20 more long-form profiles — heritage food brands, the Nishat empire, Pakistan's state explorers and Syed Babar Ali's Packages. See also profiles H–M and the 44 Learn guides. Educational content only, not financial advice.
Set up at Daudkhel in 1956, run by the state for decades and privatised to the Saigol family's Kohinoor Maple Leaf Group in 1992 — the story of a northern cement anchor.
Founded as Rana Tractors in 1964, nationalised, then bought by its own employees in 1992 — how Millat learned to build Massey Ferguson tractors, not just import them.
Founded in the Murree hills in 1860 for British troops, kept alive through Partition and the 1977 prohibition era by the Bhandara family — and by juices, water and glass.
Incorporated in Karachi on 19 February 1970 as a spice company, National Foods turned recipe mixes and convenience foods into a Pakistani kitchen staple — and an export business.
Created by ordinance on 9 November 1949 to finance a young country and act for the State Bank where it had no branches, NBP remains the government's banker — and a listed one.
Incorporated in 2007 by the Nishat Chunian textile group, running a 200 MW plant in Kasur district since 2010 — and, from 1 October 2026, a member of the KSE-100.
It began as Syed Babar Ali's Milkpak in 1979. Nestlé bought in during 1988, took control in the 1990s, and built the milk-collection network behind Pakistan's best-known food brands.
Begun in 1951 by Mian Muhammad Yahya and his brothers after Partition, Nishat Mills grew from a Faisalabad weaving unit into the foundation of Mian Muhammad Mansha's Nishat Group.
A Nishat Mills subsidiary incorporated in 2007, Nishat Power has run a 200 MW fuel-fired plant in Kasur district since June 2010 — selling every unit to a single state buyer.
Created as a state corporation in 1961 with Soviet help, turned into a public limited company in 1997 and partly sold to the public from 2003 — OGDC is Pakistan's upstream anchor.
One Lahore company cools Pakistan's homes and helps power its grid — the Saigol Group flagship that has made appliances and electrical equipment since 1956.
Founded in Karachi in 1947 as one of Pakistan's first foreign investments, the BAT subsidiary remains the country's largest cigarette maker — factories, leaf farms and excise included.
Incorporated in Karachi in 1994, Pak-Gulf Leasing is a small survivor of Pakistan's once-crowded leasing industry — a window onto how leasing works and why the sector shrank.
Pakistan's first mechanised coal, clinker and cement terminal at Port Qasim — a Marine Group project, built on a 30-year BOT, that took dirty bulk cargo out of Karachi's city port.
A Punjab cement maker founded in 1986, built on Khushab limestone and expanded line by line — now inside the Maple Leaf fold after one of the sector's biggest takeovers.
Syed Babar Ali founded Packages in Lahore in 1956 to pack Pakistan's consumer goods — it grew into a holding company whose ventures seeded much of modern corporate Pakistan.
Born of the Attock Oil Company in 1950 and rooted in Punjab oilfields found before the First World War, POL explores, produces LPG and pipelines crude to the Attock refinery.
Founded in 1981 as Al-Abbas Cement and remade after its 2010 acquisition by the Arif Habib Group, Power Cement runs a modern European-built plant at Nooriabad serving the south.
Incorporated in 1950 from Burmah Oil's Pakistani business, PPL discovered the giant Sui gas field in 1952 — the find that gave Pakistan 'Sui gas' and shaped its energy economy.
Created in 1958 to build InterContinental hotels for a young Pakistan, PSL today owns the Pearl-Continental chain — Karachi's first five-star hotel and the Hashoo Group's flagship.
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