A Different Take On CSR

We often talk of how important it is to serve the country. At the organizational level, it gets called by a fancy name of Corporate Social Responsibility but, more often than not, little is actually done that serves the purpose. Not so with TimeSvr. CEO and co-founder of the organization, Osama Sehgol, spoke about the way that his company works, and what makes his organization click.

In the words of Osama Sehgol, while he was explaining what the business was all about, TimeSvr “provides online personal assistance— a 24/7-365 days service.”  The service is headquartered in Singapore, with it’s main office in Karachi and suboffices in Lahore and Islamabad.  ”The organization has hundreds of clients, about 150 of those have opted for a more generalized personal service by being assisted by a team of people.”  The clients themselves meantime, come from across the world, with “nearly 85% from the US, and most of these are from California which shows that most of the clients are tech-savvy, web-based entrepreneurs…small companies or individuals who are trying to build their business online.” The organizational services include not only business assistance, but also personal assistance so that the entrepreneurs’ personal lives are also supported and “taken care of” and they can focus on their own products.

For Osama, his company has been a success, and he has many reasons to back his claim. For one thing, there was “no funding,” hence it was a challenge to start a business in Pakistan. TimeSvr managed to not only start, but also ran the business well enough, so that by the end of the fiscal year they even “made it even out!” Now in an effort to help out Pakistan and the people, Osama talks about a little project he has started in Hunza.

The project aims to help the people living in Hunza to “tap into their own resources after getting trained on virtual assistance,” so that they can earn money online this way. “Hunza is a region with 99% literacy rate,” explained Osama, “with a tertiary level education of nearly 47%.” However, the people over there lack employment opportunities, and the population there either ends up working for NGO’s or social service organizations, or work on farmland nearby. “We discovered an NGO with an IT center over there, so we worked with them, training and empowering the locals…helping them out with the initial funds and getting them a few projects to startup,” said Osama. The Hunza project was allowed to keep all the revenue it generated to build up their infrastructure, get more PCs and hire more people for the job. A business of this sort has multiple benefits for the people of the Hunza valley. It is helping one of the backwater areas in Pakistan to progress. And, just as importantly, the emancipated women there can also easily work from the comforts of their homes.

Giving Corporate Social Responsibility a new twist, Osama Sehgol and his organization is certainly, as he puts it, “More inclined towards building a connection with people never expected before.”