Comment by Riaz Haq on August 30, 2022 at 11:30am

Faseeh Mangi
@FaseehMangi
* Pakistani startup PostEx has acquired a logistics company to make it the nation's largest e-commerce delivery firm
* It started in 2019 by going door-to-door to small shops for business
* The combined entity will handle 50,000 orders a day https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-30/postex-buys-riva...

https://twitter.com/FaseehMangi/status/1564496822860668938?s=20&...

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Pakistani startup PostEx, a provider of courier and financing services to online merchants, acquired logistics company Call Courier in a deal that makes it the nation’s largest e-commerce delivery firm, according to its founder.

The combined entity will be handling about 50,000 orders a day, a scale that makes it profitable, founder Muhammad Omer Khan said without disclosing a value for the deal. The acquisition gives PostEx delivery operations in 500 Pakistani cities, compared with its previous base that consisted of just the three main ones.


“While others are going on the backfoot and slowing down, we plan to become even more aggressive,” Khan, who is PostEx’s chief executive officer, said in an interview in the southern city of Karachi.

Pakistan, whose population of about 230 million makes it the world’s fifth-largest nation, is attracting interest from global investors as its online businesses gain users. The country’s startups raised more than $350 million in 2021, a record, with several global venture funds investing for the first time. PostEx raised $8.6 million last year in one of Pakistan’s largest early-stage funding rounds.

More than 90% of e-commerce deliveries in the South Asian nation are paid for in cash, resulting in long delays before the merchants receive the proceeds for the sale. PostEx offers these businesses upfront payments before deliveries are made, giving them liquidity. The financing services help PostEx stand out from the region’s other delivery companies, Khan said.


Pakistan’s e-commerce industry has lured the most investment in the recent funding rush. The majority of the population still hasn’t switched to online shopping, providing room for the sector to grow and transactions to reach $10 billion before 2025 from about $6 billion now, Khan estimates.

Khan started PostEx in 2019 with a friend, going door-to-door to small shops to convince them to allow the company to handle their deliveries. The acquisition more than triples its number of employees to 2,400.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 6, 2022 at 9:09am

#Pakistan #PropTech #Startup Scene a Standout Among #EmergingMarkets.A huge, young/growing population needs #housing & other #realestate services.The country’s only #unicorn — EMPG, the Emerging Power Market Property Group — came out of the proptech sector https://commercialobserver.com/2022/09/pakistan-proptech-companies/...

Because Pakistan’s black market is three times the size of the nation’s legitimate economy, real estate is the only industry outperforming other asset classes, said Arif.
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A country of 230 million people with a median age of 23, Pakistan is embracing proptech innovation as a means to more efficiently increase housing availability and other real estate services. The proptech industry in turn is providing new job opportunities for Pakistan’s growing number of highly educated young people.

Atif Bin Arif, founder and CEO of Karachi-based MyGhar, a coliving startup that provides furnished private and shared rooms with all-inclusive billing, said his decision to start the company was based on his trying to rent an apartment in Islamabad, the country’s capital. He found that Pakistan’s residential culture was a problem for a young bachelor looking to rent.

“You know, we live with our parents over here,” said Arif, who was raised in Toronto and moved back to Pakistan 10 years ago to take over his family’s travel and hospitality business. “It’s just a cultural norm that families live together and move out when they get married.”

However, Arif wasn’t married as he looked for an apartment.

“That was the first time I moved between cities as a temporary move,” he said. “As a single male, that was one of the most daunting tasks I have ever come across. If you visited 10 properties, 10 out of 10 landlords would say no to bachelors because they would think they’re going to come and ruin the place. So, culturally, that was a problem.”

It took Arif nearly two months to find a place.

“Also, it was expensive,” he added. “They would ask for three months’ deposit, three months advance rent, and one month of broker fees. It was a completely offline process. I would be going on classified websites, visiting properties, and physically exhausted. That’s where the Eureka moment happened: I am someone with resources and it’s taking me this long and it’s this daunting of a task? Imagine the average individual.”

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“Funds cannot be parked anywhere except [in real estate],” he said. “I realized that’s where I wanted to be. There was no dedicated housing solution. And I thought that if I can create furnished spaces that are move-in ready that people can book on a monthly basis, completely flexible and digital, we might be solving one of the most pressing needs in the housing industry in Pakistan. That’s what we’re out to build.”

The market is huge and growing. About 500,000 Pakistanis graduate college annually, and one-fifth of those move to city centers, Arif said.

Pakistan’s foreign direct investment in June 2022 was $271 million, according to CEIC. The country’s only unicorn — EMPG, the Emerging Power Market Property Group — came out of the proptech sector.

Given Pakistan’s vast market potential, its housing challenge is not the only area where proptech startups are looking to provide solutions. The workplace is being disrupted and digitized, as well.

“We provide flexible workspace solutions across coworking enterprise offices,” said Omar Shah, co-founder and CEO of Colabs, a Lahore-based proptech firm founded in 2019.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 6, 2022 at 9:10am

#Pakistan #PropTech #Startup Scene a Standout Among #EmergingMarkets.A huge, young/growing population needs #housing & other #realestate services.The country’s only #unicorn — EMPG, the Emerging Power Market Property Group — came out of the proptech sector https://commercialobserver.com/2022/09/pakistan-proptech-companies/...


Having seen the traditional Pakistan real estate market that has existed for decades — one he characterized as grossly inefficient and expensive — Shah realized it was ripe for digital disruption.

“I did this because it was the sharing economy,” he said. “The whole concept of the sharing economy is that the same spaces are used by multiple people. And as we move towards a more flexible world, people realize that these solutions are more organized and better fitted in terms of what we’re all doing.”

Colabs bills itself as the fastest-growing flexible workspace in Pakistan. It provides back-office services; HR payroll accounting, for which it is developing a SaaS platform; and an entrepreneurial division for events, workshops and training that acts as an accelerator for other startups.

Similar to MyGhar’s Arif, Shah sees great opportunity and growth for Pakistan proptech.

“I am a former investment banker and investor,” said Shah. “I spent nine years doing private equity venture capital in London and across emerging markets, including Dubai, Latin America, Turkey and Africa. I moved back three years ago to start COLABS. Today we are the top company in the country in terms of speed of growth. We are managing about 1,200 seats across multiple locations. In the next 12 months we hope to get up to 3,000 seats.”

In March, Colabs raised a $3 million seed round from venture capital firms in Pakistan and internationally, said Shah. “Our investors include Fatima Gobi Ventures, Indus Valley Capital, Shorooq Partners, Kinnow Capital, Zayn Capital, as well as angel investors.”

Also, like MyGhar, COLABS is part of a Singapore-based holding company, said Shah. “It’s very common in Pakistan to have your holding company in Singapore, or the Cayman Islands, or Delaware,” he said. “The holding company makes it easier for investors to raise money at the seed or series level by having a foreign audit.”

Although U.S. investment in Pakistan-based proptech startups remains rare, interest in the market is growing, said Zach Aarons, co-founder and partner at MetaProp, a Manhattan-based early-stage proptech startup investment firm.

“A few reasons why I’m excited about the proptech ecosystem in Pakistan is that it’s such a large and young country,” said Aarons. “It has a favorable regulatory environment for fintech and an inefficient current real estate market. Plus, it has high mobile phone penetration and very quickly growing internet access.”

In fact, over the last 18 months, U.S.-based general technology venture capital firms such as Tiger Global Management and Kleiner Perkins have begun slowly to invest in Pakistan proptech startups, said COLABS’ Shah. However, he admits that Pakistan still trails far behind other emerging proptech markets such as India, Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam.

As a Pakistan-born immigrant to the U.S., Farhan Masood, president and CTO of Soloinsight, a leading workflow automation and security proptech company founded in 2018 and based in Chicago, has a unique perspective on what’s happening in his homeland.

“I think things are changing now,” Masood said of Pakistan. “Things have drastically changed. If you look at the amount of investments that are coming to Pakistan, proptech is the most [exciting]. Ask any Pakistani, ‘What’s your dream?’ The dream is to own a house.”

In such a huge population, home buyers and renters are met with major inefficiencies due to a lack of product as well as no established financing, government support or conventional mortgage systems, he said. “You don’t have any of that support, so the market isn’t right for a huge amount of business.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 6, 2022 at 9:11am

#Pakistan #PropTech #Startup Scene a Standout Among #EmergingMarkets.A huge, young/growing population needs #housing & other #realestate services.The country’s only #unicorn — EMPG, the Emerging Power Market Property Group — came out of the proptech sector https://commercialobserver.com/2022/09/pakistan-proptech-companies/...


In such a huge population, home buyers and renters are met with major inefficiencies due to a lack of product as well as no established financing, government support or conventional mortgage systems, he said. “You don’t have any of that support, so the market isn’t right for a huge amount of business.”

As for Soloinsight, it is a somewhat rare Pakistan-U.S. proptech startup, Masood said.

“We started in Pakistan and moved to the United States and now focus on some of the most iconic buildings and Fortune 500 customers,” said Masood, who received the so-called “genius visa” after attending the MIT Business Acceleration Program.

“I’m actually a dropout, but I have a lot of contributions and patents around authentication, facial recognition technology, machine vision and data analytics. I’ve worked with national databases for identity management,” Masood said of his more than 23 years of working to make building infrastructures secure.

Soloinsight has 114 employees, 104 of whom are based in Lahore, with the other 10 in Chicago. The company’s leading product, CloudGate, is a visitor identity and access management (VIAM) platform that delivers security and an intuitive guest and host experience at multiple locations via the cloud. The startup has integrated its product with access control and visitor identity firms, such as Honeywell, Johnson Controls and LenelS2.

Despite the various types and degrees of ongoing chaos in Pakistan — including a parliamentary no-confidence vote in April that ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan and recent catastrophic flooding — MyGhar’s Arif is bullish on the country’s proptech potential.

“It’s a huge opportunity,” he said. “I think the fact that there’s less competition here is the opportunity, which is why we’re all here. It’s why we work day in and night out, regardless of the economic and political turmoil.”

Philip Russo can be reached at prusso@commercialobserver.com.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 6, 2022 at 8:19pm

Kalsoom Lakhani
@kalsoom82
1/ As of today, Pakistani startups have raised $322M in 2022 (YTD) via 48 deals. Just to give perspective, in 2021, we ended the year w/ startups raising $350M via 83 deals. Not bad considering (a) we still have Q+1 mo left in 2022 & (b) the global slowdown & PK's macro./

https://twitter.com/kalsoom82/status/1567288940356374531?s=20&t...

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Kalsoom Lakhani
@kalsoom82
2/Not going to sugarcoat things: int'l investor appetite on PK has slowed down A LOT, esp this quarter (we have a month left). As someone who's worked in the ecosystem way before the 2021 hype, it almost feels like that bright & shiny year never happened, BUT, because it DID/

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Kalsoom Lakhani
@kalsoom82
3/ here's some good takeaways: #1: In a market w/ v few exits (& that being the biggest ? for investors), 2022 has at least seen some notable ones - DigitalOcean acq by Cloudways for $350M, TezFinancial acquired/


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Kalsoom Lakhani
@kalsoom82
4/ by Zoodpay in a play to enter the PK market (our hypothesis is this will continue to occur), local players VentureDive acquired NexDegree (if u know either Atif or Imran, u know this was v v smart) & logistics player Postex acq older gen play Call Courier./

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 14, 2022 at 7:34am

Pakistan’s embedded finance platform Neem has raised $2.5 million in a seed funding round as it works to support underbanked communities in the country.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/13/pakistan-embedded-financial-platf...

The Karachi-based startup targets communities across sectors including agriculture, MSMEs, e-commerce, logistics, healthcare and others. It offers a lending platform that its partners use to provide tailored lending products to consumers and MSMEs. Neem is also working on a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform, which will go live in December, that will onboard partners to embed wallets and payments and offer financial products such as insurance and savings customized to specific community’s needs.

Three-year-old Neem was founded by Nadeem Shaikh, Vladimira Briestenska and Naeem Zamindar, who previously worked as fintech entrepreneurs, operators and VCs.


“Most of the [existing] players are providing a B2C solution; we are a B2B2C solution. If you look at the embedded finance space, it is a $167 billion opportunity,” Shaikh said in an interview with TechCrunch.

Owing to COVID, the strong growth in digitization has helped Neem embed its finance services across private and public sectors.

Citing industry figures, Shaikh said about 53 million people in Pakistan are currently underbanked. Over time, the startup plans to go beyond Pakistan and support underbanked communities in other developing markets.

The seed funding, which the startup aims to use to expand its existing team of 20 people, roll out the BaaS platform and capitalize licenses, was led by Hong Kong-based SparkLabs Fintech. The funding round also saw the participation of Pakistan’s investment banking firm Arif Habib, Cordoba Logistics and Ventures, Taarah Ventures, My Asia VC, Concept Vines and Building Capital. Additionally, partners at Outrun Ventures, the founding partner at Mentors Fund and fintech veteran and ex-CEO of Seccl also participated in the seed round.

“We have strong conviction about Neem’s mission to enable financial wellness for underbanked communities, and have full confidence in the Neem leadership team to realise this vision amidst macro challenges across the globe,” said William Chu, managing partner, SparkLabs Fintech, in a prepared statement.


The startup was bootstraped before receiving the seed funding.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 3, 2022 at 10:52am

Pakistan sees growing culture of innovation amid tech startup boom
By Hamna Tariq and Uzair Younus

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/pa...


Pakistan’s startups and technology sector witnessed unprecedented growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. 2021 was a record-breaking year, with technology startups raising $350 million, while over $227 million was raised in the first half of 2022; Pakistani startups have raised $322 million in 2022 so far. Additionally, Pakistan’s information technology (IT) services sector has emerged as the largest net services exporter in the country, with IT exports more than doubling from $1.19 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2019 to $2.62 billion in FY 2022.

Another key component of the country’s technology sector is freelance work, where individuals provide technology services to global clients through platforms such as Upwork and Fiverr. This talent pool has experienced a tremendous increase in their earnings during the pandemic. While exact data for cumulative freelance earnings is not available, Pakistan is ranked as one of the largest freelance markets in the world. The national government has set a target of earning over $3 billion from this sector by 2024.

However, a tightening global macro environment coupled with increasing domestic political instability is a cause of concern for the sector, especially the domestic startup economy. To understand the risks and opportunities facing the technology ecosystem, the Atlantic Council’s Pakistan Initiative interviewed several experts within and outside Pakistan. The analysis below highlights the current state of the ecosystem and the impact of ongoing economic and political instability in Pakistan. It also outlines recommendations for key stakeholders including policymakers seeking to further globalize Pakistan’s technology sector to unlock both export earnings and foreign investment opportunities.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 25, 2022 at 10:15am

Pakistani startups raise $328m in first 9 months of Calendar Year 2022
Despite investor scepticism, amount raised equals 87% of total funding in 2021

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2380002/pakistani-startups-raise-328m

In spite of heightened investor scepticism stemming from geopolitical tensions and mounting fear of a global recession, the total funds raised by Pakistani startups, in the nine months of 2022, stood at $328 million. This amounts to 87% of the total funding in 2021, as per Alpha Beta Core’s Deal Tracker.

“The third quarter of 2022 has had more early-stage deals with total seed and pre-seed level rounds accounting for 90% of the total deals. The average deal size in the third quarter of 2022 clocked in at $60 million versus $7.3 million last quarter,” said Khurram Schehzad, CEO of Alpha Beta Core (ABCore).

Speaking to the Express Tribune, startup Investment Specialist, Kapeel Kumar said, “The more room for failure we leave, the more we also create room for success in its wake.”

“The one reason Pakistan is witnessing the boom is because the country is, after all, one of the few untapped frontier markets,” he noted.

“Most investments are within B2B or B2C e-commerce, fintech and logistics. This is a trend that can be observed in a lot of emerging markets as the ecosystem starts to grow,” he added.

“The total deal value in the third quarter was recorded at $48.6 million with a total of 11 deals,” said ABCore CEO Schehzad.

“The top deals closed were DBank at $17.6 million, OneLoad at $11 million, PriceOye at $7.9 million and DealCart at $4.5 million. Other notable deals this quarter were Neem and SnappRetail at $2.5 million each and Mahaana at $2.1 million,” he added.

Explaining the impact of startups shutting operations in Pakistan, Kumar said, “The closing of tech-startups in the last six months is alarming. In Pakistan, this will weigh heavily on the entire startup ecosystem, which is unfair to the many startups performing and creating employment.”

“The success of some startups is being fueled by the country’s growing human capital and rising investments in technology startups,” he added.

“We look forward to a better closing of 2022 as compared to that in 2021. Pakistani startups still have much better survival rates (both in terms of size and numbers) than the rest of the region or the world,” Kumar commented.

“Owing to our massive population, we have an incredible potential of growth within us,” said Noman Ahmed, CEO of SI Global Solutions.

He highlighted that “Fintech and e-commerce alike have brought in a significant chunk of this funding. The need of the hour is to create consistency and compliance, and support may be needed in order to sail through this passage to enable startups to continually thrive ahead. With this new found funding, we must collectively focus on bringing Pakistan at par with the Western world. There’s absolutely no doubt that Pakistan is positively brimming with talent.”

“As leading professionals in the tech world, it is upto us to revolutionise Pakistan’s technological landscape by nurturing, guiding and shaping this pool of talent. It is imperative that this work begins at the university level. Final projects and thesis submissions should focus on creativity and new ideas that may be brought to life with support from the startups on ground. We must rise to the challenge and work on expanding our horizons within the tech world,” urged the SI Global CEO.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 25, 2022 at 10:26am

Kalsoom Lakhani
@kalsoom82
1/It's the end of Q3, so u know what that means -- time for the
@Invest2Innovate
deal flow roundup! In Q3 2022, startups in #Pakistan raised $65.5M via 15 deals, bringing our YTD total to $340M. In Q3 2021 in comp, startups raised $177M via 22 deals, so *yes* the slowdown is/


https://insightsi2i.substack.com/p/4-q3-2022-roundup

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 22, 2022 at 10:32am

Waada Buys Rival to Become Pakistan’s Top Insurance-Tech Startup
Pakistan’s insurance penetration is 0.7%, trailing neighbors
Nation to see further consolidation as funding slows: investor
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Waada becomes largest technology led insurance start-up in Pakistan - 24/7 News

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2022/11/07/6938...

Pakistani online insurance startup Waada acquired a local rival to create the South Asian nation’s largest player in the field, seeking to benefit from growth in the burgeoning market.

The Karachi-based company took over MicroEnsure Pakistan, a unit of MIC Global operating in South Asia and Africa, in an all-stock deal, according to a statement Friday. The brands combined have 1.5 million active customers, Waada said, without disclosing the deal value. Waada also said it’s closed a seed round of $1.3 million from local angel investors and foreign venture capital firms.


Pakistani online insurance startup Waada acquired a local rival to create the South Asian nation’s largest player in the field, seeking to benefit from growth in the burgeoning market.

The Karachi-based company took over MicroEnsure Pakistan, a unit of MIC Global operating in South Asia and Africa, in an all-stock deal, according to a statement Friday. The brands combined have 1.5 million active customers, Waada said, without disclosing the deal value. Waada also said it’s closed a seed round of $1.3 million from local angel investors and foreign venture capital firms.

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https://247news.com.pk/waada-becomes-largest-technology-led-insuran...

Waada, The Insurance start-up has announce that the company has become the largest player among all technology-led start-ups in the country’s insurance segment after acquiring its rival company MicroEnsure Pakistan.

The Announcement was made on the startup’s Social media handle LinkedIn, In the announcement, it has been confirmed that deal has been locked however, company has not disclosed the details of the deal yet.

Separately, the company also announced a $1.3 million seed funding round. According to international news agency, the all-stock deal will bring the number of active customers of Wada to 1.5 million. “Waada aims to add customers using online sign-ups and has a goal to distribute 10m policies in three to five years,” it said.

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