These Pakistani brothers skipped college, taught themselves to code, and built a site that attracts 100M monthly visits

For brothers Arsalan and Jehanzeb Hassan, founders of video-streaming startup Tune.pk, attending university was never something they wanted. Describing themselves as “solely interested in technology,” they felt dedicating four years of their lives towards learning an array of subjects would have been a “waste.” Instead, the brothers felt they needed practical exposure and experience to meet their dreams of becoming successful entrepreneurs.

This was in the year 2006, when video streaming and user-generated content had started to enter the mainstream through YouTube. The founders were hugely impressed by the site and how well it resonated with both audiences and publishers alike. They were attracted by its traction and felt the model was highly scalable.

At the same time, they felt that not enough was being done to promote indigenous content from Pakistan. During the mid-2000s, broadband penetration in the country was very low, and a vibrant, online community had yet to flourish. Pakistan was lagging behind the rest of the region. The brothers sensed an opportunity to cater to an underserved market and dove in without hesitation.

While candidly admitting that they had “limited skills and resources,” both entrepreneurs felt they could teach themselves how to code and learn through experience. To build the first version of Tune.pk they used a 3rd party script, made a few customizations, and put it on their server. “Our first and foremost desire was to showcase Pakistani content to the world,” says Arsalan emphatically. “The rest would follow.”

The brothers claim interest in their portal started just a few hours after the site went live. “Within a day we received a call from a man in the US who said he had stumbled across it and was impressed by what he saw,” claims Jehanzeb. “After that we knew this was a model we could scale.”

Learning from failure

However, the lack of technical skills came back to haunt them. It took several crashes for them to realize that a customized script was required to ensure flawless user experience. They were also unable to generate the kind of traffic they had expected. The growing online community in Pakistan preferred YouTube and there wasn’t enough content on Tune.pk to cater to a large audience. Despite these hurdles, the founders persevered. For six years they doggedly learnt from their mistakes, expanded their technical repertoire, and kept persevering in the hope of making it big.

It certainly wasn’t easy. The startup has, to date, never raised funds. That meant the founders had to bootstrap and secure sponsorship agreements to survive. “While we’ve had plenty of interest from investors, a deal has never been thrashed out,” says Jehanzeb. “Hence, there have been some pretty lean times.”

Ironically, their breakthrough moment came in 2012, after YouTube was banned across Pakistan in response to a video uploaded on the site which was deemed ‘derogatory’ and ‘insulting to Muslims.’ “Pakistanis were now desperate for video content,” reveals Arsalan. A large portion of that traffic started to divert to alternative platforms for user generated content, with the majority of it landing at Tune.pk.

“We started off with big plans, but knew it would be a step-by-step effort,” says Jehanzeb. “It took us six years to finally make our presence felt.”

YouTube remains banned in Pakistan to date, a fact that has helped the local startup immensely. Today, the portal attracts 100 million visitors per month, with more than 50 per cent of the traffic from countries other than Pakistan. The founders were able to consolidate their revenue streams and sign lucrative advertising contracts with companies such as Telenor, Shell, Caltex, and Samsung. A large portion of that cash was invested back into the startup, and used to hire a team.