007 onwards as we worked on our IDG brands. But as we sit on the cusp of 2025, we thought why not give a platform that gave so much to the IT industry life again. And bring alot more Pakistaniat back into our own locally produced brand.
So here's a sweet small effort to seed life back into a great tech media brand as it turns 24 this January. And I would be amiss not to mention some of the crazies apart from the founders who helped us build this brand. Primary among them were Hussain Talib, Saadia Bondrey, Afroze Khan, Mahvish Aslam, Shujaat Khan, Abdullah Haroon and Nafisa Shafquat. Had these kids not run the race with us I doubt we could have even done one tenth the things we did.
So here's to getting back on the Net Express. Tally ho!
Logging back in 14 years later...
Sal Haroon
The team
