Investment in Pakistani startups surges to $200 million this year with country’s largest funding round

KARACHI: Lahore-based online shopping delivery firm, Airlift Technologies Pvt., has raised $85 million in the largest single private funding round in Pakistani history, pushing the investment in the country’s startup ecosystem this year to around $200 million, startup executives and experts have said.
Co-led by Josh Buckley of Buckley Ventures and Harry Stebbings of 20VC, Airlift’s Series B financing also marks the largest in the Middle East and North Africa region.
Other major participants included Sam Altman, the ex-president of YCombinator, Biz Stone, co-founder at Twitter/Medium, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the ex-CEO of Disney, Taavet Hinrikus, founder/CEO at TransferWise, and Seve Pagliuca, co-chairman of Bain Capital.
Airlift, which has raised $107 million so far including from the most recent funding round, plans to venture into overseas markets like Africa and Middle East.
“The funding would be utilized for network growth, marketing and infrastructure development,” Usman Gul, co-founder and CEO of Airlift, told Arab News in an interview on Wednesday. “We are looking at Asia, Africa and other countries. We are excited about big markets in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.”
He said the company was still deciding about its “immediate overseas destination.”
The startup chief said the company wanted to create thousands of jobs within Pakistan by building a platform for consumers, drivers, and small business owners.
“We are looking at 200,000 jobs in Pakistan in the next five years,” Gul said.
Airlift started out in 2019 as an alternative to Uber, Careem and public transportation, allowing users to book rides on premium quality, air-conditioned buses and vans with fixed routes, stops and times. After signing up and logging in, users could reserve their seats by selecting their pick and drop locations or browsing the routes.
But with disrupted mobility in the country due to the coronavirus pandemic, in September last year, the company decided to venture into the quick e-commerce space with online deliveries.
“A year ago, Airlift halted operations on the transit service and diversified into last-mile grocery delivery,” Gul said. “With this financing, we as Pakistanis must return to where we started from: fighting against the odds and staying true to our core values of hustle, teamwork, resourcefulness, and bias to action. If this is the journey of a thousand miles, we have taken only the first step.”
2021 has been a big year in general for Pakistani startups.
Venture capitalists poured over $85 million in funding in Pakistani startups just in the first five months of 2021, with fintech companies riding a wave of interest by overseas investors, according to data from Invest2Innovate Ventures, which supports early-stage enterprises in untapped developing markets.
“The startups ecosystem in Pakistan has raised around $193 million in the current year so far,” Kalsoom Lakhani, founder and partner at Invest2Innovate, told Arab News.
Khurram Schehzad, CEO of Alpha Beta Core, a startup investment advisory platform, put inflow figures at $200 million.
“It is just a beginning,” he said, “and we expect funding in the emerging startups ecosystem in 2021 to cross $300 million, which has already gone past $200 million during the year to date.”