Mian Muhammad Fazal Chairman of Orient Group of Companies, who made the Orient Empire just by working hard and enduring sleepless nights.
Mian Muhammad Fazal also know as Bao Fazal had its very humble beginings almost five decades ago from a small retailer operation in Lahore.
Bao Fazal has an inspirational story behind his success, Bao Fazal was born in Misri Shah area of walled city of Lahore, to a poor family, where his dad was running a tea stall near Railway Station, Lahore.
Bao Fazal who just passed 6th grade from school left school and joined his father to help him at his tea stall in late 1960s, Bao Fazal would serve tea to passengers at railway station and would wash the cups at tea at stall.
While working at tea stall for several years Bao Fazal became sick of the customers’ opinions and discussions on the current affairs, he wanted to do a different thing other than selling tea.
In those days Still Photography business was on it’s peak, Bao Fazal took some money from his father, purchased a used still camera and started taking pictures of tourists who came to visit Lahore.
All the day he would spent in walled city of Lahore, taking pictures of people with his old manual film camera and at night he would develop film rolls and print the photos at a small store room at his father’s tea stall.
After working for 5 years Bao Fazal opened his own shop near his father’s tea stall and shifted his studio from footpath to his shop. Now he would photo shoot at his shop and develop prints there as well.
In those days photocopy machines were introduced in Pakistan. Bao Fazal also buy a photocopy machine for extra income. With
In 1970s his sons also joined his business, now they started selling rolls of 35 mm film for cameras at wholesale and expanded their business.
Later in 1980s Bao Fazal made a colour lab, where he would print color photographs and started importing film rolls, printing papers from Mitsubishi company and became whole sellers for Mitsubishi in Pakistan by 1995.
In 1998 due to growing popularity of Digital Cameras, their business went down. By this time Fazal’s youngest son who graduated from abroad joined the family business.
Fazal’s son came up with latest idea of that time and started selling Motorola Mobiles and energy saver bulbs, but having no experience in the filed, their business failed and they lost huge sum of money.
Bao Fazal who was working with Mitsubishi company for long time, contacted them again and started selling their other products including Air Conditions. Bao Fazal imported 500 unites of Mitsubishi Air Conditions and in a span of few weeks he sold all of them.
They imported and sold Air Conditions till 2004 with a minor profit margin. In 2005 Bao Fazal purchased a land in outskirt of Lahore and with the help Mitsubishi corporation, started a plant with name ‘Orient Group’ to assemble air conditions in Pakistan instead of importing the whole units.
In 2007 Orient Group started making its own air conditions. Now Orient Group is one of Pakistan’s largest consumer electronics manufacturer & a key player in the IoT & E-commerce space apart from providing innovation-led products & helping organizations transform digitally, has also positioned itself for sustained growth in the digital economy.
Today Orient Group of Companies, has huge production setup and a sprawling dealer network all over the country, selling their own products, Air Conditioners, Refrigerators, LED TVs, Microwave Ovens, Water Dispensers, and Washing Machines.
