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COVER STORY
Forget Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan and KPK. Be PAKISTAN ka kher khwah – That’s how KTips roll!
By Fatima Zakir
It was exactly six months back when Facebook got loaded with posts like “Making phone calls on the streets is how we define daring”, “Take pride in belonging to the city where Shahid Afridi resides”, “Kaddoo is a valid comeback for just about everything”, and this has given rise to a new phenomenon every Karachiite can relate to. It’s something fun, something interesting and something to feel proud of. No matter how much we speak against it, we keep picking harmless war of words with the people from other provinces. And that, too, for no reason at all. It sounds very juvenile but hell, that’s how we enjoy being Pakistanis and talk about the good things in our lives. It also started with a harmless posting of Lahoritips that got these two guys – Muhammad Abdullah and Bilal Zubair Khan – along with Baakh Nusrat to start ‘tips’ of their (read our) own – KarachiTips.
Muhammad Abdullah is just 21 years old and is doing his Bachelors in Mass Communication from the University of Karachi. Bilal Zubair Khan is 19 and has recently done his FSc from Government College, and aspires to get into Mass Communication. While, Baakh Nusrat just got into Ziauddin Medical University and would soon start her first year of med school. They are young, they are enthusiastic and the best part is… they love their city.
Inception
The three met during the USA student exchange programme. Abdullah went to the US with the 2006-07 batch, Baakh went there with 2008-09 batch while Bilal was a year junior to Baakh. Abdullah has been the Youth Officer to the younger ones, and their mentor. Since there is not much difference in their ages, their friendship just clicked. They started to meet more often and interact on a regular basis. It was during one of these meetings at their favourite dhaba, Café Runway, that Abdullah and Bilal started talking about the different tips that are circulating on the web. Inspired by the international Brotips, a guy from Lahore started Lahoritips and it was a couple of his tips bashing Karachi that compelled these two friends to come out with KarachiTips. Little did they know then that their timely determination would be a rage within no time and would make their Facebook page one of the most sought after pages related to our city.
That night, they went home, involved Baakh, got online, made a couple of tips, put it in the traditional tips format and posted it on Facebook. And voila! It became an instant hit! Within six hours they had 750 fans and before the week ended the fan following reached to 10,000. This was the second of June, and today (2 Dec) KarachiTips marks the journey of their six successful months; with 290 tips, thriving business of shirts and helping the humanity by giving out all their profits to the flood survivors.
Yes, they agree they started off because they wanted to ‘diss’ Lahoritips by coming out with “We don’t eat like horses… They do!” or “Your best argument in the Lahore vs. Karachi debate is… well, we have the beach”. But later on they realised there is no point of doing it this way since they could come with so many good things about their city without putting down the others.
Bearing fruits
Within a week, they got invited to radio shows! Suddenly, people wanted to know more about them and KarachiTips. They were celebrities overnight. A web entrepreneur called them up and told them that he has registered a website for them and he wanted to meet up with these guys. On June 25th, they met up and started planning out their website. Someone asked them to do T-shirts and they started working on the designs. They were naïve, they were amateurs and they definitely had no idea how a business is managed, so they made a lot of mistakes and wasted thousands and thousands of rupees due to their inexperience. They planned to launch their shirts on 9th of July, just a month after KarachiTips was born, but had to postpone it at the last moment due to the security conditions of the city.
They moved it to 16th of July, and booked Café Coffee Day at Jumerah Mall, Tariq Road. The turnout was unexpected and they sold shirts worth Rs10,0000 and booked lots of orders. They gave a lot of shirts free of cost to their volunteers, friends and pretty much anyone who showed the slightest signs of appreciation to them; a decision they still regret. After the successful launch, they worked on the orders and have delivered almost 1000 shirts till now.
As for the designs, they chose the tips that had the most numbers of ‘likes’ and were most popular. Abdullah designed the shirts and selected colours for them.
“Well, black and white were our immediate success but as far as others colours were concerned, we thought they would look cool,” shares Abdullah. “But it turned out that we were wrong. For our next batch of shirts we will include blues and reds too.”
KarachiTips not just got them to nearly every radio station but got them space in print media too. They were even interviewed for a documentary about Karachi, made by a Pakistani student studying in USA currently. Of course, for that they needed a proper shoot of their designs so they got that done too. It cost them Rs6000, which was their transportation expense, as their friends modelled their shirts in front of the cameras handled by Baakh and Abdullah. They are natural at photography and it helped them in the promotion of their shirts.
KarachiTips took their shirts to different colleges and universities too since that’s the crowd they can relate to. They went to CBM, SZABIST, Nixor etc. “Everyone knows us there,” says Baakh. “They get us, they get our jokes, and they understand our humour so we are quite at ease while dealing with them.” Their next step, they believe, is schools!
More than just the tips
The trio didn’t just depend upon the tips but they kept on evolving to keep their fans engaged. They held a couple of contests on their page like ‘Karachi Meri Nazron Se’, in which people were encouraged to take pictures of Karachi according to their perception and the winners would win movie tickets as well as free shirts. Then they held ‘Tip It To Win It’ contest in which they encouraged their fans to share tips and the ones with most likes would win the same prize.
Through this, they introduced some great photographers who, otherwise, didn’t know about their latent talents. They feel that since they didn’t get enough opportunities and proper guidance to showcase their true potential, they wouldn’t let the same happen to someone else. Hence, they started promoting young photographers and endorsed their page, who are big names now.
“We want to change mindsets of our people through cultural exchange as we want to bring our people closer together conversing in a single language – of harmony,” shares Bilal. “We want our people to own their country, their city and be proud of it. We want youngsters to believe in themselves and pursue their careers in the fields they choose to be the best. Nothing is impossible; you just have to work hard to make people understand your point of view.”
In the future they plan to venture into short movies and funny videos. Besides, they want to work on Karachi diaries that would be dealing with the serious side of the city. They want to expand their passion for their city by surpassing the tips to bigger mediums of mass communication.
“We want to show the side of Karachi that not many have ever seen. With the completion of our six months, we want something that really defines Karachi as we are not just a bunch of youngsters doing this for fun. We are serious about it,” says Baakh.
Lessons learnt
No free T-shirts
No promises that are hard to keep
No relying on everyone
Believing in yourself
No political or religious tips
No bashing rivals
To keep one tip with a moral in every set
The profits
Seems like the business is booming and the three youngsters must be sleeping on dollars but nah! One of the biggest reasons why Bilal started off with the whole venture was Abdullah’s promise of Rs50,000, each one of them would make once they successfully launch their T-shirts. Well, Bilal has now forgotten about the promise. In fact, they have donated all their profits for the flood survivors (that’s what they like to call them, claiming victim to be a very pessimist word). They recently came out with their special edition of tees – “I did something for the 2011 flood survivors, you should too!” – and donated all the proceedings to the survivors. They personally went to the affected areas and took medicines, clothes and other items of need for them.
“For all those who think we are rich, I am sorry to announce, we are not!” says Abdullah.
“If I made so much of money out of this business, I wouldn’t be running around the city on my bike delivering 100 tees in a day,” shares Bilal.
But, if we count all the love and appreciation these three are getting through KarachiTips, they are definitely extremely rich and have made quite some profit out of it too.
Tipping away…
Their creativity is endless. They have a special edition for everything happening around; from strikes to electricity load shedding and from rains and Ramadan to Bakra Eid, there has been a set for everything. In fact, they have recently come out with their ‘Lala-volution’ shirts featuring Shahid Afridi in a Che Guevera look after Pakistan’s T-20 win against Sri Lanka. This shirt is all the rage as they have booked 600 orders in a day! Yet, they have started to take it slow and easy. Coming out with 20 tips a day was affecting their quality so they have decreased the quantity to keep the creativity factor alive and kicking.
With time they have become more organised as they have teamed up with Blue Ex courier service for the delivery of their shirts and stocked at Studio S as well.
Abdullah, Bilal and Baakh might not have done much to bring a change in society but they have sure stepped on the first step towards progress – discovering themselves!
- Photo Courtesy: Ehsun Farooqi and Mehlum Sadriwala.
