Comment by Riaz Haq on June 8, 2022 at 7:45am

Pakistan’s startup boom has triggered a “war for talent”
Flush with venture funding, tech companies are offering staggering salaries and perks, while recruiters struggle to hang on to candidates eager for the best deals.

https://restofworld.org/2022/pakistans-startup-boom-war-for-talent/

Only two years later, Hasan was making 50 times his original salary as a staff software engineer for a global travel tech company.

This kind of steep career growth was unheard of in Pakistan until a couple of years ago.

A few years ago, a software engineer in Pakistan who had work experience of around three years would make about 150,000 rupees ($1,000 at the time) a month, according to Shahid of Kamayi. Now, someone with the same skills and experience earns double that. More than 40% of Pakistani tech companies gave over 30% increment raises to their employees in 2021, while 41% of firms gave hikes of between 15% and 30%, according to a survey by the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA). Yet, the annual turnover rate for the industry shot up to 30% in 2021 from 18% the year before.

There are over 500,000 people working in the IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) sectors in Pakistan. The country produces around 25,000 fresh computer science graduates every year, which is growing by 5% each year. Most of these graduates cannot be put on jobs immediately. “Only 20% of those graduates are actually employable. Very few local universities are actually training their students on newer technologies, like Javascript and Python, which account for almost 80% of our exports,” Mustafa Najoom, vice president of growth at Gaper.io, a recruitment startup that helps Pakistani engineers find jobs with U.S. companies, told Rest of World.

To navigate the situation, Pakistani tech companies are coming up with unique solutions.

Salesflo, a supply chain software catering to consumer goods companies, has launched a structured graduate program, which recruits recent college graduates and trains them across a range of business functions. “In our first year of Salesflo, we hired four fresh graduates because that’s all we could afford at the time. But the results were so encouraging that from next year onwards, we developed it into a structured graduate program,” Yasir Suleman Memon, co-founder of Salesflo, told Rest of World.

Salesflo has also chosen an unlikely destination to set up its engineering hub: Hyderabad, the eighth largest city in Pakistan. “There’s a lot of wonderful talent in cities like Hyderabad, Multan, Bahawalpur, etc., who have to move to metropolises for jobs, so why not take the jobs there?” Memon said.

Several tech companies are also trying to tackle the problem of talent shortage via coding camps and open-source courses.

One of the largest export-oriented IT services companies in Pakistan, 10Pearls, has set up “10Pearls University,” which offers free training and online courses in different technical disciplines. “To double our IT exports, we need to increase our workforce by two times,” Zeeshan Aftab, managing director and co-founder of 10Pearls, told Rest of World. “To address this, we need to combine multiple strategies: provide software development training to graduates of other engineering disciplines who haven’t secured jobs, incentivize women with professional IT qualifications who have become homemakers to rejoin the workforce, and adjust the current degree programs so students can join the workforce after two to three years of studies and complete the final year while working.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 20, 2022 at 7:04am

Rider is taking a nimble approach to e-commerce logistics in Pakistan | TechCrunch


https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/19/rider-is-taking-a-nimble-approach...

Rider’s new funding will be used on its in-house tech, including e-commerce enablement tools like plug-ins and built-in wallets to help SMEs, which Allana said are mostly owned by women, grow their businesses.


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Rider is on a mission to provide online shoppers in Pakistan with “Amazon-like” next-day deliveries. The Karachi-based company announced it has raised $3.1 million in new funding from Y Combinatior, along with new investors i2i, Flexport, Soma Capital and Rebel Fund. Returning investors included GFC, Fatima Gobi and TPL E-ventures, along with Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi. This brings RIder’s total raised to $5.4 million since September 2021.

Founded in 2019 by former UPS Pakistan executive Salman Allana, Rider is building a network of sorting hubs, delivery centers and a digitized fleet. The platform enables sellers to offer next-day delivery with route optimization, live tracking and scheduling for buyers. The company claims that since their pre-seed investment round in September 2021, monthly revenues have grown 110% and they have doubled their customer base to 650 online sellers. So far, Rider has delivered 3 million parcels across 60 cities in Pakistan. It currently runs a network of 16 hubs that cover 60 cities across Pakistan, which Allana said accounts for about 60% of e-commerce demand in the country.

Allana told TechCrunch that growing up in Karachi and spending his early career in sub-Saharan Africa meant he was used to poor supply chains and logistics services. “If you ordered something online, you accepted the huge risk it might never show up,” he said. When he moved to London to study for his MBA, he became “obsessed” with Amazon delivery. “How could an order I placed at midnight be at my doorstep the next morning? I believed there was a clear and large opportunity to bring this service quality to online sellers in Pakistan and eradicate ‘parcel anxiety’ for all online buyers in Pakistan—including myself.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 21, 2022 at 9:21am

Why do investors prefer start-ups in India, Pakistan over Bangladesh?
Bangladeshi start-ups raised $165 million in 2021, whereas Indian counterparts raised $38 billion and Pakistani ones raised more than $350 million

https://www.dhakatribune.com/business/2022/03/27/why-do-investors-p...

Zisan Bin Liaquat

March 27, 2022 7:50 AM

Bangladesh has been consistently outperforming neighbouring India and Pakistan on various economic indicators, and its start-up scene — propelled by the government’s Digital Bangladesh vision — is growing at a breakneck speed.

And yet when it comes to raising funds from venture capitalists (VCs), the Bangladeshi start-up sector is dwarfed by those in neighbouring countries.

Bangladesh received over $750 million in foreign investment for start-ups in the last decade, raising the highest $165 million in 2021.

In that same year, Indian start-ups raised $42 billion, according to a report by Orios Venture Partners. And in Pakistan, whose start-up sector is still at a rudimentary stage, the companies raised more than $350 million, according to Pakistani consultancy firm Invest2Innovate.

According to industry experts and insiders, the narrative of Bangladesh in the global arena has been a major barrier to raising funds as most global investors do not know that Bangladesh has more to offer than just cheap labour and goods.

“Our storytelling needs to be better,” says Rahat Ahmed, the founder of Anchorless Bangladesh — a New York-based early-stage venture investment fund focused on advancing the Bangladeshi start-up ecosystem through access to global resources.

“As a country, we don’t often understand the criteria foreign investors look for in private investments, including deal structure and founder mentality. However, it's definitely starting to get better,” he told Dhaka Tribune.

Apart from the lack of creating a compelling story for big ticket investors, including foreign angels and VCs who can literally invest their capital anywhere, there are several other bottlenecks.

“Some of the lingering challenges include a lack of liquidity, including follow-on funds, a growing need for more product development and management expertise other than creating a compelling story and proposition,” Nirjhor Rahman, the CEO of Bangladesh Angels explains.

He pointed out that in neighbouring markets such as India and Pakistan, there is a flourishing industry of domestic venture capital, particularly in the early stages within the fundraising value chain, often affiliated with local corporations and family offices.

However, despite Bangladeshi corporations and financial institutions turning towards start-ups for potential investment, they are still cutting relatively small — $250,000-500,000 — cheques.

“If we can create more domestic liquidity, more and more start-ups in Bangladesh can start scaling and get to Series A, B and C, and more foreign investors will start looking at Bangladeshi start-ups, because their minimum cheques are much larger and range in the millions of dollars,” Rahman said.

Rahat Ahmed also believes the lack of consistent and appropriately structured local funding is one of the single biggest weaknesses that has limited the development of the ecosystem.

“In comparison, our regional peers in India, Indonesia and Pakistan have benefitted from local corporations and angels playing a critical role in the early development and future funding of start-ups. Not only does Bangladesh need more such investors, but we also need them to invest in a manner so that founders can raise future rounds of funding abroad to scale their businesses,” he explained.

Bangladeshi tech start-ups have also been slacking in terms of fundraising compared to their neighbours because of certain policy bottlenecks, which unless resolved, will not attract foreign investors at a greater scale and with more significant sums.

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 21, 2022 at 9:22am

Why do investors prefer start-ups in India, Pakistan over Bangladesh?
Bangladeshi start-ups raised $165 million in 2021, whereas Indian counterparts raised $38 billion and Pakistani ones raised more than $350 million

https://www.dhakatribune.com/business/2022/03/27/why-do-investors-p...

“First, we need to recognize that foreign investors will prefer indirect investments via holding entities in Singapore, or US, versus investing directly into a legal entity in Bangladesh. From that perspective, we need to allow Bangladeshi start-ups to legally create offshore entities to receive investments, with the goal of bringing them back to Bangladesh for operations,” Nirjhor Rahman said.

“We also need to allow for cross-shareholding, where local investors should be able to own shares in those foreign holding entities alongside foreign investors, even if they invest money locally,” he added.

Rahman also noted that there is still a lot of ambiguity and lack of case studies regarding successful repatriation of capital — be it dividends or share sales — in privately-held Bangladeshi companies.

“Without that, foreigners will feel uneasy because they are not fully sure how their money will be returned,” he added.

Local start-ups that pitch for foreign investment also face barriers that have been holding Bangladesh from keeping up with neighbours.

“When we are trying to look for foreign investors, the “sloth” regulatory process becomes a big issue that acts against the interest of investors,” a top official of MyCash told Dhaka Tribune.

“Suppose we are planning to launch our product by June, but our papers aren't ready yet because the whole process is very slow. If we say we could not launch in time, our investors will naturally shy away from investing anything,” he added.

Nazmul Arefin, the CEO of parenting services start-up ToguMogu, on the other hand, says that there is a lack of data, and such resources are very crucial in attracting foreign investors through an empirical projection that is realistic.

“When an investor looks for insights such as the size of a certain market, we hardly have any data to back our claim of its potential for growth. We cannot prove to them why our start-up has the potential to become a unicorn like bKash as we do not have enough data on unconventional or latent markets,” he said.

Bangladesh also needs to pick up pace on adapting the trend of reverse brain drain like India and Pakistan, which helped out their start-up ecosystems immensely.

Bangladeshi alumni of global tech companies who have made an impact in the West or in the local scenario need to reconnect with the local community to help them flourish through mentorship and investment, industry insiders say.

This has been the case for start-up GreenGrocery.

Green Grocery received angel investments by a group of young investors, led by M Asif Rahman, founder of ARCom and WPDeveloper.

Noor-E-Saba, co-founder and director of Marketing and Customer Service at GreenGrocery, said that unlike other similar start-ups that had faced several barriers in landing investments from foreign sources, it has been able to raise funds without much hassle as it was being backed by a veteran.

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 27, 2022 at 7:35am

Pakistan Ride-Sharing Startup Bykea Raises Funds to Fuel Growth

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-27/pakistan-ride-sh...

Pakistani ride-sharing and delivery startup Bykea raised $10 million from its existing backers to tap rising demand for online services in the South Asian country.

Bykea, which focuses on two-wheeler rides, said in a statement Monday it plans to use the funds to extend its services, which include food and e-commerce deliveries, as well as cash pick-up. The company’s investors include Prosus Ventures, MEVP, Sarmayacar, Tharros, and Ithaca Capital.

With 1.7 million active monthly users and more than 60,000 driver partners, Bykea offers services in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. It’s among an emerging crop of Pakistani startups attracting attention from global venture investors as mobile services gain popularity in the country of more than 200 million people.


“We see an enormous opportunity to serve the middle class by offering easy, affordable, and convenient transport and logistics solutions,” Bykea Executive Chairman Jonas Eichhorst said in the statement.

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 27, 2022 at 10:49am

Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Syed Aminul Haq has announced the setting up of an IT park in Karachi and a piece of land costing Rs31 billion has been acquired from the Civil Aviation Authority near Karachi airport for the project.

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2359967/it-park-planned-near-karachi-a...

“Plots will be available at much lower rates in the IT park to encourage maximum number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) associated with IT services to establish their businesses, which will be fully equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure and all IT-related facilities,” said the minister.

He was speaking at a meeting with traders during his visit to the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI).

The move was welcomed by the financial and technology consultants.

“This will enable our SMEs to grow at a faster pace, which is the need of the hour, keeping in mind not just our current economic situation, but also the overall global situation,” said Saad Gadit, Co-founder Savyour.

“This step will help in creating an efficient ecosystem, which comes when likeminded individuals working with the same vision come together. It also helps in model and information sharing; hence the beneficiaries are significantly higher.”

“Although brick and mortar is not a roadblock to technological development and digitisation, it depends on how the piece of land is utilised to create an ecosystem where incentives are timely provided and technological hubs are created for not only tech businesses but also for all the SMEs backed by tech infrastructure, skill development and research and development (R&D),” said Khurram Schehzad, CEO of Alpha Beta Core.

“It comes as great news that Karachi has finally decided to go in the direction of an IT park as other provinces have already started work on similar spaces; it will prove to be a great opportunity for technological exploration in the region,” said Noman Ahmed Said, CEO of SI Global.

“Karachi already ranks higher in technological prowess and it will prove to be more beneficial to begin development in the city by working under one umbrella and generating more revenue.”

Said described IT parks as the areas with scores of facilities, where IT-related knowledge and service industries were attracted and facilitated through the provision of buildings, industry-specific infrastructure and business support services.

“The ultimate objective of an IT park is to provide an environment that will enable the localisation of tech-related companies.”

Moreover, IT parks attract investment, which gives a boost to the economy, while simultaneously creating room for more companies to establish or expand their operations, thereby leading to job creation, he said.

Start-up investment expert Kapeel Kumar remarked that it would be a great initiative for start-ups and SMEs to accelerate development work and would also encourage the youth to start business with ease and tax benefits.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 1, 2022 at 5:21pm

Startups in Pakistan have raked in a total of $284.89 million in disclosed funding across 45 deals in the first six months of 2022, according to Profit’s research of data from insights firms i2i Ventures, DataDarbar, and Crunchbase.

https://profit.pakistantoday.com.pk/2022/07/01/pakistani-startups-h...


This investment in the first 6 months of the ongoing year is 182% higher than the first six months of the last year. (Note: 24SEVEN’s $6 million pre-Series A raise, which was raised earlier but announced on July 1, has been included in the total number for the first six months of this year)

Despite this, amid a global funding crunch, they are most likely to close the year with less funding collected than in 2021.

Till June 2021, Pakistan’s startups had raised $101 million in funding across 33 deals, according to data from i2i Ventures. The bulk of the funding in the ongoing year has come into B2B startups Bazaar, Dastgyr, Retailo, and Jugnu, which announced raking in $70 million, $37 million, $36 million, and $22.5 million, respectively, contributing more than half (58% or $165.5 million) towards the total funding raised till June this year.

After the B2B startups, sizeable funds have been raised by Abhi Finance ($17 million), NayaPay ($13 million), Truck It In ($13 million), MedznMore ($11.5 million), SadaPay ($10.7 million) and Bykea ($10 million). The remaining 31 deals are all under $10 million.
There are four big deals in this equation, and they are either Series-A or Series-B raises, which are understandably very large in amount because of the scale of operations at these stages. However, most of the seed stage and pre-Series A stage startups from last year have not announced any raise so far.

According to i2i’s deal-flow tracker, 46 startups were at the seed stage last year and five startups were at pre-Series A stage. Out of these 51 startups, only 3 Series A announcements have been made so far of Jugnu, Retailo, and Dastgyr. According to Crunchbase, one out of two (50%) seed-stage startups makes it to Series A stage. The ratio right now is abysmal, with only 5% of the startups from last year making it to the Series A stage. This only confirms that fundraising right now is difficult.

There are still six months to go before the end of the year and the aforementioned startups could be announcing Series A investments but it is almost certain that not most of them would be announcing such raises. The market downturn is actually getting intense and the situation is only going to get worse, which would have prompted startups to wait it out.
Profit has earlier covered at length the funding crunch that has hit global markets, which has also impacted the ability of Pakistani startups to raise funds. Being a frontier market, only crumbs will be reaching startups in Pakistan. But $271 million in funding in six months is an impressive number. Considering that the expectation in Pakistan’s VC circle was that in 2022, the final tally would hit $750 million mark for the entire year, because of the great momentum and attention from foreign investors last year. So how have the startups been able to raise this funding apparently during a funding crunch?

The answer to the question above is that the funding was not entirely raised during the investment shortfall this year. Fundraising can be a lengthy process, with startups continuously engaging with investors, and closing deals as they come. Investors put money in tranches. An investor could be releasing the funds for a startup in October whereas the next investor would release funds in December. The funding round could be announced when the target for the raise is achieved.

Some of the startups that have announced big rounds this year, we’re in the process of raising new funds since last year. For instance, Dastgyr had reportedly been in talks with Veon Ventures since December last year, and Bazaar, too, reportedly signed the term sheet with Tiger Global sometime in December 2021.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 1, 2022 at 5:21pm

Pakistani startups have raised $284mn in first half of 2022, but are expected to close the year at less than 2021
As the funding crisis deepens, additional $40-80mn only can be expected to be coming into Pakistani startups in the next six month


https://profit.pakistantoday.com.pk/2022/07/01/pakistani-startups-h...

So if startups have announced their fundraising this year, this does not necessarily mean that they raised all of it during this year. They could have been negotiating with investors prior to when things went down south in the US market and announced when it is officially now a bear market, creating a wow moment in the process.
So what is the situation like now?

If a startup like Bykea scraps fundraising efforts because the terms are not favorable for startups right now, things are headed towards the worst. On June 15, 2022, the US Fed increased interest rates by 0.75 basis points, its biggest interest rate hike since 1994, to fight inflation.

The consequence of this would be that more money would be parked in the banks and less would be available for investment. Whatever crumbs were available for investment in Pakistani startups, there is going to be a shortfall of that as well in the days to come, except for Pakistani startup founders.

The equation is simple. There is a lot of dry powder that is waiting to be invested. It’s just that investors would want to invest in less risky assets. So even if a Pakistani startup is able to access investors that are willing to invest, they would offer investment at terms highly unfavorable for the startup. So startups here can either accept harsh terms or wait it out while trying to become sustainable on their own.

Whatever the case, the fundraising is going to go down and by the time this year ends, the overall raise is going to be substantially less than what was expected on the back of strong momentum from last year.

Kalsoom Lakhani, co-founder, and general partner at i2i, expects that startups might close the year at $350 million, which is about $30 million less than what was raised during the last year. Khurram Zafar, the managing partner at 47 Ventures, also predicts that Pakistan will close the year at about $350 million.

According to Faisal Aftab, co-founder and managing partner of Zayn Capital, the funding slowdown is going to get worse. According to his estimates, about $30-50 million can come into Pakistan’s startups in the next 6 months in the current situation. This would bring the final count for 2022 to $300-320 million for the complete year. The amount would be about $60-80 million short compared to last year’s funding, and less than half of what was the expected target for fundraising this year.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 2, 2022 at 10:19am

Pakistani Startup Funding Shrinks by 41% in Three Months

https://propakistani.pk/2022/07/01/pakistani-startup-funding-shrink...


Startup funding in Pakistan decreased by 41 percent to less than $104 million during the second quarter of the calendar year (CY) 2022, compared to $177 million recorded in January-March.

According to data collected by analytics firm Data Darbar, startups raised $103.8 million in funds from a total of 22 rounds in April-June CY22. This reduced the average ticket size by 58 percent to $4.94 million, from $11.5 million the previous quarter. However, financing increased when compared to $99.2 million from April-June CY21.

The top five rounds were led by Dastgyr ($37 million), Abhi Finance ($17 million), Medznmore ($11.5 million), Sadapay ($10.7 million), and Bykea ($10 million).


Sequentially, startups raised almost $277 million in the first half of CY22, indicating a 135 percent increase from $117.6 million in the corresponding period last year.

A stage-by-stage review of the financial data revealed that seed funding fell the most, from $35.9 million in the previous quarter to $19 million in April-June. This was the smallest amount at this point since the first quarter of CY21.

Series A funding fell to $54 million in the most recent quarter, down from $58.5 million in Q1. However, it increased by 52.7 percent year on year from $35.4 million recorded in the second quarter of CY21. Pre-seed investments, on the other hand, remained robust, totaling $8.2 million and up on a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) as well as a year-on-year (YoY) basis.

E-Commerce had the largest inflows during April-June. In the previous three months, five e-commerce rounds totaling $42.6 million were completed. Other notable areas included fintech ($27.9 million in three transactions), healthtech ($13.3 million in two transactions), and transportation and logistics ($14.6 million in six transactions).

Fintech startups raised $27.9 million in three deals during Q2. While the value increased both on a QoQ and YoY basis, the number of transactions was the lowest since Q1 of CY21. Meanwhile, transport and logistics came in third, bringing in $14.6 million through six rounds.

During the period in review, the business raised $10 million in a Series B round. Additionally, five rounds attracted $8.2 million in Pre-Seed funding, while seven other rounds gained over $1.1 million in Accelerator funding.


Location-wise, Karachi led the space by a wide margin. Companies in the city attracted $90.9 million over 19 deals, accounting for 87.6 percent of total investment and 81.8 percent of all deals respectively. Meanwhile, Lahore raised just $1 million in a single round (24Seven.pk), the lowest amount since 1QCY21. Meanwhile, female-founded and co-founded firms raised only one round of funding each, with $1.8 million for meqIQ and $500 million for Outclass.

Since the beginning of 2022, there have also been two exits. In the previous six months, travel firm GoZayaan purchased FindMyAdventure, while fintech ZoodPay acquired microfinance player Tez Financial Services Ltd. It is noteworthy that back in 2021, there were an identical number of departures observed in the space.

Due to cheap liquidity, global venture investments set new records in 2021. However, soaring inflation and rate hikes spoiled the mood this year, delivering a huge blow to the space and funding rounds that had been so common lately. Overall venture capital financing slowed both on a monthly and yearly basis between March and May.

The VC market crunch has caused companies to reassess their business strategies and slash expenditures. So far, 881 startups have laid off over 141K individuals, and Pakistan is no exception. Several high-profile players have announced huge layoffs and withdrawals from certain services or marketplaces in recent months. Among them are Airlift, Truck It In, Retailo, Tazah, and Swvl.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 11, 2022 at 10:10pm

The world’s most active investor is on the prowl in Pakistan
“I’ve never met investors who are this prepared.” Tiger Global is making swift and aggressive moves in the country's startup scene.

https://restofworld.org/2022/worlds-most-active-investor-pakistan/

By MUTAHER KHAN
11 JULY 2022 • KARACHI, PAKISTAN
The world’s most active investor is on the prowl in Pakistan

Despite being the fifth most populous country in the world, Pakistan has long been ignored by international tech companies and investors: PayPal services are unavailable in the country, Amazon’s e-commerce website doesn’t operate here, and Apple didn’t even have an official reseller in Pakistan until recently. Although Pakistan has been touted as the world’s last big untapped market and drawn almost $366 million in funding in 2021, local investors continue to worry that global venture capital (VC) firms aren’t serious about the country.

That changed in December 2021, when Karachi-based CreditBook, a digital ledger app, raised a pre–series A round co-led by Tiger Global. The single most active investor in the world, Tiger Global made an astonishing 335 deals last year. Pakistani investors and entrepreneurs say its arrival in the country marks a new era. “Their presence is a very big deal. It shows the market is ready, and it’s here to stay,” Faisal Aftab, co-founder of Zayn Capital, told Rest of World.

Tiger’s footprint in Pakistan has spread quickly since: The New York–headquartered investment firm participated in a $70 million series B round for e-commerce firm Bazaar in March and in a $2.1 million pre-seed round for B2B supplies startup Zaraye in April.

These investments by “the world’s biggest unicorn hunter” could go a long way in nurturing and strengthening Pakistan’s startup ecosystem, which is eagerly awaiting its first billion-dollar venture

Tiger Global has played a vital role in the success of the startup ecosystem in neighboring India. It backed some of the country’s most iconic tech ventures, including e-commerce major Flipkart (now owned by Walmart) and ride-hailing major Ola. In 2021, it was the most active private investor in India by dollar value, deploying $2.25 billion in the country.

Tiger Global’s moves in Pakistan are designed to replicate the firm’s success in India. CreditBook, Bazaar, and Zaraye all have Indian counterparts: OKCredit, Udaan, and OfBusiness, respectively.

All of Tiger Global’s investments in Pakistan so far are B2B companies that cater mainly to the retail sector, which accounts for over 18% of the country’s GDP and is largely undocumented. “It’s about the total addressable market. The segment is massive and undocumented, and they bring in experience in similar models across different countries,” said Aftab, whose firm, Zayn Capital, is a co-investor with Tiger Global in at least two Pakistani startups.

True to its global reputation of being aggressive and quick in decision-making, Tiger Global has moved swiftly in Pakistan. “I have never met investors who are this prepared,” Hasib Malik, co-founder and CEO of CreditBook, told Rest of World. “They were able to understand exactly what we were doing and what phase we are in and go deep. As a result, conversations or questions that would happen in the third meeting were already happening in the first because of the preparations they had, without us providing them anything. This was super impressive and sped things up.”

The executives at Zaraye had a similar experience. A B2B raw materials procurement app currently catering to textile and construction industries in Pakistan, Zaraye started looking for funding in late October 2021. In mid-November, one of the company’s angel investors introduced the executive team to John Curtius, who leads Tiger Global’s software and B2B practices. In early January, Zaraye co-founder Ahsan Ali Khan and his team got on a call with Curtius, and 30 minutes later, the deal had been signed off. Typically, such deals can take up to four rounds of calls and interactions to be finalized, Khan said.

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