Rafiq Habib is the Chancellor of Habib University incumbent chairman of the Habib University Foundation, where he is actively involved in helping devise innovative approaches to education.
As the former head of the House of Habib – a leading financial and business conglomerate in Pakistan that employs well over 15,000 people across various sectors – Mr. Rafiq Habib possesses decades of rich experience in building and managing successful businesses, especially in the insurance and banking industries. He has received multiple awards for his dynamic leadership and innovative approach to solving industry problems.
Mr. Rafiq Habib is also a trustee of several welfare projects that cover a wide range of activities, including education, healthcare, relief and rehabilitation.
Talking about the definition of success for our SuccessPedia, he said “well! What an easy question and what a difficult one too. This depends on how you think, what the meaning is and cause of life in your eyes, everyone has different ideology in this regard. In my view the success is peace of heart. If you have a lot of wealth but you are not in peace, your heart and mind is upset so it is useless. This is not the success. To help others is certainly success. One can say that being CEO of House of Habib, talking something like this is very easy but my family has the same values and views at the time when we lost everything because of nationalization and we have nothing else of our creditability.”
He further said “for me, there is no one as my great father Mohammad Ali Habib. He was a dynamic architect and excellent builder. He was a noble social leader and had GOD gifted ability to motivate everyone. He was a great business leader and firmly knows that who is suitable for which position and that was his powerful delegation of work.”
“Will you believe that he monitors all the construction work of Habib Public School, Orphanage and Hospital himself, he spends hours at sights of these projects on daily basis, “he added. “He was most successful and busy person and there was no shortage of money as well, but he pays his personal attention and time for these projects which shows the importance of noble cause in front of him. You can understand his position by this only that when Pakistan appears on world map and State Bank has nothing in its exchequer to run the country. At that time international market required the State Guarantee to release Pakistan’s share of money from India and Habib Family provides that Guarantee and country starts working on that Guarantee Paper. So, this was my father’s level, but he always teaches us that to spend all on ourselves is not success even it is nothing but to help others is real success. He uses marble in construction of orphanage at that time when there is no marble used in our house. This all he teaches us practically and never pressurize to do this or do not do that and still this trend is on. As family tradition, we give two basic advices to our children, firstly, never compromise on our family traditions and values, secondly, work hard, play hard, pray hard. We try that children can understand the importance of these things and follow it with its essence because we saw our elders to follow these values and witnessed their satisfaction. We taught for philanthropy as one of our basic family values. Then work for educational activities is very important for Habib Family. I cannot explain that how much satisfaction and happiness is there in this way, this is the real success that we can play a part to educate our next generations. I believe that if we all start to do something good for others and consider this as our success so our country and our society can turn in an ideal state.”
