About Us (In Urdu)

Sabaq Foundation, more commonly known as "Sabaq" or “Sabaq.pk”, was founded in 2012 by Iqbal Mustafa Khan in Islamabad and registered as a non-profit Trust with the Government of Pakistan. Then, in 2023, Sabaq Foundation was re-registered as a Charity in Islamabad under the Islamabad Charities Act, 2021.

The Chairperson of Sabaq Foundation was originally Iqbal’s brother whereas Iqbal was involved in running its day-to-day operations. Then in 2023, after Sabaq’s re-registration as a Charity, Iqbal became the Chairperson and Iqbal’s brother remained involved as a Trustee.

Additionally, Iqbal’s wife oversees all the content development work of Sabaq. For this, Sabaq has always maintained a world-class professional team of full-time teachers with MSc/MPhil/Ph.D. level education in their subject and a passion for education. Sabaq has also ensured very high quality in its work through a well-defined video development process that includes multiple rigorous quality checks.

Sabaq is a self-funded non-profit. Sabaq’s offices are situated in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Revolutionize Student Learning

Our main objective is to revolutionize student learning based on concept development instead of traditional rote learning. Our content enables concept-building and critical thinking by letting students watch video lectures on-demand repeatedly and then test themselves through practice tests that are thought-provoking.

Our video lectures are delivered in simple Urdu but use English-medium terminology. This enables us to reach the largest number of students all over Pakistan and help them quickly learn the concepts. Additionally, although our video lecture topics fully map to Pakistani curricula, the content used in these videos is world-class and not from Pakistani books. This along with the Urdu language is what makes our video lectures so powerful in improving student learning.

Achievements

1. Pakistan’s Largest & Most Popular (Free): Sabaq is Pakistan’s largest and most popular eLearning content provider. Sabaq has developed 17,000+ video lectures to date and provides them free of cost on its website for classes KG-14. Sabaq has over 5 million users annually (50 Lakh) from all parts of Pakistan. Sabaq videos cover all educational boards of Pakistan (Federal, Punjab, Sindh, KPK, Baluchistan, and Cambridge). The subjects include English, Math, Science, Computer Science, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, General Science, General Math, Statistics, and Accounting.
2. Sabaq Android App (Free): Sabaq has also developed an Android App that contains all these videos and practice tests free of cost and allows users to download them upfront for later offline viewing without any internet. This offline viewing is a powerful feature considering how unreliable internet services are in Pakistan. Get Sabaq App.
3. Blended Learning for Schools (Free): Sabaq has made its eLearning content available to schools all over the country free of cost so they can implement Blended Learning. See more details on Sabaq Blended Learning.
4. PTV Teleschool (Free): Sabaq gave its content free of cost to the Federal Ministry of Education in 2020 in response to Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, PTV Teleschool is airing eLearning videos from multiple EdTech providers but approx. 70% of all videos are from Sabaq and in fact, 100% of the videos for 9-12 classes are from Sabaq.

About Iqbal Mustafa Khan

The founder of Sabaq Foundation, Iqbal Mustafa Khan belongs to Golra Sharif (now a part of Islamabad). Iqbal went to the United States of America for higher studies in 1984 and obtained his BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from Indiana University, Bloomington in 1988 and 1990 respectively. Afterward, he continued living in the US and worked for various companies before starting his first software company in 1994 in Silicon Valley, California.

Since then, Iqbal has been a serial entrepreneur by starting multiple software/IT businesses in the US. In 1998, he opened the offshore office of his US-based business in Islamabad, Pakistan. At that time, Iqbal was one of the pioneers of Pakistan’s IT Export industry.

His most recent company is Alachisoft (https://alachisoft.com), a software company based in the US. Alachisoft was started in Silicon Valley, California, but is now headquartered in Dallas, Texas with its offshore offices in Islamabad, Pakistan. In 2011, Iqbal moved back to Pakistan (after 27 years in the US) and started Sabaq Foundation. Iqbal is now based in Islamabad but travels to the US and other countries for business.

Iqbal’s family is prominent in the area. Iqbal’s father was also a known figure in the area and ran for the 1985 National Assembly Elections from Islamabad.

Iqbal's family has a strong history of education. His mother and paternal aunt (Phuphee) ran a government primary school for girls in Golra Sharif, situated inside his grandfather’s home. This inspired Iqbal to do something for education in Pakistan. Hence, upon returning to Pakistan, he started Sabaq Foundation which combines Iqbal’s background in IT entrepreneurship and a passion for education.