I know the late Yusuf Shirazi very well. He was one of my closest friends. We had been friends for more than 60 years. Our families were friends, our children have been friends and even our grand-children are friends.

I first met Yusuf Shirazi in 1956. He was then working in the Income Tax Department and I had just joined Pakistan Customs Service. We were introduced by my late brother-in-law who knew Yusuf Shirazi because of their Sahiwal contacts. In fact Yusuf Shirazi's ancestral village and my family's village shared a common boundary, not far from Sahiwal (then Montgomery) city.

We remained in close touch when I was posted in Quetta, Karachi and Islamabad. We also remained in touch when I moved to Geneva, Switzerland. In fact he used to visit Geneva sometimes on business trips and sometimes on vacation with his family. And he always made it a point to visit my house in Geneva with his family. He even sent his young children to stay with me in Geneva.

Yusuf Shirazi was an exceptional person, a multi-dimensional personality. He had been a journalist, a civil servant, an intellectual, a prolific writer, a well-read person, a philanthropist and an enlightened progressive businessman.

He was not a born businessman. His family was never in business. I think what put him on the road to becoming a successful businessman was an assignment that he was given when he was working in the Income Tax Department. He was assigned to make a study on income tax evasion in the stock exchange. Rather than make a superficial, run-of-the mill study, he decided to immerse himself to deeply study and understand the working of the stock exchange. That developed his interest in stock investments and put him on the road to becoming an investor and a businessman.

He was quick to realize the emergence of Japan in the 1960s as an upcoming economic superpower. Thus his projects of Atlas Honda Motor Cycles, Atlas Battery and Honda Atlas Cars.

Yusuf Shirazi was no ordinary businessman. He passionately believed in professional management. I remember he sent many of his young professionals to renowned business schools abroad, at company expenses. He also sent his children to prestigious foreign universities for higher education. He often consulted me about the education of his children. He even sent his daughter to a prestigious well known boarding school in Switzerland, where I was her guardian.

He once told me that he would not go into traditional industries of Textiles, Cement and Sugar. He would prove his mettle in non-traditional industries. And he did succeed in that.

The extraordinary achievement of Yusuf Shirazi was not that he became a successful businessman, an entrepreneur par excellence. His outstanding extraordinary achievement was that he started from a scratch, with no family business background, and during his lifetime created a vast empire consisting of Automobile industry, Batteries, Engineering Industry, Insurance, Banking, Asset Management, Investment, Trading, Power Generation etc. Few if any businessman can match that phenomenal achievement. May Allah bless his soul and give him peace in Heaven.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2019