South Asia Investor Review

Pakistani startups raised  $23.1 million in the first quarter of this year after hitting a low of $15.2 million in the last quarter of 2022, according to  Data Darbar . The amount of money raised by Pakistani startups increased in each of the first 3 months of 2023, bringing the total funding amount to $945.4 million across 321 deals since 2015. It started out slow with just $1.5 million raised in January, followed by $8.7 million in February and $12.9 million in March. Most of the money went for seed or pre-seed stage companies.  Pakistan Startup Funding Trend. Source: Data Darbar Six of the eight deals in Q1/2023 involved seed stage. The pre-seed and accelerator rounds were never disclosed and aren’t, therefore, reflected in the numbers. The lion's share of the investments this year went to logistics ($10.1 million) and fintech ($9 million) startups with the two sectors drawing about $10 million each. Education technology (Edtech) startup Maqsad raised $2.8 million....

The year 2021 is turning out to be a banner year for  Pakistani tech startups . At the end of the third quarter of the current year, technology startups have already raised $278 million, twice the funding raised in the previous 5 years combined. In per capita terms, this is still just over $1 per person, a lot less compared to neighboring India where startups attracted  $20 per person .  Venture Capital Investment in Pakistan. Source: Kalsoom Lakhani, i2i Ventures The third quarter (July-Sept 2021) alone has seen startup companies raise $172.6 in 17 deals closed in the three-month period, according to data compiled by Kalsoom Lakhani of i2i ventures. The top deals closed in the third quarter were: 1. Airlift $85 million series B 2. Bazaar $30 million in series A and 3. QisstPay $15 million seed round.  Source: Kalsoom Lakhani, i2i Ventures The lion's share of the ,money ($117 million) went to E-commerce startups followed by Fintech ($35 million) and trucking platform...

Pakistan's technology sector is in the midst of an unprecedented boom. It is being fueled by the country's growing human capital and rising investments in technology startups. A recent  tweet  by Swedish fund manager Mattias Martinsson captured it well when he wrote, "Have followed Pakistan for 15 years. Can't recall any time time when VC activity was anywhere near we've seen in the last few months. Impact of reforms kicking in?".  New laws have made it easier to create startups and offered greater protection to investors.  Digital infrastructure has expanded with over 100 million smartphones and an equal number of broadband subscriptions.  Source: Twitter Pakistan is churning out more than 30,000 information technology graduates every year. Over three-quarters of Pakistanis in the top three metros of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad are regularly using the internet. Technology startups are on track to attract more than $230 million in venture capital investments...

Hundreds of Pakistanis and Pakistani-Americans attended Pakistan Tech Summit 2020 at Draper University in San Mateo, California on February 15, 2020. It was organized by Arzish Azam of Ejad Labs with sponsorships from JS Bank, Netsol, VisionX, Pakistan IT ministry, Pakistan National IT Board and Pakistan Software Exports Board. This event came after a recent report in Germany's  Deutsche Welle  (DW) by Miriam Partington who wrote in a story titled "Pakistan: The next big Asian market for tech startups?" that "Pakistan's young and tech-savvy population, market of over 220 million people and increasing levels of local capital are creating opportunities for tech entrepreneurs". Pakistan Tech Summit: At this conference, I was really encouraged by the presence of many young Pakistan entrepreneurs eager to realize the vision of Digital Pakistan. Enthusiasm is necessary but not sufficient. What is missing is serious attention to attract more risk capital to sup...

Atoms shoes, founded by a young Pakistani couple, has attracted $8.1 million investment, according to  media reports . Atoms' investors include  Silicon Valley  based venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian.  It's the latest success in the entrepreneurial journey that Sidra Qasim and Waqas Ali started in Pakistani town of Okara around 2010. Sidra Qasim and Waqas Ali Wearing Atoms' Sneakers Okara, Pakistan: Atoms.com story began in 2010 when twenty-something Waqas Ali met a shoemaker Muhammad Hussain in Okara at a local panchayat (council meeting), according to Dawn. Waqas brought up the idea of selling shoes online but it did not particularly appeal to Hussain who thought people want to touch, smell, wear and feel shoes before buying them. Waqas soon dropped out of college and persuaded Sidra to join him in pursuing his dream of selling shoes online. They chose "Hometown" as the brandname for their shoes and set up thei...

Pakistani-American venture capitalist Asad Jamal hit it big with Baidu, China's search giant worth over $90 billion in market capitalization today. Jamal founded ePlanet Capital in Silicon Valley in 1999 and became an early investor in Baidu at its founding in 2000. Asad Jamal In addition to its search business, Baidu also runs an  e-commerce  platform with an online payment tool, develops and markets web application software, and provides human resource related services. Here's is how Jamal  has described his experience  of working with Baidu's founder Robin Lee: "I first experienced this  Chinese tech  dynamism when, inspired by the late-1990s Internet start-up culture, I moved to  Silicon Valley  and founded ePlanet Capital, a venture capital firm. I was new to the field and unsure what to expect. In 2000, I met Robin Li, a Chinese entrepreneur in his twenties who was seeking funding for his new company, Baidu. Based on conventional i...

Latest funding of Ashar Aziz's FireEye and Zia Yusuf's Streetline rank #1 and #4 among top 5 VC deals in Silicon Valley announced in January 2013, according to Silicon Valley Business Journal . FireEye is riding high on a wave of growing cyber security concerns amidst increasing cyber attacks being reported almost daily from around the globe. FireEye's founder Asgar Aziz is among the top recognized experts in the field of Internet and computer security. With the recent $50 million round from top investors, the company has raised $100 million to date. The new funding comes from new and existing investors — including Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Goldman Sachs, Juniper Networks, Silicon Valley Bank, and others. Streetline is offering smartphone applications to help drivers find the increasingly scarce parking spots in crowded places. The company bills itself as "the leading provider of smart parking solutions to cities, garages, airports, universi...

US is providing $80 million to create multiple VC and PE funds in Pakistan. These funds will be run by professional fund managers who will be required to manage and raise additional money from other sources to start multiple funds. US Embassy in Islamabad told Express Tribune that they expect that "there will be substantial interest from local, regional and international investors”. Polish Model: The initiative is based on the Polish American Enterprise Fund model which was started with $140 million from US government and has now grown to several billion dollars of investable funds, according to Express Tribune . US AID's Theodore Heisler said that co-investment was essential in bringing the size of each fund to a level where it can cover operating expenses. The funds will focus on investing in small and medium entrepreneurial companies which, the US Silicon Valley experience has demonstrated, are major drivers of innovation, economic growth and job creation. Histo...

China continued to outperform India as a magnet for US venture capital investments in 2008. This was particularly interesting in a year that saw the venture investors feel the pinch from declining values of their portfolios. It was also a year when a company based in Pakistan became the first to receive US venture funding. In India, the VC investment in the year 2008 amounted to $740 million across 125 deals, while it was $876 million from 144 deals during 2007. A major portion of the decline came in the last quarter of 2008 when world economy started feeling the bite of the credit crunch that precipitated the economic crisis on Wall Street. Arun Natarajan, CEO, Venture Intelligence told SiliconIndia , "Everything got affected in the October-December quarter. VCs are much better off because the money is already available as many closed funding before the middle of 2008." According to Srini Vudayagiri, Managing Director, Lightspeed Ventures, the venture capital space in Indi...