South Asia Investor Review

Last week I attended a Silicon Valley fundraiser by  iCodeGuru , a Pakistani-American group focusing on arranging training and guiding young men and women from underprivileged backgrounds to get full scholarships for advanced STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) degrees at universities in America. The well-attended event held at Chandni restaurant raised over $180,000. It featured  iCodeGruru alumni  who shared their success stories.  iCodeGuru Alumna Afsheen Ghuman Speaking at Silicon Valley Fundraiser.  The story of Afsheen Ghuman from Gujranwala shows how a poor girl from a small town can succeed in defying the odds with a little help from iCodeGuru team headed by Dr. Zafar Shahid. She was able to take advantage of the online platform remotely from her home.  She is now studying at an American university with a fully funded scholarship. iCodeGuru uses its online platform to offer advice, training and financial assistance to get advanc...

Our Next Energy (ONE), a two-year-old Michigan startup founded by Pakistani-American Mujeeb Ijaz, has received $25 million in initial investment from Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures and German automaker BMW. Storage battery technology is a key area of innovation to bring about  clean energy revolution .   Mujeeb Ijaz has engineered a way to achieve longer ranges for electric vehicles from lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries, a more stable but less powerful chemistry than the nickel-based batteries currently used by most automakers. Mujeeb's brother  Mansoor Ijaz  made headlines in 2011 when he wrote a Financial Times Op Ed regarding his conversations with Husain Haqqani who was serving as Pakistan's ambassador in Washington. Mujeeb's father Mujaddid Ahmed Ijaz was a Pakistani experimental physicist and a professor of physics at Virginia Tech.   Mujeeb Ijaz, Founder CEO of Our Next Energy (ONE) Mujeeb Ijaz,  Pakistani-American  fou...

Over half a million Pakistani-Americans constitute the 7th largest Asian ethnic group in the United States. Pakistani-Americans are young, well-educated and prosperous. Median age for Pakistani-Americans is 31.7 years. 60% have at least a bachelor's degree. Their median household income is $87,510 a year.  The graph below shows that  immigration into the United States  significantly slowed down in Trump years.  Still, the remittances from Pakistani-Americans have jumped  58% to $2.75 billion  in the current fiscal year.   Pakistani-American Population Growth. Source: Pew Research About 36% are US-born while the rest are foreign-born. Just under 80% are US citizens, both native and naturalized. Here are the key takeaways from US Census data recently published by  USA Facts : 1. Median age of  Pakistani-Americans  is 31.7 years, below the 37.9 years for Asian-Americans and 38.5 for overall population. Median age is 34.8 for Indian-Ame...

Divorce rate among foreign-born Pakistani-Americans with children is the third lowest of all immigrants in the United States, according to research recently published by the US-based Institute of Family Studies. Foreign-born Indian-Americans' marriages tend to be the most stable, followed by those of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis living in America.  On the other end of the spectrum, the divorce rates among immigrants from Latin-America are the highest of all ethnic groups.    Immigrants Marriage Stability. Source: IFS Immigrants from Taiwan, Korea, China, and Japan, also have greater family stability than native-born Americans, as do immigrants from the Middle East and South America, according to the IFS report . Here’s the list of top 20 immigrant groups in the US leading in marriage stability:  1. India - 94%  2. Bangladesh - 90%  3. Pakistan - 87%  4. Taiwan - 86%  5. Korea - 85%  6. China - 84%  7. Japan - 83%  8. Poland - 80%...

Americans see Pakistanis as "aggressive and violent" while Pakistanis say Americans are "loose, immoral and arrogant", according to research study findings of American cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand. She told an interviewer that the American media portrayed Pakistanis as " big bad wolf ".  Gelfand is a distinguished professor at the University of Maryland. She studies why different cultures accept different levels of rule-making.  Cultural Psychologist Michele Gelfand, Author of Rule Makers, Rule Breakers In an interview with  Kara Swisher of Recode , Gelfand said  Americans and Pakistanis  usually "meet in the media". In other words, their perceptions of each other are based on media stereotyping of the two nations. "Pakistanis think Americans are half naked all the time. They don’t just think we’re loose, they think we’re exceedingly loose", she said.  Gelfand found that Americans "don’t think about Pakistanis as playing s...

 Amir Husain, a Pakistani-American AI expert, has started a defense-focused artificial intelligence company, according to builtinaustin.com .  Amir Husain's AI company SparkCognition has been building artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) software for its various clients since 2013. After closing on a $100 million Series C round last year, the company claims to be “one of the most valuable startups in Texas and one of the most valuable AI startups in the United States.” Earlier this year, Amir Husain and his wife Zaib, both University of Texas at Austin alumni, donated $5 million to launch "Artificial Intelligence Institute" at their alma mater.  Pakistani-American Couple Amir and Zaib Husain “We started to develop software capabilities for a variety of (Department of Defense) clients and partners in the defensive industry,” founder and CEO Amir Husain said in a virtual event announcing the new company, as reported by the Austin-American Statesman . “We inv...

A recent Dawn newspaper article entitled " Getting Ahead in the West " by British journalist Owen Bennet Jones suggests that Pakistanis in the US and the UK are doing poorly relative to their Indian counterparts. It builds this narrative using the example of 3 ministers of Indian origin and just one junior minister of Pakistani origin in Prime Minister Boris Johnson's cabinet. It also cites the example of the choice of Kamala Harris, who is seen as African-American in the US political context, on the Democratic presidential ticket headed by former Vice President Joseph R. Biden. British Pakistanis:  While it is true that the current British government has three ministers of Indian origin, it is also true that British Pakistanis Sajid Javid and Sayeeda Warsi held senior cabinet posts in recent British governments headed by Prime Ministers Teresa May and David Cameron.  In addition to cabinet memberships, British Pakistanis have been elected as mayors of several cities, inc...

A recent study shows that  Pakistani-Americans  are among 5 most  upwardly mobile  groups in the United States. Other top most upwardly groups are Chinese-Americans from Hong Kong, Taiwan and People's Republic of China and Indian-Americans. US Offers Upward Mobility For Immigrants:  Immigration to the United States continues to offer a route to escape poverty — if not for poor immigrants themselves, then for their sons, according to a study published by a team of economic historians at Princeton,  Stanford  and the University of California, Davis. Average income rank of sons with parents in 25th percentile. Source: New York Times Top 5 Upwardly Mobile Groups in America: The  study  shows the adult outcomes of sons born in 1980 who grew up in poor families at about the 25th percentile of income distribution in the United States. Pakistani-American sons born in poor households are now at 59th percentile of income in the United ...

Foreign-born Pakistani immigrant population in the United States rose 31% since 2010 to reach nearly 400,000 as of 2017. This figure includes naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents (green card holders), temporary workers, and foreign students from Pakistan. An earlier 2015 estimate put the number of   US-born Pakistani-Americans at 180,000 .  It is safe to assume that the total number of  Pakistanis in the United States  exceeds 600,000 in 2018. Origins of Foreign-Born Americans. Source: Pew Research 2017 US Census Update: On September 13, 2018, the US Census Bureau released some of the data from the 2017  American Community Survey (ACS) . The survey reflects the U.S. population as of July 1, 2017. The source countries with the largest increases in the number immigrants since 2010 are  India (up 830,215) , China (up 677,312), the Dominican Republic (up 283,381), Philippines (up 230,492), Cuba (up 207,124), El Salvador (up 187,783), V...