SaadiCorp: What is it?
Let me take you through a story. Imagine you’re a student at a business school in Lahore, Pakistan. You, along with your friend are discussing business ideas and crying over the fact that now everyone is hopping on the train of the entraprenuer trend. However, you want to do something different. You don’t want to start an instagram page clothing store or a jewelry store or sell accessories online, you wanna do the boring stuff. You wanna go into corporate, you wanna do the boring math stuff, you wanna deal with the hectics of taxation and accounting and auditing. That’s exactly what Muhammad Salman Saadi (Founder and current CEO of SaadiCorp) did.
I interviewed Mr. Muhammad Salman Saadi and this is what was concluded of a 29 minutes on the clock;
SaadiCorp (Saadi Corporation Limited) was first found in 2019 days before covid hit Pakistan. It started off with the name “Nouman and Salman Taxation and Accounting Corporation,” Nouman Asif being the other friend whom with Salman built this company. Since this name was way to long and not at all easy to remember, they changed the company name to “Saadi Taxation and Accounting Corporation,” better? This went on for 2023 and in the end of that year, they found themselves in deep waters of debt. To overcome this, Salman and Nouman persuaded their old time college friend Naveed Khalid. They managed to successfully convince him into buying his part in the company, which he did.
In december of 2023, Naveed acquired majority ownership of the company and rebranded it into “Saadi Corporation Limited.” According to information on the website of SaadiCorp and what Mr. Salman and Mr. Naveed both admitted to, Naveed Khalid owns 75% of the company through its limited shares. Whereas, Muhammad Salman Saadi owns 14% and Nouman Asif owns 10% and a mere 1% is owned by another friend whom name did not get disclosed as he is not an executive at the company.
It is also worth mentioning that SaadiCorp is a public company and is registered with the SECP (Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan) and because of this, it submits its financial reports and other necessary documents to the SECP. By this, we get to know that SaadiCorp is doing “good business.” It reported inflows of around 2.5 million PKR on average every quarter of last year (2023), and for Q1 of this year (2024), It reported 3.1 million PKR in inflows. SaadiCorp is currently working with more than 40 clients which are public and private companies or individuals. This sort of a business is not new, but is something different from what trends we’re seeing in this new world. SaadiCorp aims to provide financial services and also work towards the betterment of Pakistan and its people.
When i was concluding my interview with Mr. Muhammad Salman Saadi, he asked me what i thought about the company and what were my views. I told him it’s not my job to give my personal views on the matter or story i’m covering, but i’ll tell you what i think. I think SaadiCorp is actually doing something good and is trying to change its country’s landscape.
