Netxpress Media kicked off its journey in the latter half of 1999, when only three other IT magazines existed in Pakistan. Computerworld Pakistan was the oldest, Spider had been recently launched in 1998, and Netmag had come about in 1996. With the burgeoning and fast-moving IT space in the country raring to go, Netxpress became the fresh entrant, just when Y2K never happened. Meaning circa January 2000, the first tech tabloid of the country came into being.
Coming out once every two months, it first came out in newspaper size, and a few issues later, Netxpress turned into a tabloid. Many things happened quickly. The Netxpress team, which averaged barely 20 years of age, with some team members still just out of college and having founded a research business a year prior, happened to run into a bunch of people who were as crazy as they were. Not only did Netxpress happen, but shortly thereafter, a Punjab Edition came about, a kids’ tabloid called Kids@IT, followed by magazines E-Doers Digest, The E-Minute, Bandwidth, Tech Ed, and finally, Little Bits & Bytes, which later became a TV show on Samaa TV.
Netxpress did stuff that none of the other larger media houses’ owned brands could. They introduced the concept of media partnerships for tech magazines. They went like Star Trekkers where no one had gone before. They partnered with IT events across Pakistan and physically attended them, riding trains and buses, collecting stories no one else did.
From doing a 14-city tour hunting stories in tech in conjunction with Intel and Cybernet, Netxpress launched Pakistan’s first teachers’ training program for tech, called Netxpress Teachers@IT, with the British Council. They followed this with their journalists’ training program, also with Intel, Intrasync, and a few others, where they recruited young students from school level to come and learn the tech rag trade. Netxpress worked with and was swamped by requests from several electronic media outlets to produce for them. From Geo to Ary to Hum to Indus to Business Plus to CNBC, Samaa, APNA Khi 107, FM 89, 91, and others, they worked with everyone.
They produced special publications for PSEB for GITEX and another event in Saudi Arabia, both under the E-vestment name. Similarly, they produced special publications and tech show dailies for almost all tech exhibitions across Pakistan. They worked with CSP, PASHA, and PSEB, who called them in and asked them to consult on branding Pakistan’s tech industry. They worked closely with them to produce some of Pakistan’s first international content for the industry and put out stories in the region. They produced Pakistan’s first proper tech show, called Ufone Tech Talks, on Geo TV, a tech show on a scale that still hasn’t been mounted again.
They also ended up championing the franchise for ThinkQuest/Think.com Pakistan, which they converted into a nationwide tech roadshow for schools and colleges, another first in Pakistan. This allowed them to take the Netxpress train across the country to places they would never think of going otherwise, and almost no other tech journalists ever did back then.
There’s a lot more they did, and would have continued to do, but six years later, they had done and expanded more than they should have, which gave them the opportunity to bring brands like CIO, PC World, MacWorld, DEMO, and others from the IDG network into Pakistan.
Netxpress ran online until 2010, though they discontinued all print publications in 2007, as they worked on their IDG brands. But as they sit on the cusp of 2025, they thought, why not give a platform that gave so much to the IT industry life again? And bring a lot more Pakistaniat back into their own locally produced brand. Wait as the story further unfolds.
