Lahore April 2 2022: Pakistani startups raised USD 163 million in Q1 2022 via 15 deals in Q1 2022, a little less than 50 percent of what was raised in all of 2021 (USD 350 million) and more than 7 times of what was done in Q1 2021 (USD 22.2 million).
Most of this amount was thanks to larger later stage rounds, mostly achieved by the b2b e-commerce space, Bazaar Technologies USD 70 million Series B (led by Tiger Global & Dragoneer), Retailo Technologies’ USD 36 million Series A (led by Graphene) and Jugnu’s USD 22.5 million Series A (a strategic alliance with Saudi b2b ecommerce player Sary).
This is important signaling, given predictions of the market cooling off and concerns about a dearth of growth stage capital for Pakistani startups — this at least shows that companies can and are raising serious rounds from serious players.
Fintech and logistics also raised significant capital in Q1, the most notable being NayaPay’s USD 13 million seed round and Truck It In’s USD 13 million seed round.
We often see the most amount of US dollars in emerging markets initially go to e-commerce, fintech and logistics, so this trend continues and is aligned with the notion that these 3 sectors are somewhat symbiotic — as e-comm grows, as does logistics, etc.
