Startup connecting overseas Pakistanis to families at home plans new office in Dubai

KARACHI: A local startup connecting overseas Pakistanis with their families through a mobile app plans to set up new facilities in Dubai and other parts of the South Asian region as part of its international outreach plan to facilitate greater number of immigrant families, its founder said on Saturday.
Launched in August, the InstaKin app has been downloaded by Pakistani nationals residing in 86 countries who want to resolve immediate family issues back home.
Several Pakistani startups in recent months have captured the attention of global venture capitalists, attracting over $300 million during the course of this year.
Most recently, an online travel and ticketing platform, Bookme.pk, and a beauty and fashion startup, Bagallery, raised $7.5 million and $4.5 million, respectively, in Series A rounds.
“Our majority customers are based in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, apart from Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain. The Middle East is therefore an important market for our company,” Yasir Shirazi, the founder and chief executive officer of InstaKin, told Arab News.
“Setting up teams in other South Asian countries will also facilitate members of the region’s other diaspora communities working in the Middle East, whether they belong to Sri Lanka or Bangladesh,” he continued. “We already have two offices in Karachi and the United States. The third one will be established in Dubai.”
The InstaKin mobile app offers various services, including delivery of medicines and food, bill payments, legal services and property management. The platform hopes to tap more than 38 million South Asian immigrants, including nearly 10 million overseas Pakistanis.
The Dubai office having a local team would also facilitate financial services through local banks, according to the InstaKin CEO.
“Recently, I was in Dubai where we partnered with telecom companies and signed agreements with two banks whose customers will be able to use our services,” he said.
The startup is facilitating payments through Roshan Digital Accounts, a facility provided by the Pakistani central bank to overseas nationals to open bank accounts.
Shirazi said he was running his operations through a WhatsApp group before launching the mobile app.
“An overwhelming response from overseas Pakistanis compelled us to come up with our own product,” he said.
The app has so far served over 10,000 customers, mostly from the Middle East.
“Overseas Pakistanis, whose parents need any services come to us and we facilitate them through runners. They hire these runners through us,” the top InstaKin official said.
He maintained the launch of the app reduced the dependency of overseas Pakistanis on friends and relatives.
“Our users tell us they just log into the app and hire a rider,” he added. “They don’t need to call friends or relatives to run errands in their country.”
The startup aims to establish itself as a one-stop solution for users across the globe to reduce day-to-day complexities in the lives of about 250 million immigrants in a simple and instant manner.
“We want to be a one-stop shop for Pakistani immigrants in the Middle East such that if they need any services in Pakistan, they can visit the app and get things done,” Shirazi said.
Responding to a question about overseas funding, he said the Y Combinator, an American technology startup accelerator, was one of its major investors.
“Y Combinator is the world’s largest venture fund based out of Silicon Valley and we are actually one of the very few companies in Pakistan which got investment from it,” the InstaKin CEO said.
“We also have other investors mostly from the Silicon Valley,” he said without divulging the exact investment figure.