Opportunities to Invest in Pakistani High-Tech Startups

[Riaz Haq]

Guest Post by Khurram Zafar

I believe that the technology entrepreneurship ecosystem in Pakistan is at a tipping point! There are a number of factors at play that make Pakistan so ripe for both local and international investors looking to invest in the tech space:

• Quickly growing internet adoption currently estimated to be 25 million internet users and 15 million mobile internet users;
• Cheap smart phone devices costing under $50;
• 3G and 4G rollouts;
• Massive amounts of marketing and media spend by companies like Rocket Internet, Schibsted, and Naspers that’s targeted to make Pakistani consumers comfortable transacting online;
• Development of platforms like The Foundation at LUMS Center for Entrepreneurship and Plan9 that are supporting passionate entrepreneurs during their formative years;
• Slow but steady investments flowing into startups at seed (e.g. Kima Ventures investment into Eyedeus Labs) and early stage (Frontier Digital Venture’s US$3.5 Million investment into PakWheels...) from local and foreign angels as well as early-stage funds;
• Tens of millions of dollars being poured into developing pervasive electronic and online payment infrastructure in Pakistan (you have to take my word for it, but telcos and major banks will soon start announcing these plays);
• Successful entrepreneurs returning from abroad and providing mentoring to startups and building bridges for them outside of Pakistan;
• Gradual realization by seasoned businessmen and young aspiring entrepreneurs alike that internet has a massive equalizing power and they can tap into a global market of billions through online channels;
• Low cost of starting a technology business due to easy access to cloud computing platforms; massive distribution channels like the PlayStore, AppStore and Facebook; ability to create very targeted online marketing campaigns; inexpensive outsourcing of development tasks to freelancers; and quick feedback from customers to iterate and improve the products and services;
• Ease of doing a tech business in Pakistan compared to the red tape and bureaucracy that has to be dealt with while setting up an industry (in fact, software exports still enjoy a complete tax holiday in Pakistan);
• Excellent leverage on HR that tech (product) businesses provide compared to any other business and we all know that good HR is a constraint anywhere in the world;
• And lastly, because tech businesses are not as widely impacted by security, electric power shortfalls, gas load-shedding and others infrastructure issues plaguing the rest of the industries in Pakistan.

You inject a bit of capital to catalyze all this further in the 6th most populous (196 Million) country in the world, and we can have a perfect storm that can turn the Pakistani technology startups of today into the giant global businesses of tomorrow!

How long will you keep pumping money in sugar and textile mills? Let me share something that might shed some light on the opportunity that I am ranting about. The following chart compares the annual profit before taxes of a single games company based in Finland, a country with half the population of Lahore, employing only 120 people (which recently took over Nokia’s old R&D facility) with multiple publicly listed companies in Pakistan belonging to various industrial segments. Here are some eye opening inferences in case they are not readily evident:

• One mobile gaming company in a country with half the population of Lahore makes more profit before taxes than ten of the largest cement companies in Pakistan
• One mobile gaming company in a country with half the population of Lahore makes more profit before taxes than two companies that distribute natural gas to the entire Pakistan
• One mobile gaming company in a country with half the population of Lahore makes more profit before taxes than five power generation companies and two oil refineries combined
• One mobile gaming company in a country with half the population of Lahore makes more profit before taxes than nine of the top textile mills, five automobile companies and 5 sugar mills combined

Comparison of profit before taxes (FY2013) of a single mobile gaming company with various industries in Pakistan

Here is another chart to drive home the point.

• One mobile gaming company in a country with half the population of Lahore makes more profit before taxes than any one of the largest banks in Pakistan
• One mobile gaming company in a country with half the population of Lahore makes 6 times more profit before taxes than National Bank of Pakistan

Comparison of profit before taxes (FY2013) of a single mobile gaming company with various banks in Pakistan

Alright, so I have used one of the most successful games development companies for comparison, but that is besides the point. The point is, the next big games development company could be Mindstorm Studios based right here, in Lahore. The fact that it’s based in Pakistan does not minimize its chances of success. It’s as good an investment opportunity as Supercell of Finland!

One of the incubated companies at the LUMS Center for Entrepreneurship, interaCta, has developed tech to make all TV and radio broadcast interactive without the need of additional hardware, just requiring smart phones. Imagine the implications! It can disrupt the TV, Radio, Advertisement, Ratings industries just to name a few. A potential acquirer wouldn’t care whether the tech was developed at Xerox or LUMS. Eyedeus Labs, another team of LUMS students, recently raised money from Kima Ventures. They are looking to disrupt online video advertisement market by introducing non-intrusive advertisement methods in the videos that do not distract the viewer. Then there is Savaree, BizClout, Burq Solutions, JewelryDesignPro, P for Plan and the list goes on. All of these are great investment opportunities seeking capital. And these are just a few of the seed stage investment opportunities.

I repeat. This is a great time to enter Pakistan. Equity in technology companies is relatively cheap, assets are portable (predominantly intellectual property) in case one gives too much weight to country risk, operations are already on cloud platforms outside of Pakistan for many, and exit opportunities exist globally. The fundamentals of the on-ground businesses are already very strong. The Karachi Stock Market index has been growing north of 40% for the past few years (30%+ in $ terms) and broke the highest ever 32,000 KSE 100 index points barrier a few days ago. Most of that is driven by foreign investment into rock solid businesses by investors who can see past the FOX news propaganda and realize that the nation, that is often deemed to be on the brink of extinction since its founding in 1947, is as resilient as it is resourceful!

It is time local investors join the party as well. Pakistan is a gold mine of opportunities for the truly visionary, local investors with large balls and an appetite for risk looking for big rewards – people who can consider and invest in the opportunities lurking underneath the veil of ‘mostly perception based’ geo-political and security issues. If you are it, sign up as an investor at http://lce.lums.edu.pk/contact-form for starters.

Disclaimer: The author advises, mentors or has some sort of a non-compensatory advisory relationship with almost all the local startups listed in this article. This post reflects the author's assessment of the tech startup scene and the investment opportunities he sees in Pakistan. The owner of this blog does not necessarily agree with the contents of this guest post. 

 

The author is Executive Director, LUMS Center for Entrepreneurship.

This post was first published on techies.pk

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[Riaz Haq]

National Incubation Center Karachi inaugurated at NED University by PM

https://www.techjuice.pk/national-incubation-center-karachi-inaugur...

Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has inaugurated the National Incubation Center (NIC) Karachi at the launch ceremony held at NED University of Engineering & Technology on 11th May.

The event kicked off with a panel discussion moderated by Murtaza Zaidi, Director NIC Peshawar. The panelists included Jehan Ara – President at P@SHA, Faisal Sherjan – Program Director at NIC Lahore, Neelam Azman – Innovation Intervention Specialist at Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF), and Adnan Shahid, Chief Commercial Officer at PTCL. The panel discussion explored the potential of NICs to ignite and strengthen the local entrepreneurial ecosystem of the country.

Jehan Ara believes that successful exit stories will help attract investors to inject more finance in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. While sharing success stories of their respective incubators, Jehan and Sherjan identified that Pakistani millennials are passionate to solve social problems with entrepreneurship. Be it education, healthcare or social inclusion, young entrepreneurs of the country relate to grassroots problems and are driven to solve them.

With incubators being the guiding force, these startups are smart enough to figure out the right way. Sherjan highlighted that it is essential to expose “Generation Z” to the driving factors behind fourth industrial revolution such as machine learning and AI. Summer programs launched by NIC Lahore and The Nest I/O are putting rigorous efforts to provide that tech entrepreneurial exposure to teenagers.

[Riaz Haq]

Sarmayacar ready to back #Pakistani #tech #startups with $30m #VC fund. International partner Dr Klemen described #Pakistan as "one of the last remaining untapped markets of an attractive scale". #technology https://www.dawn.com/news/1444552

Sarmayacar, a Netherlands-based early stage seed fund, announced on Friday the close of Sarmayacar Ventures, a $30 million venture capital fund geared towards supporting Pakistani startups.

Founder and Chief Executive Officer Rabeel Warraich and international partner Dr Bernhard Klemen will lead the fund's investment of $100,000-$2m into companies focused on the technology and technology-enabled sectors, a press release issued by the company said.

Warraich explained that the objective of Sarmayacar Ventures is to "invest in the future of Pakistan".

"We are excited about the emerging opportunities in the country, particularly in the venture space, underpinned by attractive demographics and a strong digitisation push across many segments of the economy," said Warraich.

He added that the company looks to combine its expertise with the "financial firepower" of the fund to "back the most promising entrepreneurs building the next iconic Pakistani companies."

The CEO expressed hope that more investors, both local and international, follow "these small initial steps" and direct more risk capital towards the budding entrepreneurial ecosystem of Pakistan.

International partner Dr Klemen described Pakistan as "one of the last remaining untapped markets of an attractive scale".

"The stage of development of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Pakistan allows us to build bridges and bring learning and expertise from international ecosystems."

Sarmayacar aims to provide value-added capital to recipients by giving them access to a diverse and experienced base of investors and international domain experts led by former Electronic Arts board member Jan Bolz, Dr Klemen said, in order to support local talent in company building and mitigate the scarcity of "smart capital" in Pakistan.

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistani start-ups: The next innovation district
Nabeel Qadeer
Pakistan’s entrepreneurial ecosystem has made immense strides, but this is only the beginning, writes Nabeel Qadeer.

https://aurora.dawn.com/news/1143296/pakistani-start-ups-the-next-i...

The evolution of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Pakistan has been impressive to say the least. It has grown from a state of non-existence 15 years ago to a multi-stakeholder industry that is fast being validated globally.

The ecosystem – a snapshot
A 2017 report by Planet N and supported by Karandaaz Pakistan and the Lahore University of Management Sciences examined the challenges of the start-up ecosystem. It estimated that the number of start-ups launched after 2010 increased to 723, with 68 raising funding, of which six secured an investment greater than $500,000. An accumulated $20 million was raised by start-ups and $49 million by mid-stage companies. This growth has been supported both by infrastructural and policy measures. Over the past six years, start-up facilitation centres, including business incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces, have emerged across Pakistan, some backed by the Federal Government’s National R&D Fund. International business competitions are held all year round, thereby providing young entrepreneurs with the opportunity to have their business idea validated at an early stage. The year-round activity of the industry culminates into two large-scale international platforms, 021Disrupt and Momentum. Not only do they bring the entire ecosystem together, the sector is pitched in a holistic manner on a global level.

Policy and the ecosystem
On the policy front, measures have been taken by the Government to promote high-growth firms, thereby strengthening the ecosystem. As a result of the orientation towards one-window operations for legal paperwork, Pakistan now stands at 136 on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index, a jump of 11 places from last year. This compares to India’s 77th position and Bangladesh’s 176. To tackle the issue of seed capital, an entrepreneurial loan scheme for young people was launched by the Federal Government in 2014. This provided subsidised financing on an eight percent annual service charge basis. In the FY18-19, it is expected to benefit 2,800 applicants with Rs 3.7 billion. (A similar policy, Arabuma, was launched in Sri Lanka under the ‘Enterprise Sri Lanka’ programme in which a tax exemption was introduced for start-ups in 2017, acting as a financial incentive to scale; in Pakistan, start-ups are still struggling for such exemptions). The National IT Policy was launched in Pakistan in 2016 and if implemented in its true spirit, it will further level the playing field for start-ups. The digital policy presented by the incoming government makes mention of creating Knowledge Economy Authorities across Pakistan, ensuring standardisation of enterprise systems to improve governance, with an emphasis on ensuring the integrity and security of national databases.

As a result of the orientation towards one-window operations for legal paperwork, Pakistan now stands at 136 on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index, a jump of 11 places from last year. This compares to India’s 77th position and Bangladesh’s 176.
Although the Government aspires to create special economic zones (SEZs) to increase the ease of doing business, the focus should rather be on building IT parks and innovation cities like those created in China and Malaysia for example. This will create massive opportunities for start-ups to grow into SMEs (traditional SMEs in Pakistan create over 80% of the jobs in Pakistan).

So are we there yet? Nurturing infrastructure and supporting policies are in place for entrepreneurship to thrive and the private sector is contributing to the ecosystem as well. The numbers are showing an encouraging trend. However, there is still a lot that needs to be done.

[Riaz Haq]

IFC to invest $2.5m to support tech startups in Pakistan

https://nation.com.pk/01-Aug-2019/ifc-to-invest-2-5m-to-support-tec...


The International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, will invest $2.5 million in Sarmayacar, one of the first early-stage venture capital funds supporting tech-driven startups in Pakistan, to help boost entrepreneurship and spur economic growth. Of the total amount, $2 million is equity commitments from Startup Catalyst, IFC’s global programme that backs accelerators and seed funds in emerging markets, said IFC press statement, adding that through this initiative, the corporation supports startups that provide innovative solutions to development problems and create quality jobs. The remaining $500,000 is from the Women Entrepreneurship Finance Initiative (We-Fi), a partnership among governments, multilateral development banks and other public and private sector stakeholders, hosted by the World Bank Group. We-Fi supports women entrepreneurs in developing countries by building their capacity, scaling up access to financial products and services, and providing links with domestic and global markets. “Pakistan offers a unique opportunity with its improving stability, large, young population, rising middle class, fast-growing internet and smartphone penetration, and a dearth of venture capital in the ecosystem,” said Rabeel Warraich, Founder of Sarmayacar. Rabeel said that the IFC’s goal at Sarmayacar was to provide value-add early-stage funding to entrepreneurs who are building scalable, market-transforming consumer and enterprise technology businesses in Pakistan. “This marks the first such investment from the World Bank Group in Pakistan and will enable us to back more startups in the country, while also providing access to a global network, new markets and domain expertise to our portfolio companies,” said Rabeel Warraich added.

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan's Airlift raises $12 million in country's largest Series A to build a mass transit system. It offers #rideshare system using higher capacity vehicles enabling urban commute. #Transportation #VentureCapital #startups #Uber #Lyft https://www.menabytes.com/airlift-series-a/ via @MENAbytes

Airlift, a Pakistan-based eleven-month-old decentralized mass transit startup, has secured $12M in Series A financing, it announced in a statement today.

The round is led by First Round Capital, a leading US venture capital firm with notable investments in Uber, Square, Roblox, Looker, and Notion. The round which is the largest Series A ever raised by a Pakistani startup also marks one of the largest financings in South Asia this year and the first time that a US-based VC has led a round in Pakistan. The round was also joined by Fatima Gobi Ventures, a joint venture between one of Pakistan’s leading conglomerates Fatima Group and Gobi Partners, and Indus Valley Capital.

Founded by Usman Gul, Ahmed Ayub, Awaab Khaakwany, Meher Farrukh, Muhammad Owais, and Zohaib Ali earlier this year, Airlift enables users to book rides on premium quality (air-conditioned) buses (and vans) that have fixed routes, stops and times, in Lahore and Karachi.

The users after signing up and logging in, can reserve their seats by selecting their pick up and drop off locations or browsing the routes. Airlift’s mobile app that’s available for both Android and iOS allows users to track the buses in real-time and make payments as well using their credit or debit cards (the users have the option to pay by cash too when they board the bus).

“Airlift is spearheading the third wave of ride-sharing, in which higher capacity vehicles are playing an increasing role in enabling urban commute. With this financing, Airlift is looking to invest in technology and operations to scale its vision for a decentralized mass transit system, initially focusing on the developing world,” the startup

“In the future, mass transit systems will be dynamic in nature, catering and adapting to the changing needs of the urban population. Our vision for a decentralized mass transit system is a new concept, one that will fundamentally redefine how people commute in urban centers,” says Usman Gul, Airlift’s co-founder and CEO.

Prior to moving to Pakistan, Gul previously worked at DoorDash, the largest food delivery platform in the US. Tony Xu, Founder/CEO at DoorDash, which was valued at $12.6 billion in the last round, was among the first few angel investors to support Airlift. In August, just five months after launching operations, Airlift closed seed financing of $2.2M with Indus Valley Capital and the Fatima Gobi Ventures co-leading the round. In October, only two months later, the Company has secured Series A financing, increasing its total capital to $14.1M and setting a new precedent for startups based in Asia.

[Riaz Haq]

#startups ecosystem in #Pakistan is taking shape with 24 incubators and accelerators, 20 formal funders and #investors and 80 co-working spaces across the country. The domains vary from #edtech, #health, #fintech and #ecommerce to on-demand. #technology https://aurora.dawn.com/news/1143578


The last three years have seen a significant rise in venture financing and investments. The most recent are Airlift, TelloTalk and SastaTicket.pk (which raised $1.5 million in Series A funding by Gobi Partners). Airlift, a decentralised mass transit system, has raised $12 million Series A funding, the largest by any start-up from Pakistan and one of the largest in the South Asian region this year. The funding round was led by Round Capital, a US-based VC that has previously invested in start-ups including Uber and Square. Earlier this year, Airlift secured seed financing amount of $2.2 million from Indus Valley Capital and Fatima Gobi Ventures and TelloTalk, a local instant messaging application, raised $1.6 million from i2i Ventures.

This brings us to the other side of the table – investors. i2i is a Pakistan-based early-stage investment fund with Kalsoom Lakhani and Misbah Naqvi as partners. Other examples are Sarmayacar and Fatima Gobi Ventures. Zamindar Capital has also made investments via Idea Croron Ka, a business reality TV show that over a series of four seasons has connected 100+ start-ups with 25 potential investors, resulting in Rs 510 million committed investments. Oman Technology Fund has invested in six start-ups – including $100,000 each in Smartchoice, a financial comparison platform, and Queno, an edtech offering ERP solutions for schools – in a short span of 18 months. Most recently, SparkLabs Global Ventures, the world’s third-biggest early-stage investment firm, has announced the launch of SparkLabs Pakistan in this year.

Sarmayacar, for example, has been set up with an initial $30 million and will invest $100,000 to two million into companies in technology and technology-enabled sectors. So far it has made investments in Bykea, with a funding amount of $5.7 million that was co-led by investors from South Asia. (Bykea, Zameen.com and PakWheels are set to be unicorns from Pakistan.) Bykea is scalable, local yet replicable and has a forward-looking team of co-founders. Add Jonas Eichhorst’s experience on the board, and you will not find an element stopping them from growing as a million dollar unicorn.

Muneeb Maayr, founder and CEO of Bykea, was previously a co-founder at Rocket Internet’s Daraz, the largest e-commerce setup in Pakistan and the largest in South Asia after the Indian market. The acquisition of Daraz by Ali Baba presents multiple facets; firstly, the entrance of an e-commerce giant in the local market is promising and a positive sign for other large companies and start-ups to enter and secondly, setting the scene for other, early stage start-ups by showing a possible trajectory.

There is another perspective too. Atoms, a New York based footwear brand, traces itself to Markhor and HomeTown of 2011-2012. Atom’s journey was not easy – it required passion, dedication and self-belief. Sidra Qasim and Waqas Ali, the co-founders, have all three. Persistence has been key and multiple pivots later, they landed a position at Y-Combinator, one of the top business accelerators in the world. Atoms have successfully raised $8.1 million in Series A rounds led by Initialized Capital, along with other investors including Acumen CEO Jacqueline Novograts, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and TED curator Chris Anderson. A completely home-grown startup has set an overarching way for others to acquire global exposure and rebase internationally.

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan: The next big Asian market for #tech #startups? McKinsey report says 720 startups have been created in Pakistan since 2010 — 67% of which are still in operation — with 100 successfully raising funding. #ecosystem #VentureCapital #technology https://www.dw.com/en/pakistan-the-next-big-asian-market-for-tech-s...

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, as Miriam Partington reports.

"Pakistan's tech ecosystem has been slowly gaining momentum in the last few years," says Hena Husain, founder of London-based communications startup The Content Architects. "It's home to a strong tech talent base and it's still competitively affordable, which makes it ideal for early-stage founders like myself."

Hena's company works with a development team based in Karachi, Pakistan's business center and best-known tech hub. It was here that transportation startup Careem — acquired by Uber for $3.1 billion (€2.8 billion) in March 2019 — wrote its first lines of code and where a cluster of software engineers has formed gradually over the years.

Hena says that the growth in Karachi's tech market is "accelerating" by the day, which reflects a broader trend across Pakistan.

The country was named one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia in McKinsey & Co's latest report on the Pakistani ecosystem. The same report revealed that 720 startups had been created since 2010 — 67% of which are still in operation — with 100 successfully raising funding.

Unprecedented growth

For many familiar with Pakistan's startup scene, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what triggered its growth.

According to Iskander Pataudi, a Pakistani-born tech professional working in Berlin, the tech scene emerged organically. Tech is booming around the world, and Pakistan is an untapped market. It was only a matter of time before investors started to take notice.

"A few Pakistani tech startups have raised huge funding rounds at a time where our economy is just keeping its head above water," he says. "This makes sense, considering we have a huge market of young, digitally-savvy consumers and increased 3G and 4G connectivity."

Iskander adds that May 2018 marked one of the "first and only exits Pakistan has seen so far" when e-commerce platform Daraz was acquired by China's Alibaba Group for an estimated $200 million. This was an early indicator that "something was about to happen."

Since then, Airlift, an app-based bus service founded just 11 months ago, raised a Series A funding round of $12 million in August 2019, led by US-based venture capital (VC) firm First Round Capital. This round marked the firm's first investment in Asia in more than a decade.

'An unlocking of capital'

According to Rabeel Warraich, founder of Pakistan-based venture capital fund Sarmayacar, the string of startup success stories — combined with a more stable political landscape under President Imran Khan and decreasing levels of corruption nationwide — has increased "investors' confidence that Pakistan holds huge potential for exiting businesses."

"Tech startups that were once considered risky investments are more commonly looked upon by venture capitalists as 'high-yield opportunities,'" he adds.

This newfound confidence has led to an increase in the availability of local capital. While Pakistan's startup scene and VC market is still nascent, the number of funds — such as i2i Ventures and Fatima Gobi Ventures — and active angel investors have increased significantly since 2018.

[Riaz Haq]

Prosus Ventures leads $13 million series B #investment in #Pakistan's ride-hailing #startup Bykea. Current investors Middle East Venture Partners & Sarmayacar also invested in the round, bringing total to-date raised to $22 million. #tech https://tcrn.ch/3iddjcF via @techcrunch

The startup has been able to out compete firms like Careem and Uber in Pakistan by offering localized solutions. It remains one of the few internet businesses in the country that supports Urdu language in its app, for instance.

“Our brand is now widely used as a verb for bike taxi and 30 minute deliveries, and the fresh capital allows us to expand our network to solidify our leading position,” he said.

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Bykea, which leads the ride-hailing market in Pakistan, has raised $13 million in a new financing round as the five-year-old startup looks to deepen its penetration in the South Asian country and become a “super app.”

The startup’s new financing round, a Series B, was led by storied investment firm Prosus Ventures . It’s the first time Prosus Ventures has invested in a Pakistani startup. Bykea’s existing investors Middle East Venture Partners and Sarmayacar also invested in the round, which brings its total to-date raise to $22 million.

Bykea leads the two-wheeler ride-hailing market in Pakistan and also operates logistics delivery business and financial services business. The startup has partnered with banks to allow customers to pay phone bills and get cash delivered to them, Muneeb Maayr, founder and chief executive of Bykea, told TechCrunch in an interview.

Fahd Beg, Chief Investment Officer at Prosus Ventures, said firms like Bykea are helping transform big societal needs like transportation, logistics and payments through a technology-enabled platform in Pakistan. “Bykea has already seen impressive traction in the country and with our investment will be able to execute further on their vision to become Pakistan’s ‘super-app,” he said in a statement.


Bykea works with over 30,000 drivers who operate in Karachi, Rawalpindi and Lahore. (Two-wheelers are more popular in Pakistan. There are about 17 million two-wheeler vehicles on the road in the country today, compared to fewer than 4 million cars.)

The new investment comes at a time when Bykea restores the losses incurred by the coronavirus outbreak. Like several nations, Pakistan enforced a months-long lockdown to curtail the spread of the virus in March.

As with most other startups in travel business globally, this meant bad news for Bykea. Maayr said the startup did not eliminate jobs and instead cut several other expenses to navigate through the tough time.

One of those cuts was curtailing the startup’s reliance on Google Maps. Maayr said during the lockdown time Bykea built its own mapping navigation system with the help of its drivers. The startup, which was paying Google about $60,000 a month for using Maps, now pays less than a tenth of it, he said.

Starting August, the startup’s operations have largely recovered and it is looking to further expand its financial services business, said Maayr, who previously worked for Rocket Internet, helping the giant run fashion e-commerce platform Daraz in the country.

[Riaz Haq]

Emerging Technologies Centre will be Established in Pakistan with UK-Pakistan Collaboration

https://www.phoneworld.com.pk/emerging-technologies-centre-will-be-...

The Extreme Commerce Magna Carta College (ECMCC) and the British Computing Society are collaborating for the development of Pakistan’s first Center Of Emerging Technologies in the private sector, IT industry is highly dependent upon the newest technology developments. Yesterday, the agreement has been signed to start this project.

The collaboration has been established by AccrediNation Founder and Managing Partner, Mr. Asad Aamir Ansari and ECMCC Head, Mr. Abdul Hafeez Malik. British High Commissioner Mike Nithavrianakis and the Director of Commerce for Pakistan also participated in the signing ceremony.


With respect to the idea behind the campaign, Sunny Ali, the founder of Extreme Commerce, said:

“The Center for Emerging Technologies was lacking in Pakistan. While initiatives in the public sector have been made. We are pleased to be leading this initiative in Pakistan.”

In addition, Sunny says how this would provide a new path towards the formation of a new industry of human resources in the country, therefore soon that would lead a greater industry in Pakistan. Founder of AccrediNation’s Asad Aamir Ansari emphasizes as new technologies will help many sectors including the healthcare, finances and more not only IT industry, those will get huge profit from technology like Artificial Intelligence.

In addition, the CEO of Ejaz Chaudhry Magna-Carta college said, “It would enhance employability and the worth of our young people worldwide through IT certifications from BCS UK. In the vibrant and challenging market of today’s world, IT professionals require internationally renowned and industrially relevant knowledge, experience and practical competencies to compete the technology improvements.”