Four days ago Bilal Fibres Ltd (PSX: BILF) – once a modest spinning mill on the dusty Sheikhupura Road – told the Pakistan Stock Exchange it had approved a Rs10 million business plan to create an in-house IT division. The nine-page filing sketches a start-up more reminiscent of a co-working loft than a ginning shed: five laptops, two software engineers, a marketing specialist, and a go-to-market playbook that explicitly name-checks Upwork, Fiverr and other online labour platforms for client acquisition.
Management says the cash will cover basic kit, registrations and one year of salaries; breakeven is pencilled in for “12–18 months” on the back of website builds (Rs100–250 k each), mobile-app minimum viable products (Rs300 k–1 m) and monthly IT-support retainers. Board minutes show annual revenue potential of Rs12–70 million if the team lands even a handful of contracts each quarter.
The announcement follows an earlier progress report stating that spinning operations remain suspended and that the mill’s revival would hinge on “Technology/ICT… in view of limited financial resources”. External coverage quickly framed the shift as “a textile manufacturer entering IT” and highlighted the board’s hope of tapping SME demand at home and in the Gulf.
If the plan sounds quixotic, investors do not seem fazed: BILF shares are still up more than eight-fold year-to-date, trading at Rs21.3 compared with Rs2.3 last October, despite the company recording zero yarn sales for two straight years.
Pakistan’s rise in the global freelancing league
Bilal Fibres is not alone in betting on Pakistan’s digital piece-rate economy. The country now accounts for 15.1 per cent of all workers on global freelancing platforms, behind only India and Bangladesh, according to the University of Oxford’s Online Labour Index. Government data tell a similar tale: freelance remittances officially topped US$ 400 million in the first nine months of FY-25 and are projected to cross US$ 500 million by June, outpacing many manufactured-goods exports.
This surge rests on three pillars. First, a youth bulge – 65 per cent of Pakistanis are under 30 – is comfortable selling code, design and analytics services abroad. Second, state-run training such as the DigiSkills.pk programme has certified 4.6 million learners, creating a conveyor belt of entry-level talent. Third, an uncertain domestic jobs market makes dollar-denominated gigs attractive: average freelance hourly rates on Fiverr hover around US$ 23 for full-stack developers, five times the local minimum wage.
The model is not friction-free. Platform outages earlier this year – when Fiverr briefly labelled many Pakistani profiles “unavailable” amid nationwide bandwidth throttling – exposed how sensitive earnings are to policy blips. Payment channels likewise remain patchy in a country still waiting for PayPal. Yet the momentum is unmistakable: the IT-, ITeS- and freelance-export pie hit a record US$ 4.6 billion in FY 2024-25, up 26 per cent on the year.
Against that backdrop, Bilal Fibres’ plan to fish on Upwork looks less like a lark and more like a low-capex attempt to catch a proven wave.
A brief corporate history
Founded in 1987 and listed on the Karachi bourse soon after, Bilal Fibres spent three decades churning out poly-cotton and viscose yarn for Asian and European buyers. At its peak the Jaranwala mill boasted 20,000 spindles and employed 500 workers.
The trouble started with the post-COVID energy crunch and rising borrowing costs: gas rationing idled looms, while mark-to-market losses on cotton inventory blew out working-capital lines. By FY 2023 the company had already suspended production; FY 2024 accounts record zero sales, a Rs20 million net loss and accumulated deficits of Rs586 million.
In October 2024 directors approved an asset-disposal scheme to sell the entire Sheikhupura Road complex – plant, land, even right-of-use assets – and plough the proceeds into a new tech venture. The same resolution authorised a change of name and object clause, though that legal paperwork is still pending with SECP.
Investors initially greeted the pivot with scepticism; the scrip traded under Rs3 until January. But a speculative buying spree, fanned by social-media chatter about a potential “mini-Systems Ltd”, has since turned BILF into one of 2025’s best-performing small-caps.
Remote work, AI and the market Bilal Fibres hopes to enter
Pakistan’s telecom network now reaches 91 per cent of the population, while 4G coverage sits above 96 per cent of live cell sites. Affordable fibre in Lahore means Bilal Fibres can run a fully remote stack with minimal on-premises hardware. At the same time, generative AI is accelerating developer productivity: Deloitte’s 2025 TMT Predictions note that code-generation copilots can cut development time by up to 45 per cent, pushing more projects towards fixed-price delivery models that suit freelancers.
With even conservative forecasts showing Gen-AI “embedded into nearly every company’s digital footprint by 2027”, small shops that master the tooling early enjoy a genuine arbitrage against slower incumbents. Bilal Fibres’ filing hints at that advantage, promising “cost-effective, high-quality IT solutions” powered by lean teams and AI-augmented workflows.
Yet the same AI democratisation also lowers entry barriers, flooding gig sites with auto-generated bids and squeezing margins.
Platform dependence is a second hazard. The Fiverr “unavailable” episode shows how a single API tweak or geopolitical flare-up can wipe a month’s pipeline overnight. Diversifying into direct enterprise contracts or building proprietary SaaS products – both flagged in the board’s business plan – will therefore be critical for durability.
Third, capital. Even after this week’s rally, Bilal Fibres’ entire market cap is just Rs300 million (≈US$ 1 m) and the balance-sheet is thin: the mill land is earmarked for sale, cash reserves are minimal, and previous losses have eroded equity. A Rs10 million seed budget may suffice for proof-of-concept apps but not for chasing enterprise-grade contracts where six-figure dollar invoices – and working-capital buffers – are the norm.
Industry data suggest the addressable market is still expanding. Global spending on outsourced software development is forecast to grow at 7 per cent CAGR through 2028, and Pakistan’s IT & ITeS exports have delivered double-digit growth for seven consecutive years. (Profit by Pakistan Today) Within that pie, freelance platforms remain the fastest-growing channel because they de-risk vendor onboarding for overseas SMEs.
On the flip side, text-to-app AI tools threaten to commoditise entry-level work such as static websites – precisely where Bilal Fibres hopes to win its first clients. The firm’s plan to evolve into subscription SaaS and staff-augmentation services will therefore need to materialise quickly if it wants to avoid a race to the bottom on gig portals.
Balance-sheet headroom for the pivot
Because yarn production is mothballed, Bilal Fibres’ assets today are mostly idle plant and land. The October 2024 board resolution lists “property, plant & equipment, right-of-use assets, investment property, stock-in-trade and other assets” for disposal – a fire-sale expected to yield Rs250–300 million net of liabilities, according to brokers following the notice.
Assuming the mill finds a buyer at book value, management could fund two additional Rs10 million tech pods without fresh equity, and still clear legacy bank debt. But that optimistic scenario depends on appetite from larger textile players already nursing their own overcapacity.
Meanwhile, the IT venture’s initial outlay – roughly three per cent of market cap – is small enough that a failure would not bankrupt the company; success, however, could transform its multiples. For now, the share price implies investors grant Bilal Fibres an option premium on the digital future rather than on polyester-cotton yarn.
Whether Bilal Fibres’ reinvention inspires copy-cats across Pakistan’s struggling textile belt will hinge on execution. Converting looms into laptops is not unprecedented – Crescent Textile spun off an IT wing in 2019 – but it remains rare. The company will need to:
- Hire and retain talent against stiff competition from established software houses in Lahore’s Arfa Software Technology Park.
- Shift corporate culture from shift-based factory routines to agile sprint cycles and remote Git workflows.
- Navigate regulatory hoops: IT exports now qualify for a 0.25 per cent tax rate, but only if certified by the Pakistan Software Export Board – paperwork the board has yet to complete.
If those hurdles are cleared, Bilal Fibres may go down as the first listed Pakistani mill to swap cones of yarn for lines of Python – a micro-signal of how even legacy manufacturers can pivot when the global gig economy beckons. Conversely, if the plan falters, sceptics will chalk it up as another speculative detour by a loss-making penny stock.
Source: From textile seth to freelancer: the evolution of Bilal Fibres
