Umar Rana
Jan 10
3 min read

Updated: Jul 1

I used to think looking at the competition was a waste of time. In the early days of our journey, we never studied the market. I thought:

“Whatever we do, we’ll do it in the best possible way. So competition doesn’t matter.”

I believed in our work, in our effort, and in the problems we were solving. I didn’t care who else was out there. But I’ve since learned that while competition shouldn’t drive you, it should teach you.

Not so you can copy them, but so you can understand what made them succeed… or fail.

“It’s important to know what is making them successful or giving them failures so that from their failure, you can learn and identify what you should be doing.”

That one realization changed the way I approached building.

Solving real problems > Following trends

Even when we started gaining traction with our ICT consulting and built large-scale systems, from virtual reality applications to a vehicle tracking system for over 1,000 cars, our motivation wasn’t, “Let’s be better than X company.” It was always, “What’s the actual problem here, and how can we solve it better?”

That mindset became our identity.

In fact, in 2016, we were given a BI project with zero upfront payment, because others had failed to deliver. We said yes. We delivered 10–15 reports in 20 days. The result? A long-term relationship.

That project wasn’t won because we were the cheapest. Or the fastest. It was won because we had a problem-solving mindset and a belief: Listen deeply, Solve accurately.

The secret behind growth (without a sales team)

By the end of 2016, something unexpected happened: Sapphire, a big name, gave us a major opportunity. We had no marketing team. No website. No sales reps.

We simply solved problems, and word spread.

In fact, by 2019, we had become the largest e-commerce technology company in Pakistan, purely through referrals and performance.

That’s still one of the proudest parts of our journey.

Go deeper than customer “requirements”

One of the biggest mistakes early-stage companies make is treating customer requests like gospel. I’ve always said:

“Don’t follow the requirement. Follow the expectation and the pain point.”

Customers might tell you what they want, but that’s often not what they actually need. They describe the symptoms. It’s our job to diagnose the root cause.

That’s why, in Alchemative and our other ventures, we built a culture of listening, diagnosing, and then solving. We’d sit down with clients, hear their story, and say:

"You’re probably facing these problems too — you just haven’t noticed yet."

Often, they’d pause, smile, and say: “You’re right. We never realized that.”

That moment? That’s where trust is built. And products become valuable.

When you build to solve, not to impress

Some of our biggest wins — like building a massive omni-channel solution for Sales & Service Corporation, or launching our fintech product that now works across 13 countries — didn’t come from market analysis or competitor tear-downs.

They came from talking to real users, understanding their pain, and responding with speed, agility, and transparency.

Those are the values we started with, and those are the values that saved us when things went wrong.

A final word for founders

Yes, study your competition. But don’t obsess over them.

Don’t build for noise. Build for need.
Don’t chase funding. Chase problem–solution fit.
Don’t ask, “What are others doing?” Ask, “What is broken, and can I fix it better?”