The Philosophy in his life is the need to reach out to the society in whatever way that one can benefit it. He is sensitive to the society and the community of Pakistan, which is facing the agony of illiteracy. But despite the darkness and depth of its ignorance, at heart, it is a community that is desirous of learning & educating itself. Therefore, rather than focus on education in general where some great work is being done, he has chosen to educate the job providers, the entrepreneurs of micro and small enterprises. He has participated in educating the entrepreneurs to become job providers not job seekers. He has also felt that at the heart of educating a society is the importance of educating the women entrepreneurs also as he says we are committed to believing in a community without oppression by empowering all entrepreneurs. Education must have a purpose as education on its own does not prevent hunger. He hopes to achieve this by preparing people to setup and run their own affairs of business whether the people are in the rural micro sector or urban small sector. He has been the advocate of entrepreneurship for nearly Three decade and is in the process of introducing Entrepreneurship Education in Pakistan.
Iqbal Khan began, unknowingly, a carrier as a Social Entrepreneur as early as 1963. As a student of undergraduate program at Government College Lahore, he setup a social enterprise under the title of Youths Association of Moral & Social Services (YAMSS) in the community he lived in. He was the President of YAMSS for two years. During, this tenure he collected donations for relief of flood victims that hit Pakistan in the year 1963. This collection was handed over to the Commissioner to be pooled in the relief work. He also organized with his members a Rural Development Programs by visiting villages and training to establish schools on self-help basis. He and his friends who were members of the Association (YAMSS) were at that time all teenagers. They went ahead and adopted a village and supported it for establishing a basic health unit & dispensary. They also motivated the villagers to establish a community centre for getting together in the centre of the village. These activities were also reported in some newspapers of that period and also to Civic Education Project of Yale in New Haven CT. 06511 USA in the year 1993.
In the early 70’s the country went through a Nationalization phase and all big banks and industries were nationalized. At that time every development slowed down and the vibrant society felt the pangs of stagnation. At that moment in time private sector initiative and small enterprises were a great asset for the society. Realizing this phenomenon Iqbal Khan championed the cause of entrepreneurship and small enterprises in the face of nationalization. He propagated entrepreneurship to promote private sector job creation. Iqbal Khan began his professional carrier as a banker in 1965 with leading Pakistani Banks (UBL & HBL) and remained as Manager for 6 years and attended professional courses for bankers. With this background he started a cooperative bank for small enterprises in 1971 and became its Managing Director with the objective of improving system and creating solutions to benefit the society in the face of nationalization. This was mandated to support and finance Small enterprises. In 1971 he engineered a strategy to open branches extensively to capitalize on the potential savings of the society which was vary of the nationalized banks. It was a strategy for mobilizing deposits by moving closer to the customers by opening pay offices. As this was a period of nationalization there was a ban on many banking activity. After hours of meeting with the team and staff running the bank, a strategy was evolved not to go against the law but to circumvent it. Hence numerous products were launched that saved the society from loosing the value of their money. Therefore, all the policies and strategies that were developed were made to cater the needs of Small Enterprises and Venture Creation of Micro-entrepreneurs or Small Entrepreneurs. So far policies did not exist defining a small or a microenterprise, nor were there products oriented towards collateral free financing. Some of the products by the Progress Cooperative Bank (the small enterprise bank) were innovative in this sense. The focus was on development of entrepreneurs and to promote the growth of small businesses as large scale and medium scale industries were being nationalization. These small enterprises resulted in the survival of Pakistan’s Industrial Sector. Some of its services are list below:
1. This small enterprise bank placed special emphasis on staff training and hence established a Staff Training Institute within the bank. This was the first move to empower the bankers to think small and promote small. This was a step taken to achieve lasting benefits.
2. A focus on developing entrepreneurs was placed through a scheme called “Mutual Investment Account” whereby matching amount was invested with entrepreneurs in small firms and small projects for venture creation and venture financing.
3. Introduction of Women Banking. It was the first bank in Pakistan to introduce a Women’s branch in 1975. A branch of the bank was opened that was run entirely by women bankers. These bankers were trained at the Staff Training Institute and it empowered women to be banker and also empowered women to do banking with banks. This was a pioneering feet because until this moment women as depositors or customers were not seriously targeted. It started a new trend of banking and inhibition in women to deal with banks was reduced. Women were happy to have their own private accounts without the influence of their men folks. This move was the result of the social entrepreneur in Iqbal Khan that aimed at a transformational change that would benefit this marginalized society-the women-and ultimately the society at large.
4. Saving & Investment Advisory services was another successful services by this bank.
5. Daily Balance Pass Book, Saving Account was introduced to promote the mobilization of deposits from small entrepreneurs.
This bank, which was doing exceedingly well for small enterprises were nationalized in 1976. A bank that had taken up the cause of supporting the social sector (hit by the first phase of Nationalization) fell to the 2nd phase of nationalization itself.
Rather than leaving society needs to government, he wanted to move ahead with his vision, Iqbal Khan bounced back by going into industry and consultancy of small enterprise. He setup a chemical processing plant based on indigenous technology and in-house R&D to produce Activated Carbon for refining cooking oil from agriculture waste (rice-husk). This itself was a small enterprise based on appropriate technology concept (indigenous know-how). As soon as this industry got going he again implemented his vision, an earlier experience, of adopting a village which was near the factory. He embarked upon using the manpower available in the village and also women workers from this village. These were trained to work in the chemical processing plant and most of them had never dreamed of working ever in their life. They are now assets to the society and with the acquired skills some have moved on in their professional carriers.
He is now in the process of building the first Entrepreneurship Development Institute (called SURE Entrepreneurship Development Institute) in Pakistan in the private sector. He wants to focus on entrepreneurship education and on writing case studies on local entrepreneur to record their contribution to the society and also to use as teaching material based on experiences of successful local entrepreneurs. He hopes to focus specially on social entrepreneurship and on developing a leading institution of social entrepreneurs to make it at par with international standards to bring recognition to Pakistani Social Entrepreneurs.
