Tahir Majeed Butt founder of on-line ‘Virtual NGO’ Contact Pakistan is a very well known personality thoroughly respected and admired by the Pakistani community in Saudi Arabia. Born in Mianwali and raised & educated in Sargodha – the hub of Pakistan Air Force – and being the only sibling of his parents, Tahir Butt describes himself as a lonely child very much missing a company of yet another brother or sister which, unfortunately, Allah did not give him the opportunity of the company of. As a child he was a carefree, aimless and a spoilt brat. Today he is a successful on-line bank professional and a dedicated soul ever ready to serve any or all in the Pakistani community through his one and only passion – that is contactpakistan.com
As a young-man growing up in the seventies in Sargodha, he was involved in politics too and in fact he was also then office bearer of PSF (Peoples Students Federation). He also had unique experiences as a drama artist and had ventured into cinema and theatre as well. During the student life, he had a great passion for cricket and played with the star cricketer of Pakistan - Zaheer Abbas - also.
In 1981 he arrived in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a fresh graduate in commerce with a scanty education, training & experience in computer programming. Soon he was lucky to have landed a job in Cable & Wireless Company– a British Telecommunication Company working for Saudi Arabian National Guard. A British boss in fact had discovered a jewel-from-within-the-straw in him and had soon made him the in charge of the Computer Department – a position normally not handed over to Asians.
Within matters of some months, Tahir Butt then transformed from a frolicking carefree young kid, freshly arrived in the Kingdom, leaving the childhood realms in Pakistan, to become a serious computer whiz kid. He never looked back ever since. Later, using his rich & varied experiences and training with the British company as a springboard, he joined Bank Al-Rajhi in the year 2000. Al-Rajhi Bank at that time was transforming into a modern Islamic bank.
Using the experience from his works of developing a Web Portal for contactpakistan, he also helped create a vast community of on-line users for Al-Rajhi Bank. As a result, as of today, total online banking users for Al-Rajhi Bank were in excess of 600,000. He now heads the online banking channel of the same. In 2007 his professional contributions were acknowledged internationally as he bagged two awards for the bank, one from the Institute of Excellence-Middle East as the best online banking in KSA and the other as the best electronic banking award given by the ministry of information and communication KSA.
He founded contactpakistan.com in 1997 in partnership with a Saudi friend of his called Hani Darai. It was like young Bill Gates and Paul Allen – from Seattle – laying the foundation of Microsoft. His wife – Bushra Butt and daughter Mehreen Butt are also credited besides his friends from the yesteryears namely, Dr. Rao Ishtiaq Khan, Engr. Iqbal Khan, Dr. Muhammad Afzal, Mrs. Sadia Haneef, Engr. Asim Mughal, Dr. Javeed Khan, and Dr. Aisha Manzoor.
