By: Elena Mart
After an economics competition for Pakistani students fell flat, 17-year-old Ahmed Hasnat realized the problem was not a lack of interest in finance, but a lack of knowledge. The lesson led him to create Pakonomics, an independent platform designed to build financial literacy among young people by making investing and financial concepts easier to understand.
One winter morning during recess, a friend approached Hasnat with a question. He wanted to start investing in the stock market but did not know where to begin.
For Hasnat, the conversation landed differently than it might have a few months earlier. He and his friends had just abandoned an economics competition they had spent months building for Pakistani students. They had called it “Think Tank,” and it had failed to attract the participation they expected.
But now Hasnat was seeing the failure differently. The problem was not that young people were uninterested in finance. They were curious. They simply did not always have the knowledge to act on that curiosity.
That realization led the 17-year-old Pakistani student to rethink the project entirely. He eventually built Pakonomics, an independent Instagram page explaining economics, investing, and financial concepts in accessible terms.
Think Tank was inspired by Hasnat’s experience with the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Global Youth Program Investment Competition, a 10-week online challenge in which high school students work in teams on an investment case. Participants research companies and industries and develop a long-term investment strategy. The experience gave Hasnat a practical introduction to finance that he could not get through his regular school curriculum.
At Cadet College Hasan Abdal in Rawalpindi, Hasnat studies Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and English at A-level. Economics is not among his subjects. His interest in the field developed outside the classroom, through competitions, independent research, and conversations at home.
His parents are both chartered accountants, and finance was a familiar presence in the household. Familiarity did not automatically translate into understanding, though. Hasnat remembers sitting with his parents while they worked and hearing terms such as P/E ratios and balance sheets without knowing what they meant.
That changed gradually.
During one summer vacation, Hasnat remembers sitting with his mother at the family’s kitchen dining table on a hot afternoon. His mother sent him the balance sheet and income statement of an investment fund and asked him to look through the figures and decide whether it was worth investigating.
The financial language he had once heard without understanding was beginning to make sense.
The Wharton competition deepened that interest. Hasnat and his friends later tried to recreate some of that practical learning through Think Tank, building the competition using Google Forms. A first round tested basic economics through multiple-choice questions, while a second round asked students to apply what they knew to short case studies.
By December 2025, they had given up.
Conversations with friends kept challenging the assumption that the problem was a lack of interest, though. Some wanted to invest in stocks. Others were following trading strategies they had encountered online, yet they did not necessarily know how to read a balance sheet or understand basic financial terminology.
“It was not an issue of wanting to, but an issue of having the resources,” Hasnat said. The resource, he clarified, was “Knowledge.”
Instead of rebuilding Think Tank, Hasnat changed the model. If students needed the basics before they could compete, he decided to start there.
“I could shift my focus and try to educate the people first,” he said, “rather than just moving on to test-taking.”
That became Pakonomics.
On the Instagram page, Hasnat breaks down subjects ranging from financial statements and investing to gold and the Pakistan Stock Exchange. He is less interested in telling young people what to buy than in helping them understand what they are looking at.
In one piece of content, he distilled dense financial-statement information into a few indicators a beginner might actually need: revenue, profit, cash flow, and the P/E ratio.
He researches the subjects himself, develops scripts, and uses AI-assisted tools to refine the writing and produce video elements, including voiceovers and visuals. The project is still small, but its premise is straightforward. It aims to make financial information less intimidating to someone encountering it for the first time.
This effort comes as financial literacy receives growing attention in Pakistan. The State Bank of Pakistan, through the National Institute of Banking & Finance, runs the National Financial Literacy Program for Youth, which introduces young people to saving, budgeting, financial planning, and financial services. The program has reached more than 1.7 million students across 65-plus districts through hundreds of partner organizations.
In 2025, the State Bank also launched its National Financial Education Roadmap 2025-29, expanding financial education through physical and digital channels and targeting 50 million beneficiaries by 2028.
For Hasnat, the need for financial education grew out of a much smaller experiment.
He thought students needed a competition.
Then a friend asked him how to start investing.
Then the entire model shifted from application to actual learning.
Hasnat decided that before young people could make sense of the numbers, someone first had to make them understandable.
Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended as financial advice, nor does it replace professional financial advice, investment advice, or any other type of advice. You should seek the advice of a qualified financial advisor or other professional before making any financial decisions.
