ISLAMABAD – Pakistan startups have witnessed impressive growth with the start of 2021 as venture capitalists poured in a historic $305 million in the first nine months (January-September) of the year.
The figure is far more than what the new crop of Pakistani startups generated in the whole of 2020 when they raised only $66 million.
Adviser to Prime Minister of Pakistan for Commerce and Investment Abdul Razak Dawood revealed it in multiple tweets on Monday.
“I am very pleased to see that during the period Jan-Sep 2021, 🇵🇰 startups raised a record USD 305 million of investment globally. The sectors include e-commerce, fintech, health and freight,” he announced.
“As we are move forward, I urge our startups to look into the agriculture sector which has a lot of potentials,” he suggested.
He also congratulated Maqsad startup for securing Pakistan’s largest ed-tech funding of $2.1 million.
He hoped that the startups would touch $1 billion by the end of this year.
“Insha’Allah, 2021 will be the year of Pakistani startups. Let’s touch $1 Billion by the end of December, can we?” he added.
Pakistani startups raked in over $125 million in the first half of 2021, showing the growing confidence of investors in the country which is focusing on digitalization under the PTI government.
In September-end, QisstPay, a buy now, pay later startup, has raised $15 million in funds as it plans to spread its wings to other countries of South Asia in the next six months.
MSA Capital led the funding round and it was also participated by Global Founders Capital, Fox Ventures, First Check Ventures and others, international media reported.
The Pakistani firm plans to expand its services to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in coming months.
Bloomberg report said that QisstPay intends to include 1,000 more merchants in its portfolio by next month and increase its customers to one million by 2022.
At present, the startup serves “retailers including the local units of Samsung Electronics Co. and Xiaomi Corp.”.
The start-up was co-founded by former US citizen Jordan Olivas. “We want to be in all the places where people think it’s a tough place to start a business,” Olivas said as reported by Bloomberg.
QisstPay’s investors include “strategic angel investments from Simone Mancini and Johnny Mitrevski, founders of Scalapay, and the United Bank Ltd”.
