If there is one thing about successful companies, it is the steady leadership required to build a solid foundation from its strongest, standout qualities. Such companies know all too well that with overconfidence and impatience, a good thing can fall flat and fizzle out without a trace. Launched in 2003, PakWheels is now Pakistan’s best-known platform for all things with wheels and an exhaust pipe. Given the fact that the company has been around for 22 years, the co- Founders certainly know a thing or two about dogged persistence in business.

“Well before Orkut and Facebook, PakWheels was Pakistan’s first social networking platform,” Suneel Sarfraz Munj, the portal’s co-founder, tells me. He isn’t wrong. Orkut came to Pakistan in 2004, a year after PakWheels and Facebook followed two years later in 2006. “For anyone who has a car parked in their garage, PakWheels has been there,” says Munj with justifiable pride.

Sharp as a tack, Munj, in his early forties, has an ‘old soul’ quality about him. You would never have guessed it. I mean, he is crazy about cars. Even the ‘About’ write-up on the PakWheels website states that he “eats, drinks and sleeps cars 24/7.”

What would a motorhead know about anything other than cars anyway? But he does. He is a treasure trove of knowledge when he gets started, reeling off little wisdom bombs with abandon, sprinkled with some self-deprecating humour.

“I never expected PakWheels to blow up the way it did. It was more of a hobby, never a full-time job.”

Enrolled in an MBA programme at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in 2003, Munj says that back then people had an avid interest in swapping notes about their cars. “If you are in love with cars, you would know that people can speak for hours and hours about them.” As a result, he set up a basic HTML chat forum where car enthusiasts could register, create their own nicknames and chat with each other until the crack of dawn.

Then, in 2005, two years after the forum was created, a user mentioned he had a car he wanted to sell. Within hours, the car was sold. “It was a low-hanging fruit to launch a classified ads section on the website,” reflects Munj. “It’s not like we reinvented the wheel or anything. We were just the first to start an online classifieds section. It worked because the life of a car ad in a newspaper lasts a day, and the next day you find your ad wrapped up in a paper cone filled with channas.”

When Munj speaks, he talks rapidly – a reflection of his sharp, quick-thinking mind. Also, he rarely ever smiles. While his expressions may be deadpan and stoic, the content and cadence of his speech match that of a skilled orator. Minus any airs and graces, there is a deep-seated humility about Munj too, especially when he speaks about his parents and growing up in Lahore, where he was born.

“My father was a self-made man who would often tell me that his sole job in life was to give me an education and after that, I would have to figure things out on my own.” It was this upbringing, he says, that helped him gain an ingrained sense of independence early on. “Once, when I got my car windows tinted (something which was not permitted in Pakistan at the time), my father stopped a traffic warden and asked him to fine me. These were the kinds of reality checks I was exposed to at a young age.”

However, it paid off. Today, Munj has considerable clout. In fact, he is a brand in his own right, even outside of PakWheels, where he is regarded as one of the most respected voices in local entrepreneurship.

With Munj, what you see is what you get. He is authentic and outspoken at the risk of landing himself in a hot soup. Fiercely private about his personal life, he does reveal that he has two daughters who live overseas – but that is as far as he goes. His personal life remains under wraps, although when it comes to his public life, he is an “open book.”

Given his success, what makes him stick it out with PakWheels? What was the secret sauce of his staying power and what has stopped him from exploring new pastures?

“Nowadays it’s very ‘in’ to talk about founders and start-ups. When I was younger, if we talked about launching our own startup, we would get slapped by our parents and told to become an engineer or a doctor! We are slaves of the schooling system. Kids become ratta [memorisation] machines. Even my grey parrot can memorise stuff. I keep telling young Pakistanis that start-ups are not easy. They are cash-burning businesses. But to inculcate staying power in yourself? Do what you love.”

Having gone through the rigmarole of job-hopping after grad school, he even gave joining the family business a shot, but he felt ridiculous sitting in front of an Excel sheet day in and day out. “My brother would get annoyed and ask me why I was wasting their time. Then, one day, he sat me down and said, ‘Suneel, what do you want to do with your life?’ I answered, ‘Cars… I love cars.’”

“When you take the plunge to launch a start-up, you have to roll up your sleeves. You wear different hats all at once. We are a big company today, but when we started out, it was only the three of us. You cannot have illusions of grandeur thinking you will be comfortably sitting in an air-conditioned room. I had to juggle multiple jobs to keep my kitchen running in 2012. I would even clean the cars myself. I remember my brother calling me to say, ‘You have an MBA from LUMS and there you are on the street in DHA washing cars!’ But I kept at it.”

Speaking about Pakistan’s auto industry, he says, with a touch of disillusionment, that “it is the infant who never grew up. Look, if you want an industry to flourish, you have to encourage it instead of depending on imports. No doubt, it will be expensive initially, but given time, the industry will be able to produce cheaper cars like India.”

Clearly, the question has hit a nerve. “Over the years, the local auto industry would show signs of growth, but then a new government would come in and change the policy. It is a constant seesaw. Whenever a new government comes in, the auto industry becomes a method to gain popularity. These shortsighted policy changes have gone a long way in hurting the industry.”

Despite all his other commitments, Suneel Sarfraz Munj is also dedicated to philanthropic work and in 2008, during the dengue outbreak, he spearheaded Pak Donors, a website aimed at becoming a blood donor library. “This is something very close to my heart, but it has remained on the backburner. I hope one day I can turn it into a single, go-to blood donor repository for people in need. When you walk into a hospital, your perspective changes. You realise health is everything.”

Sonya Rehman is a writer based in Islamabad.