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Entrepreneurial Dilemma: How to Know What to Sell in Pakistan

Life isn’t easy in Pakistan - I’ll agree! Given the rising inflation and taxes, it's hard to run a household on one income stream - your job! Hence, most employed professionals are seeking to invest their depreciating assets or money into a profitable business but don’t know what to sell and where to sell in Pakistan.

And we've all been there! Yes, at a point where we want to leave our 9-5 and start a business. Build a life like our bosses - or better and become self-sufficient! No more clocking in and clocking out! No more anyone telling us what to do! That’s the dream, right? Let me wake you up right here!

Here’s the reality - you’re leaving your 9-5 to start a 24/7. So if you aren’t ready and that’s a wake-up call for you - stop reading now!

Most youngsters who plan to start a business in Pakistan always stumbled upon questions like “What to sell and where to sell”

This is a common entrepreneurial dilemma that most first-timers face. I mean I understand where you’re coming from. You have the capital and want to start selling something that’ll yield profit. But with so much competition in Pakistan, you can’t decide which market is most unsaturated to make an entry. In addition to that, your budget constraints might be the biggest obstacle in launching your dream business.

If you can relate to all of what I’ve said above, you’re the right person I am trying to target in this quick guide and this is the only content piece you’ll need to read to kickstart your entrepreneurial journey!

If you don’t know, my name is Burhan Mirza. I am a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder of The Coach 360 - a first-of-its-kind mentorship platform in Pakistan. I am also the Co-founder of Skills 360 where my team educates youngsters on learning skills that yield immediate monetary returns!

I think that’s about enough of my introduction to build my credibility in your eyes so that you know you’re learning from the best! So let’s get started. I’ll break my quick guide into two phases,

• How to know what to sell in Pakistan
• How to know where to sell in Pakistan (Sales channel)

How to Know What to Sell in Pakistan

Some businesses are born to die. They serve a purpose in an entrepreneur's life which is to teach a lesson. When the entrepreneur learns that lesson, their business collapses and they rise from the ashes like a phoenix.

This mostly happens to businesses that start without a plan and market knowledge. Entrepreneurs often jump into ventures based on their gut. It isn’t wrong to trust your instincts but your gut doesn’t always work. Sometimes, you need data, knowledge, market demand, and other factors in line to build a sustainable business.

All of the above-mentioned fall under one umbrella - the lingering question of this guide “How to know what to sell and where to sell” There are critical steps you can take with minimum investment to figure out what to sell. The number one point that I mentioned is free of cost but requires time and patience.

1. Follow Your Passion

I always believe that there is no bigger motivating factor than following your passion. And as Baba Ranchoordass says in the movie 3 Idiots, “Chase excellence, and success will chase you.” I believe excellence is fundamentally driven by your passion. If you follow your ambition under the light of your passion, you will definitely find success in any business you dive into.

When I decided to leave my career as a Business Unit Head at Tradekey, it was driven by my long-standing passion for the digital industry. Reflecting on those days, I knew I wanted to create something impactful. With that vision, I co-founded The Coach 360 and Skills 360 Pakistan to empower young minds and help them unlock their true potential.

I knew my passion would bear fruit because.

• I was passionate about it (obviously)
• I did market research to understand the demand and supply of my business model.

Point “B” will take us to the next section of this guide, but I want to continue my bit about following your passion.

If you’re truly driven by your passion and committed to pursuing what makes you happy, success will follow. Whether you want to enter Pakistan’s highly competitive clothing market or launch a fintech startup, having the determination to push forward and persevere through challenges will set you apart. Believe in yourself, stay resilient, and chase your dreams relentlessly!

2. Market Research and Survey

Be as passionate as you want about your startup/business, but if you aren’t selling, you aren’t doing business. The key to following your passion or tweaking it as I like to say, is to understand market dynamics and the demand of what you’re selling.

You can get a hang of your product/service’s demand through digital tools like “Google Trends” you can quickly look at what people are searching for over the internet and get an idea of your product/service demand.

Here’s a quick run I made on Google Trends to help you understand its interface. It’s a pretty good tool and lets you see the demand for your product/service within different provinces of your chosen country. In addition, you can also check the city-wise demand for your product/service.

If you scroll a bit down, you can see what provinces have the highest demand for your product or service, which will help you map out your delivery and advertisement schedule.

But if you’re launching something traditional like a jewelry shop or a shoe outlet, you can easily do recce of your target market. Go to the place you’ll set up your outlet and start counting the number of people that visit that particular area. That’s called “Footfall”.

For instance, you can check the footfall of Lucky One Mall Karachi's 1st floor if you’re planning to buy an outlet there. Once you have a number take 1-5% of that number and those will be your potential buyers. Why? Because not everyone will be interested in buying your product.

And obviously, you aren’t going to do Recci for more than an hour or so. So multiply the number of people you calculated by the number of remaining hours you aren’t doing Recci. That’ll give you an estimated footfall and when you take out 1-5% of that number, that’ll be your sales target.

Trust me, you don’t want to follow your gut when you’re doing market research. It needs to be backed by hardcore data and proven numbers to help you start your business.

3. Solve a Painpoint

Many profitable startups are running on one core principle - solving a problem. Yes, the demand for products or services that either solve a customer's pain point or make customer lives easy is increasingly popular. Think about it, how many of us use Shan packet masalas to cook food?

In the old days, our parents or grandparents would make food without these packet masalas. However, the increasing workload and the dire need to earn enough to fulfill our household requirements have forced us to save time and effort. By saving this time, we focus our direction on our career.

If you have a product or a service that solves a customer pain- point, you’ve hit the jackpot. The easiest way to find market problems is by paying attention to your surroundings. For instance, if you’re from the medical field, I’ll highlight a problem that I face - hospital wait time.

What if there was an app where I can easily book an appointment, wait for my time at my home and the app will tell me when to leave my house to reach the hospital when it’s my time to see the doctor? Doesn’t it sound interesting? That’s a gap in the market most people don’t pay attention to.

And you don’t have to come up with a crazy genius idea to solve a market problem. Just pay attention to your surroundings and you’ll find lingering issues that need attention. Just remember that we are in a fast-paced economy. So if your product or services make your customer's lives easier and save them time, they’ll definitely be interested in what you’re offering.

4. Pursue Your Past Experience

So, I can make it simple by saving you should pursue your past experience be it work or a family business, but that might create more questions in your head than solve your existing confusion. So I am going to explain this one in detail and tell you why it’s important to put your experience to market.

Let’s say you’ve worked as an interior designer for a company for more than 15 years, you’ve already built connections and links in that time and clients and suppliers are on a first-name basis with you. That’s your golden ticket to starting your business in your experienced domain. Because why not put your learnings to practice for yourself rather than for someone else?

I’ve said this countless times, “Follow your passion for business - that’s okay, but build your business in a field where you have connections” Friends, suppliers, past clients, and networks play a critical part in your startup's success. If you’re from the food industry and started your shoe brand, I am afraid you gave up your experience for your passion which is not a good choice. And I am not self-contradicting myself here.

Yes, I said follow your passion, but that’s for people who haven’t invested a significant chunk of their lives building a career. Also, if you’ve pursued your passion side-by-side with your job, good on you! You now have experience, skills, and passion for your startup and you know what to sell in Pakistan.

5. Re-Invent The Wheel - But Better

Though it’s a common phrase to avoid re-inventing the wheel, but if you can improve upon it, go for it. Reading customer reviews of existing products in the market is a goldmine. You can find your competitor's shortcomings and work on them in your product design. This model also works well in the service industry.

But the lingering question is” How to know which product to select.” In this case, you should browse through a host of products on online marketplaces and find at least 5 products that have sold more than 100,000 pieces per month for at least 2 years.

I know it’s hard to find but products that are sold more than 100,000 times over a period of 2 years show that these products have high demand and they aren’t seasonal. In which case, your business model will function all year long, generating profit in months when most products remain unsold.

Once you have a list of 5 products, go through their reviews. The reviews should be from different vendors so you can eliminate delivery issues because that’s not a problem you can solve. After you’ve gone through the reviews, narrow down your final products to 2 or 3.

From there, figure out the cost of each product. Your minimum profit margin should be at least 40% for starters. And it’s a fair percentage since the product you’re targeting has high demand (based on data). Now from the 2-3 products you shortlisted, find one that has the least cost of production, and can easily be shipped.

That my friend is the product you can sell. All other expenses such as social media marketing and billboard advertisements should be included in your “investment” segment. Once your products start selling, you’ll need to recover your investment cost, before you draw salary.

6. Reconnect With Old Hobbies

If you’re looking to sell through your passion, you can reconnect with your talent or old hobbies to sell something people might be interested in buying. I recently went to Dolmen City Mall Karachi and saw acrylic paintings. I could immediately tell that the art in these paintings were AI generated yet, they looked absolutely stunning.

I couldn’t help but buy two for my home. Each piece cost around 14,000. The product was expensive, but the craftsmanship was amazing. I could tell that the creator was passionate about art. They decorated the city lights in the paintings with embezzled cheap jewelry.

The point I am trying to make here is that I wouldn’t have bought that art piece if it wasn’t crafted so meticulously. And that’s the exact reason, why I am endorsing the idea of reconnecting with your old hobbies or talent.

If you have the skill to make sketches or art, practice that skill to perfection and start selling it online and in-store. You can easily make a deal with stationery shops in DHA (because that’s where people will buy your work) and ask them to sell your product at a premium giving you the price you asked for.

Once you’ve built a market for your product that might take either upto 25,000 sales or 3 years, you can launch your store both offline and online.

7. Create Solutions for Overlooked Small Problems

I have said this before and will say it again, you don’t need to invest a million pkr to start a business. You can always start small and grow into an enterprise. With that in mind, you can look around to create solutions for overlooked small problems. These issues can be within a particular product or the way we do things.

And contrary to popular belief, small products make a huge profit margin. Do you see that small “Kiryana” store outside your home? They make more money than the salary of a “Senior Manager” at a multinational company with 7 years of experience.

Selling small things at affordable prices increases your sales by quantity and that’s where your profit lies. You can start selling nail cutters for pets even if you have small finances to start with a minimum order amount.

Wrapping it Up

Starting a business in Pakistan is not just about having capital—it's about making informed decisions. The entrepreneurial dilemma of "what to sell and where to sell" can be resolved through passion, market research, problem-solving, leveraging past experience, and innovating existing products. Success doesn’t come from following the crowd blindly; it comes from identifying gaps, analyzing data, and executing with strategy and persistence.

No matter which path you choose, remember that entrepreneurship is a journey, not a quick escape from the 9-5 grind. It requires dedication, patience, and the ability to adapt. Whether you’re reinventing a product, tapping into overlooked opportunities, or turning a hobby into a business, the key is to start with clarity and confidence.

So, take the first step today—do your research, validate your idea, and get ready to build something that not only generates profits but also makes an impact. The road to financial independence is yours to create!