Thought Behind Things · Nov 11, 2022
Pakistan's first female-founded VC fund on what's broken
Kalsoom Lakhani and Misbah Naqvi of i2i Ventures trace their unlikely paths from defense contracting and Citibank to building Pakistan's first female-founded venture capital fund — and make the case that good founders will always find money, even when the market dries up.
with Kalsoom Lakhani and Misbah Naqvi
11 min read
From a conflict resolution master’s to a defense contractor to a blog about Pakistan
The episode opens with Muzamil noting that he had been trying to get Kalsoom Lakhani on the show for the better part of a year — and that she finally showed up on a day when long marches were descending on Islamabad and most other guests had cancelled. It is a fitting entry point for someone whose entire career has been shaped by showing up in places others found too difficult.
Kalsoom was born in Dubai to a Bangladeshi mother and a Pakistani father, grew up in Dhaka until she was eleven, then moved to Islamabad. She graduated from the International School in 2000 and went to the University of Virginia, where she intended to study film. Her first politics class changed that. “I fell in love with it,” she says. “I loved the idea of looking at the way that historically countries have developed against each other.” Being a young Pakistani Muslim in the United States during the September 11 attacks sharpened that instinct into something more urgent — a sense of responsibility about narrative and identity.
She went on to do a master’s in conflict resolution in Washington DC, which she describes as almost an extension of her own biography: “Being Bangladeshi and Pakistani already is conflict resolution in itself.” Her first job was in defense contracting — the opposite of conflict resolution, she admits — working as an analyst on counterinsurgency messaging during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She hated it, felt disempowered, and started a current affairs blog about Pakistan called Chup (or Changing Up Pakistan) at night, writing about filmmakers, artists, and changemakers that mainstream media was ignoring. The blog gave her something her day job did not: a voice on her own terms.
Misbah’s path: from Citibank to Acumen to a fintech startup nobody had heard of
Misbah Naqvi’s route was different in texture but similar in its non-linearity. She grew up between Karachi and Islamabad as a navy brat, did her MBA at IBA in 1997, and joined Citigroup on the corporate banking side. Five years in, she realized she was going through the motions. “I didn’t want my boss’ job. I wasn’t excited about the things my peers were excited about.” When the bank needed someone to move into public affairs — a role her colleagues thought was a demotion — she put her hand up.
That move brought her into Citigroup Foundation’s work in Pakistan, including earthquake relief in Kashmir, and eventually into the orbit of Acumen, the social venture fund. Acumen was entering Pakistan and needed a country manager. Misbah joined and spent years going into bastis and kachchi abadis, sitting with people to understand how they made financial decisions and what they lacked access to. “It gave me a chance to see my own country in a way that I hadn’t before,” she says.
After Acumen, she joined Valoro, a fintech startup focused on dynamic password authentication, as employee number two. She was building in markets like Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, and South Africa. “It gave me an appreciation for founders and startups, but also looking at how big these opportunities are in markets like ours.” She stayed nearly five years, then planned a sabbatical. Kalsoom heard the word sabbatical and took it as an invitation. The sabbatical lasted two months before Misbah joined i2i Ventures.
How Invest2Innovate was born — and how it survived
Kalsoom’s pivot from venture philanthropy inside her family office to founding Invest2Innovate in 2011 came from a specific frustration: she kept meeting extraordinary young founders in Pakistan, connecting them to the global impact investing circuit, and then checking in four or five months later to find nothing had happened. “Just because you exist in a place that might be hard to do business doesn’t mean we shouldn’t support that potential,” she says.
Invest2Innovate launched Pakistan’s first startup accelerator. The first batch ran over five weekends in Lahore with five companies, using space that LUMS provided for free, with roughly $6,000 in the bank. “We had money,” Kalsoom says, with audible irony. The program grew — more cities, longer cohorts, a demo day format — and eventually expanded to Bangladesh and Southeast Asia as other governments and development organizations came asking for the curriculum.
Muzamil presses on the obvious question: who funded this for the first seven years? The answer is uncomfortable but honest. “Credit card debt. Years,” Kalsoom says. Corporate sponsorships for the accelerator, small project contracts from the World Bank, IFC, Australian government, and Facebook came later. “It was not a very lucrative business for the first seven years. It was keeping the lights on.” Misbah adds that Kalsoom’s flexibility was key — if sponsorship came in for eight companies, she ran the program with eight. She never waited for perfect conditions.
What i2i Ventures actually backs, and why
i2i Ventures opened its doors in August 2019. It is an early-stage fund investing at pre-seed and seed, with no fixed sector mandate but a clear filter: have-to-have problems, not nice-to-have ones. By the time of this recording, the fund had approved its thirteenth investment.
Misbah walks through the portfolio. In fintech: Abhi (earned wage access), CreditBook (MSME credit chain), Safepay (payments for e-commerce merchants), Uran (female-first fintech starting with committees), and Metric. In logistics: Truck It In (freight) and Rider (last-mile e-commerce). In agri-tech: Taza. In marketplaces: DealKart (group buying for middle and lower income segments). In ed-tech: Edkasa (exam prep). In communications: Teletalk. And Easy Bike, the electric vehicle company that Muzamil describes as one of the investments he is most excited about in the entire ecosystem.
On Easy Bike, Kalsoom is direct about what the bet actually was: “We believed in Ali and Hadi. That’s what the bet was.” The original concept — Roamer — was not what i2i backed. But when Easy Bike emerged and petrol prices started climbing, the founders’ quality became the thesis. “With EZ Bike, it’s all about the founders. A hundred percent.”
The 2021 boom, the 2022 correction, and what it actually means
Muzamil raises the funding drought directly. Misbah’s answer is measured. Opportunistic money has left Pakistan, she says, and it was never going to stay. “That money was never strategic money to begin with. That money could dry up at any time.” What remains is investors who genuinely believe in the opportunity — and those, she argues, are still there.
Kalsoom goes further, questioning the framing of “pivot to profitability” as a response to the correction. “Why was that never not the case to begin with?” The 2021 boom was a convergence of specific factors: remote diligence became normalized during COVID, the holding company legislation passed and allowed founders to set up offshore structures, and global funds had excess capital with nowhere obvious to put it. “When you unpack the reasons and come back to right now, that money was never going to be there for the long term anyway.”
Both partners are medium-to-long-term bullish. What they expect to change is the character of the market: fewer deals at inflated valuations, more focus on fundamentals, and a natural selection toward founders who were building real businesses rather than chasing the next round. “Good business models and good founders will still find money,” Misbah says.
Pakistan’s fintech problem is a government incentive problem
Muzamil raises what he calls the most important opportunity in Pakistan’s economy: digital payments. He notes that twelve percent of Pakistanis have bank accounts, that mobile top-ups remain the dominant use case for most fintech apps, and that somehow the market is not moving. He asks Misbah — the self-described “grumpy granddad on fintech calls” — what is actually going on.
Her answer has two parts. First, the push is broken: merchants are actively disincentivized to digitize because doing so brings them into the tax net. “There is a deterrent to digitization.” Second, the pull has not arrived yet: consumers have not yet experienced enough convenience from digital payments to change behavior. She points to COVID as a moment when the pull factor briefly appeared — people ordered food online, paid by card, realized they did not have to be home for cash on delivery — and argues that pull will come, but slowly.
On credit scoring, Muzamil makes the case for a neutral data intermediary — a third party with no products of its own that aggregates data from across the ecosystem using a unique identifier like the NIC. Misbah agrees the direction is right but flags the privacy question. “I may not want my data being shared, but I’m okay sharing it where I have an independent relationship with you.” She points to Raast as a potentially important piece of infrastructure — it reduces transaction costs significantly — but notes it is still in early days and has not yet achieved the kind of adoption that UPI achieved in India.
Agri, SaaS, and the question of which capital fits which problem
Later in the discussion, Muzamil asks about the spaces that remain underdeveloped. Kalsoom names SaaS as the most underexplored: “Baksani companies building for the world.” She cites Metric as an example in the i2i portfolio. Misbah adds health tech and education as sectors where the opportunity is enormous but where venture capital may not be the right instrument.
This leads to one of the sharpest exchanges in the conversation. Misbah argues that the startup ecosystem has developed a bad habit of measuring success by whether a company raises venture funding. “Not every startup should raise venture capital. You should identify what kind of investment is right for you.” Some models need patient capital. Some need grants. Some need revenue-based financing. “Venture money kind of ruins some sectors,” Kalsoom adds. “It just forces people to say I need to grow this fast. But education is not something that can be solved tomorrow.”
On agri specifically, both partners are bullish on the long-term opportunity but careful about the venture fit. Taza is in the portfolio. The thesis was not just the mandi-to-retailer supply chain that most players attacked — it was the founders’ willingness to think about Pakistan’s produce reaching global markets. “What if Baksan’s produce could go to the world?” Kalsoom says. “These very audacious ideas that not a lot of other players are thinking about.”
The structural economic problem that startups cannot solve
By the end of the conversation, Muzamil pushes both guests toward the harder question: Pakistan’s problem is not inefficiency, it is insufficient wealth generation. Startups are optimizing leakages. They are not creating the additional pool of money the economy needs. He cites the comparison between Pakistan’s entire defense budget and the New York Police Department’s budget to illustrate the scale of the gap.
Kalsoom’s answer is a frustration more than a solution. “We’ve never had leadership that has been strategic in this country that has said, how do we rebuild the foundations from an economic standpoint?” Every government thinks in one-to-two-year cycles. No one wants to do something whose benefits will accrue to a successor. “We’re so extractive in how we behave as a society that we never come from a place of abundance.”
Misbah frames it differently: political leaders respond to public sentiment, and public sentiment is shaped by education and poverty. The voter who accepts a biryani at a rally and then has to go back to work the next day is not irrational — he has no other leverage. “It’s this cycle of poverty and education that makes things harder.” Her prescription is institutional building on meritocracy, a national agenda with a few non-negotiable commitments that no government touches regardless of ideology, and accountability at the grassroots level.
Both partners point to the 2021 holding company legislation and the State Bank’s fintech sandbox as evidence that good policy leadership can unlock entire sectors quickly. Misbah was on the working group. “That was a game changer,” Kalsoom says. “If you can change the policies, this can unlock so much.” The challenge is that the same openness to disruption has not reached industries with powerful incumbents — sugar, textiles, automotive — where the power dynamic is entirely different.
On Pakistan in 2050, Kalsoom is honest about the gap between what she sees and what she wants. She wants a startup ecosystem that is inclusive beyond English-speaking graduates with foreign degrees, that is on the global radar without surprising anyone, and that has produced exits large enough to seed the next generation of founders. On the broader country, she says: “I wouldn’t be doing this work if I wasn’t an internal optimist. But it’s hard to stay optimistic.” She wants real leadership, diversity of political voices, and an end to perpetual default. Misbah wants the same, and adds one specific wish: that by 2050, Pakistan has moved past the cycle of two steps forward and one step back, and is on a clear trajectory of improvement rather than sliding back every few years.
Full transcript
सारा ख़ब्दी और सुरात welcome back to the episode of thought banting. आज हमारे साथ मौजूद हैं दो बहुत ही खास मेहमान जिनको सच्ची बात है कि I have been trying to call for the good part of last one year but कल्सुम particularly she is so in and out of Pakistan कि उनको पकड़ना मुश्किल ही नहीं नामुमकिन होता है. This one time जब पूरा Pakistan तबाही की दिनेश पर खड़ा है और long marches आ रही हैं और हमारे तमाम guests cancel कर चुके हैं तो she's been kind enough to actually, you know, come in. With us today we have कुल्तुमला खानी who is the co founder and general partner of I2I Ventures and also the founder of Invest to Innovate. One of the oldest names in the पाकिस्तानी startup culture जब कुछ भी नहीं था जब एक wild wild वैस्ता of startups in Pakistan तो she was out there with a beacon saying कि there is a possibility this is gonna bloom and it did over time. We also have with us miss बानकी who's the cofounder and general partner at I2I Ventures. Guys, thank you so much in part this show. For having us. Kultsum, I'm gonna start off with you. Just trying to understand, थोड़ा सा आपकी early life, कहां पर थी, you know, education and what was life like growing up?
Yeah. So I was sound totally American, but I'm not an ABCD. Still confused probably, but I was born in Dubai, and my mom is from Bangladesh. My dad is from Pakistan. So given the history of those countries, that's a conflict in and of itself. Moved to Dhaka when I was six. Lived there till I was 11. For me, it was really great to kinda grow up. I have all my non my nanny was there, my kalas, all my cousins were there, and then moved to Islamabad. My dad's from Karachi, but my mom, her one condition to my dad when we were moving the kids to Pakistan was that Karachi was too dangerous in the nineties, so Islamabad it is. When Islamabad in the nineties, you know this, Mazama was, like, very, like, much more chill than it is now. So yeah, I moved to Islambad, when I was 11, and I graduated from high school here. So that's And
what was what was the year when you were in Dhaka? ढाका, I was there from '88 to '94. How would you compare ढाका? I mean, was a long time. With ढाका to Karachi, can compare. I don't think you can compare ढाका to So maybe how do you compare Bangladesh to Pakistan?
You know, it's interesting because I've always seen it from the lens of family. And so I always thought ढाका for me felt like family because I was all I grew up around everybody. So because I when I moved to स्नामाद, didn't have any family around us. Right? My whole family was in Karachi. So it's not really a fair comparison for me. But Bangladesh, and at least as a girl and a little girl growing up, felt, I come from a really matriarchal family. Like, my nanny, was a big, you know, big player in the nationalist movement for Bangladesh. There she's, like, big communist. So I have, like, all these feminist matriarchs in my family. And so her daughter ended up marrying a पाकिस्तानी. Was that not a dislocation? Yeah. Mom and dad eloped, actually. Wow. But also, you know, I think my whole family, I've always had a very matriarchal heavy on women family. And so I kind of grew up around that, which was all these women that were unapologetically just, you know, who they were. So it was a really cool way to grow up. And I think as a girl in Bangladesh, generally, there's a lot more safety, lot more mobility. So if I was to compare that to Pakistan, you know, you have to be a lot more careful. I think there's more safety issues, more things that women think about when it comes to mobility and safety here. And I was obviously more I dressed more conservatively when I moved to Pakistan versus when I was in Bangladesh. But, yeah, I mean, I think I always look at similarities rather than differences. So I always think even now in in the work that we do, I always see so much that I think we could do together rather than what keeps us apart. But, yeah, for me, it was more as a kid. You know, I was I think it was growing up around all this. I always call it, like, this color that you grew up around. Right? And these stories. I grew up around all these stories of my family and my family in '71, my family in '47. And then you kinda move to Islamabad, which I love Islamabad, by the way. So I'm not saying, like, it's so drastic, but, but I think it was it was a big it was a big difference from what I was around when I was little. Interesting. And, graduating high school, where did you go for college? So I graduated in 2000 from the international school here, and then I went to the University of Virginia for college in America. In, what major? I masked, my major was in Middle East studies and foreign affairs, which Middle East studies back then was... Included South Asia. So if I wanted to study Pakistan, they concluded box... Now I'm like, Pakistan is not part of the Middle East. But back then, they were just like, whatever, everyone... Everything's together. So I started studying I fell in love with politics the minute I got to college. And I I went to school during when nine eleven happened. So for me to be in college during nine eleven and to really think about the fact that I was this young Baksani in The US, a young Muslim in The US, it kind of puts your identity at war. And it's so you feel a sense of responsibility of what am I what am I doing to kind of change this narrative. And for me, at the time, foreign affairs and politics was how I thought that could be the way for change. Interesting. And and what was life like? I mean,
especially after 09:11. Yeah.
Because you had you lived in The US before that? No. I used to travel in the summers to The US. So my American accent, my brother and sister during my own, shadi literally said in their speech, they're like, Kulsum was born with these big dimples and a big American accent. No one in my family knows where it came from. And it's just stayed stronger and stronger as I've lived abroad. But, but, yeah, I'd I'd only gone to The US for summers to to visit my call. I lived in DC, so I would go there, But that's it. So I'd never lived in The US until I went when I was 18 for for university. And and why politics? Was that something you'd you chose straight out of high school or was No. It like I actually wanted to go to film school. So and I'm if anyone knows me, knows I love talking about film. And, like, will still, to this day, love, like, movies. Have you seen Molojat? No. It's but I'm gonna mean Dubai in a couple days, and I've been trying to get it on my because I haven't had any time even working nonstop, so Molojat is gonna be on my list. I really wanna see Joyland, which was given for Oscar. Coming out on the November 18. Yeah. And it's been given for Oscar consideration, which is a really big deal. But, yeah, really big, really big fan of film. And so as a kid, I thought, you know, I don't know. I translated my love of movies into wanting to go to film school. Obviously, my father was not excited about that. So went to a liberal arts school instead even though I did get into film school, and thought I would study film when I got there. And my first class I took was politics, and it was a comparative politics one zero one class, at EVA. And I fell in love with it. I loved the idea of looking at, the way that we the way historically countries have against each other, how things have developed. And I think that's what attracted me to I did my master's in conflict resolution, which I think being Maladeshi in Pakistani already is conflict resolution in itself. So I've always been someone who's been between two, two worlds and two identities. It's kind of the interesting thing of you don't really belong anywhere. And so I think compare, doing conflict resolution was almost, an extension of that. So I've always been fascinated by why people fight. And, also, why should they fight when there's so much to actually, you know, resolve and and actually be at peace about. So I've always loved studying that. And even when I studied that in undergrad and and compared to in politics in school, that was a lot of my focus as well. I studied a lot about war. And then, obviously, going to school during the war on terror, quote, unquote, I became really fascinated about that. So that's, you know, what led to me going to grad school. I went to grad school in Washington DC, which is where a lot of people study politics. And doing conflict resolution was was really kind of my part of trying to understand, like, how do we resolve conflict? And and that's not what I worked in first, but, but that's honestly what miss Beni joke about today. I use my master's degree in conflict resolution all the time. As an investor, probably more than someone using an MBA sometimes, but,
it's really come to use. So That's very interesting because I would I would have imagined if I were to sort of extrapolate your path, you know, 02/1934 forward, you know, right, 911, you're you're a Pakistani in DC doing masters in conflict resolution. I would think you'd be probably working for, like, let's say, USIP.
Or I did work. I did work for some of those places. Yeah. So what was the pathway? I mean, from that to actually being an investor. Yeah. It's very non linear. I started working in you know, when you're a international student working in in The US and want to work, a lot of your options tend to be very limited. And so ended up getting a job in defense contracting, which is the opposite of conflict resolution, and hated it. But it was during the war on terror again. So, like, when everything was the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, everything was focused on that. And given the lens that I had of being a Muslim in America, I actually thought, like, because, I would rather have my voice in the room than a lot of non Muslim voices in those rooms. Right? And so was working in that, worked on a lot of, countersuicide bombing campaigns, counter counterinsurgency stuff, what messaging looks like. I worked as an analyst, there. And at first, really liked it and then realized that no one really cared what I had to say as, like, a 23 year old or 24 year old. And, you know, in these rungs of power, I was really at the lowest. And so I ended up at the time because I you know, it's it is these moments where you can kinda feel like a victim in your own job. And I was there because I had a work visa, I couldn't really get out of it because I had a visa. And I remember at the time, Boksun was on the cover of Newsweek magazine for being the most dangerous country on earth. Right? And I've always been someone that's been struck by injustice. So every time I feel like something is unjust, I wanna do something to change it. And I've been really lucky because my dad is a serial entrepreneur. My dad is someone who's like, if you wanna change it, go do it. Right? That's always my dad and and what he always used to say to me and does say to me. And so that's when I started a Carn Affairs blog on Baksan called Jupp or changing up Baksan, which was back in when blogs were podcasts, But, basically, started it, and we started I started to write, tip my skill set of being an analyst, and started to write about the stories about Baksan and and did it through the lens of someone that actually was Baksani. That and but also beyond writing about politics, which I kind of did from a more funny voice and analyzing what was happening in the news. I would also, write about the news about things that you weren't reading about in news. Right? So the filmmakers, the changemakers, the artists. I just actually randomly had a chat, not to name drop, but just randomly chatted to, Marianne Jabbar, who's an awesome filmmaker. And I reminded her, she reached out to me on LinkedIn. Was like, I don't know if you remember. I interviewed you for my blog back in, like, 2000 this was 2006. Right? 2007. And she's like, oh my gosh. I didn't even remember. But she had, like, a really cool because I loved film, I was always wanting to write about that stuff. And that got a lot of traction in really cool ways. I then had realized there was a voice that I had that was unique, but also was empowering. Right? Which I think now this younger generation of, like, you know, Gen Zers really, with TikTok and everything that's out there, really have that. But back then, I realized at this job where I felt very disempowered, I had this very empowering platform where I could write and do things on my own terms. And then during the day, I I moved jobs. I moved into venture philanthropy, which is kind of, taking a venture approach to philanthropy. So rather than just doing charity,
actually saying, can we give charitable dollars to support enterprises when they're starting out? Right? And That's interesting. And I'll I'll I'll pause you here. Yeah. Because when you look at the so when you look at Islamabad
Mhmm.
Whenever I'm speaking to someone from Karachi, they they have this very clear understanding of how to do business and how to scale businesses and how to really, create sustainable economic activity. When I talk to someone from Islamabad, more often than not, they'll tell you all about how they're gonna change the world, but they have absolutely no clue on how to really sustainably do it. Right? And and I really thought about it and realized large part of that has been the development sector, you know, really, the the DNA of the development sector that's been here since the nineteen eighties with a lot of the USAID money coming in and Germany and so on and so forth. Mhmm. And so the entire style of how, you know, people in Islamabad used to do things was create a report, you know, submit it to an organization. They would give you an x amount of funding, and so you'll be able to work for three years, show what you've done in those three years. But as soon as the funding dries up, you're out of a job. And so but personally, as an Islamabad, the I really hated the the the way that the startups mostly tend to work because they're really driven by these handouts. Handouts. Yeah. I was about to say the handout culture. You know? Because, well, they're they're they're gonna continuously tell you all about how they're changing the world. Sure. That's great. But if you can't have a sustainable model Yeah. You can't do it in a in a like, again, in a in a scalable in a way that could truly create its impact beyond the personality. Right? Mhmm. And so this is a very interesting term that you've mentioned, bunch of philanthropy. Yeah. It's actually how I ended up meaning Misbah for the first time. Really? Yeah. And and so if you can just sort of quickly explain what that means. Yeah, I mean, I think at the time I was,
so my parents had moved to The US at the time, but... My dad's back in Isambad now. But, and I was, my dad had always done traditional charity, right? He actually has a free hospital here in Isambad, did a feeding program, did all this amazing, amazing work. That was really inspiring, and I think as a kid, I always grew up with my parents teaching us kind of through, like, watching them about giving back. But I was really interested in social enterprises at the time, social impact. And when I kind of came on into, at the time, his family in our family office, I was like, how do we do what you're doing but in a much more sustainable way? So not just charity where it's a handout. Right? But actually say, like, can we can high risk, no return capital, which is philanthropy, can that be given to companies or to businesses that are could do a lot could actually, you know, need that money where they could prove out something and then maybe go out and raise investment. And these were the early, early days of this space. Right? This was, like, 2008. You were doing it in 2006. But, you know, for me, I was, I I was really interested in that. I was going to these conferences and learning about it. I never even heard the term venture philanthropy. I never even really knew what social impact was. I was coming out of, again, like, politics in that space, and that's what I was surrounded by, and really felt inspired by it. And so because, you know, I am from Istanbul, but my dad I grew up with a my dad's in business. I come from a business family. So I kind of have been ingrained kind of through osmosis, all of these stories of failure and business my whole life. And so in some ways, this was bringing starting to bring it all together, especially because I was writing about all these amazing young changemakers at night. Right? I was writing this blog that was getting all this traction. And so at the during the day, I was like, how do we more meaningfully support people rather than just say, like, here's, you know, here's a thousand dollars or here is, like, you know, a lack. Like, go do something, and actually say, can we support them? And I I do think in a lot of ways, those were the early seeds of how I started to get into this space. I was going to all these conferences all over the world and and was really lucky to do that where I was meeting all these people. But every time I was meeting them, it was great, but everyone would pat each other on the back, and they were all supporting the same businesses. Like, all the businesses that were the same who sounded really good on paper, they looked a certain way, everyone was polished, We're get they were the ones getting the money. Right? And they were all in the same places. So they were mostly if you were looking at emerging markets back then, it was India, Mexico, East Africa, Kenya. Pakistan was, like, on no one's radar. Right? And in the meantime, I'm still working on that. We're giving money to people here. And, also, like, we were supporting some, some doing some really cool initiatives in The US as well. But I remember just thinking, god. That's so unfair. So, again, back to the injustice of it. I was, like, I was meeting all these amazing young people. And then I in Pakistan, I was doing the work here and also writing about them, and then I would talk to them four or five months later. And nothing had happened with their businesses, right, because there was no one here to support it. And I was like, what if we could more meaningfully support that change? And that's where I realized that while I was doing it within our family office, I felt like if I really wanted to do this, it would have to be on my own. And, you know, a lot of love to my dad and everything, but I that actually laid the seeds for why Invest to Innovate was born in 2011 because I it really came from a genuine place of listening to a lot of things around me and feeling just really angry about this potential that was existing in places that no one was talking about. And just because no one was talking about it doesn't mean that it wasn't important. Right? And I think as someone who was box or is bauxhani, but also, you know, Bangladeshi, I saw the same thing there. Same thing with people in Nigeria at the time, people in Vietnam. I was like, just because you exist in a place that might be hard to do a business doesn't mean we don't we shouldn't support that potential, and that's really where Invest to Innovate was born. So I left, my job then and decided to start in 2011. Not a lot, but just with an idea, right, of I just really believe that. And I think that conviction is something that has kind of helped the reason I've done this for so long, your time about being kind of in the wild, wild west of everything, but it genuinely came from a place of if not me, then who? Right? Like, someone has to do this. Like, we or and I hope it's someone else. And we've been there's so many other people now in this startup space, but Invest in Abate was really born out of, I this belief that this support needs to be this these entrepreneurs, these young people need to be supported. Right? And I wasn't I couldn't rely on the fact that I was gonna wait for something to happen, and maybe that change will come. But, like, again, to the point about Islamabad is, like, maybe being kind of those change makers. And I never thought about it as an Islamabad thing, but I always have been like that.
But more from a place of how do we support businesses. Right? And that's really where Invest in Abeya was born from. Makes sense. And I think one of the if I if I were to look at it, I think Sahrabadis are the idealists that really think about what future could look like, and karazi ones are the ones who can really convert that vision into Yeah. Something more more practical. Maybe it's good that my dad's from karazi. So I had I had both within me. Yeah. I'm gonna switch switch it up to misbah. I'm sorry for taking so long, twenty minutes into the conversation. But tell me a little bit about your early life and and what led you to,
you know, being being here where you are today. I was born in Karachi. My father was in the navy. So luckily, we went the only places we went back and forth was Karachi and Islamabad. So I also grew up in Islamabad back in the eighties, moved here for a few years, been back and forth, and went back to Karachi. We lived in Paris for a few years. My father was posted there, and then came back and went to IBA. So I often say, like, I I did my MBA back when MBAs were cool. Graduated in '97, and started working with Citigroup in Pakistan on the corporate banking side. Worked in transaction banking, worked in corporate finance. And five years in, I think I realized, now in hindsight, I realized that I had just been going through the motions. It was like school में अच्छा, you know, I wasn't great at science, सोचे अब economics पढ़ लेते हैं, accounting पढ़ लेते हैं, and I got it and I enjoyed it. And so, was like, अच्छा business कर लेते हैं, let's do an MBA. And it kind of said, okay, you're doing an MBA, then, you know, marketing anybody can do. Finance करना चाहिए. So, was like, okay, let's do finance. And then it was, if you're doing finance, then you had two options, brokerage or banking. And and I tried, I interned in both and at that time brokerage was going through a slowdown, so banking it was. Then I was like, अच्छा, bank में जा रहे हैं तो you should go to, like, a foreign bank. And if it's a foreign bank, then it should be one of two or three. So I was going through the motions and kind of aspiring towards things now in hindsight that I think were around me but were not driven by me. And five years into my work at Citi, I was like, I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't want my boss' job. I'm not excited about the things my peers are excited about. But I didn't know what I, what I wanted to do. So I had started having conversations with my, with my boss, with the, with the country head, and, they they actually were looking to move somebody into public affairs. This was post nineeleven, so an American bank in Pakistan. But also somebody that understood the ethos of the bank and what the bank stood for. And, I put my hand up and I said, yeah, this sounds really interesting. And my I remember my colleagues were, like, they thought that I'd been demoted. That's like that. They were like, are you are you sure you wanna do this? Teddy a suicide. Teddy a suicide. Right? It's like, are you serious? Like, I think they thought I was, you know, smoking some funny shit. But, I'd so I did make that move. And that was great because it gave me an opportunity to work, in the CEO's office very closely with him at a time where there was a lot of policy change happening with doctor was at the State Bank. Citigroup played a really key role in informing policy at the time, so it was big learning for me. I also got a chance to, not only do internal and external communications, but work with Citigroup Foundation for their projects in Pakistan. We had the earthquake at the time, in Kashmir and the North, were able was able to raise funds for that. We supported great organizations, working in and relief. I was also able to get a better sense of the development space. And that's where I came across Acumen, which I ended up joining, which is, which is how Kusum and I met. And Acumen at the time was looking to enter Pakistan. So they were, they are, social venture fund, which means that they raise philanthropic funds, and then they invested with a double bottom line approach, which really means that you not only look at social impact, but you also look at sustainability. So venture philanthropy is the other side of that because that's from the don't from the giving side, you know, that's what they're doing with their philanthropy. And on the execution side, what we were doing was taking charitable money and then investing it in debt, equity into social enterprises. Right. So startups that were companies, early stage companies - I won't even call all of them startups - early stage companies that were working in health care, housing, agriculture, education, you know, financial access, things like that. And they were setting up their office in Pakistan at the time. Right. And I joined them. The country manager at the time, sort of hired me for this role, and we built the team together. And at that time, it kind of felt like everything that I'd done to that point helped, get me to being a better impact investor because I was able to use all of my finance training, and background for good. Right. And that really resonated. I think as somebody at that time in my, you know, late twenties, early thirties, it really filled a lot of boxes for me, checked a lot of boxes. And I and I'm really grateful for that experience because it allowed me to see my own country in a way that I hadn't before. I mean, as you can imagine, in the eighties, growing up as a navy brat, as a as a military kid, we didn't have a lot of money. So we're definitely not privileged in terms of income and so... And economic status, but definitely very privileged in terms of education. And I have to acknowledge that that, you know, my parents did whatever they could to send me to to good schools, and I was privileged from that perspective. And I think having gone from good schools to IBA to Citibank, I was I was in a bit of a bubble. Yeah. And it wasn't until I was with Acumen that I got a chance to go into the field, to go into Bastis, to sit in Kachiya Bardis. And, really, I try to understand how people make decisions about where their money goes. How what do they have access to? What are the gaps and opportunities in Pakistan where
people don't have access to goods and services. Right. So if I were to ask you, for example, the money that Acumen gives, is that is that, like, completely, like, charitable money? Take the money, do whatever you want with it? Or is it more like, okay, we'll give you the money, but we'll take, let's say, 2% of whatever you guys do? Or is it, like, we'll give you the money, but you have to pay us that money back, you know, with better terms than, let's say, the bank? Yeah. So at the time and Acumen's philosophy has changed over the years. So I I I'm not gonna say that that holds true for today. But at the time, the idea was to to
invest patient capital. And what that meant was that they were, you know, like Kusumo was saying, people were not taking risk at at those stages, in those spaces. So Acumen came in as a capital provider, but there was no other capital, but not at exorbitant rates because they had a philanthropic goal, because they had a social impact goal. Because it was debt essentially. It was debt and equity. But it was patient. So, they said अच्छा ठीक है, not दो साल में नहीं आप हमें पांच साल में पैसे वापस करें या सात साल में पैसे वापस करें and you don't have to pay us 50% or 30%, you pay us 5%. There was a bit of a subsidized rate as well as a patient approach in terms of the term, the time frame. And then the idea was that you would return, recycle those returns back into the fund and therefore continue to grow the pool of money going back into this Right. But there was still some sort of an accountability as There was accountability. There was a focus on sustainability. So the idea was that you're having social impact, but you're also using money and investing it in your business so that the business can grow. Right. But you're also treating consumers like customers. And you may be charging 2 rupees for that liter of water, but you're charging something. Right. So that there's, again, an acceptance of the product, and, people would actually pay for it. So that basically was great because it gave me a chance to see my own country, like, in a way that I hadn't. I then moved with them from Pakistan to New York. I was in the New York office for a while. And a few years later, I actually joined a fintech startup that was focused on a global, product around two factor authentication. So think of it like OTP, but not onetime password. Like, you know, when you're doing a transaction, you get a so it was actually a dynamic password. So without getting too technical, it was basically a fintech. And so for for me, coming from the finance side, I finally got I mean, I that was my first exposure to technology. It was also I was employee number two in a start up, and my first sort of firsthand experience on how tough start up life is. And then we were building in markets like Pakistan, India, but Afghanistan as well, South Africa, Tanzania, Middle East. What was the name of the organization? Valoro. Okay. Are they still operational in Pakistan? They're not operational in Pakistan right now. They've done a few other markets since then, and their business model has also shifted over the last few years. And I'm talking about, ten years ago now when I joined So the the company's seen quite a few different iterations now. But it was great as giving me an opportunity to understand how tough things can be in markets like ours, right, to the point that was talking about where she saw firsthand the opportunity in Pakistan, but also recognized that people were not moving because it's so tough and that support is needed. I was on the other side of that where we could see firsthand how difficult these markets are. So it gave me an appreciation for founders and startups, and, but also looking at how big these opportunities are in markets like ours. Makes sense.
And so you were with that startup for how long? For close to five years. अच्छा. And and the next switch was eventually I to I went to the win. Yes. I so I the switch was I wanted to take a sabbatical,
just thought I'd take a step back after twenty years. And, when Khusum built I to I, Invest to Innovate, she asked me to be on her board of advisers. So since 2010 well, 2011 when we launched, I've been involved with I2I at a advisory level. And so I was kind of seeing what that where that was going, and we we have we used to have regular conversations. And I wanted to take a sabbatical, take a step back for a year, and I thought I'd, you know, figure out what I wanna do next, take take some time off. Sit on the beach. Sit on the beach, read, catch up on movies and books. My friends make fun of me because I don't end up watching movies, and they're like, you just keep adding to your list of things you wanna do. That list is still going because the sabbatical did not end up being a year, it ended up being two months because I decided to join Yeah. The soonest she was. So I took her telling me she was doing a sabbatical as an invitation to invite her to join me
I sincerely apologize.
I apologize.
Apologize. Sorry. But nonetheless, I'm gonna move towards invest to innovate. We've talked about it a few times. I'm sure those who don't know are just now scratching their heads कि what exactly is eye to eye? And and and tell me a little bit about what you guys have been up to since 2011 forward.
So InvestInnovate, as I was mentioning before, really started with a vision of we believe the next great innovators are coming from the most unexpected places. Right? And we started in Pakistan because that's where I was from. It's where my base was, my network was. And we started just at at the very first day one was starting I just started working with entrepreneurs. Right? I was like, who can I help? What can I do? Realized that's a terrible business model because no one can afford to pay you when they're starting out their business. And then realized as we were building, I was like, actually, there's, you know, I was kept hearing this term accelerator, incubator, you know, all these terms that were not even really here yet at the time. And it was the same year that plan nine was starting. The plan nine was Punjab Information Technology Boards incubator. And so I, at the time was like, you know, an accelerator could be really interesting. An accelerator, if you think about it in the life cycle of a company, an incubator is when it's an egg to a chick. So when something's an idea to, like, a baby idea, and an accelerator is a chick to a chicken or a baby chicken. Right? So it's, how do you help grow the idea a little bit? I think at the time, was too early even for an accelerator, but we started Boksan's first startup accelerator at the time. And it really came out of as we were listening to all these entrepreneurs, everyone had the same problems. Right? Everyone was like, I don't have a community. I need help on marketing. And I was like, why don't instead of me... I can't multiply me. Right? I was like, instead of me working with five companies who and I don't I was like, who am I to do all this? Right? Why not build a com build a program that helps entrepreneurs in, like, batches. Right? And now everyone hears about the National Incubation Centers and the Accelerators. This was, like, not a concept back then. And even when I would ask people about it, I was like, I want a sponsor for this. Like, no one even knew what I was talking about. So we had, like, I think, like, $6,000 in our bank account at the time, and I was like, we have money. I was like, let's just test it and go. This was in 2012, the first batch ever. We had lums gave us space for free, so we used that. We did five weekends in Lahore with our first five companies who are our guinea pigs, and we basically brought in outside experts. We brought in people that, built, you know, did trainings around their different parts of the businesses. We did a day at the end, a demo day where they presented to investors. And in that way, I started to meet local investors in Pakistan. People were literally coming up to me being like, Kulsum, I have all this money. Where do I put it? I wanna invest in entrepreneurs. And I was like, I know entrepreneurs. So all of this was so wild, wild blessed back at the time. Right? Obviously, people like Jahanara, all these people have been doing this for years. And and so many of us, when we were starting out, it was literally now there's a startup event happening almost every day in Back then, it was lucky if it was once a month. Right? And even then, it wasn't even startups as much as it was, like, the outsourcing people, like, all this stuff going on. And so Invest in Aviate started with just an accelerator program back then. And we've since we would every year change it, grow it. We would listen to what founders wanted. We would grow the batches. We then went from being just in Lahore to saying, like, I remember this was, like, literally a gas station on the motorway conversation with my colleague at the time. We're, shout out to Azair, where we literally were like, why not why are we stuck to doing it in Lahore? Let's do it in Karachi, Isambad, whatever, because then people from all over the country can apply. Right? That's how the accelerator was born. It became six weekends over four months. We'd always start it in Borbun or Murray or something up in the mountains where it was just a retreat, the first one, just about building community. And there was something so radical about that I never realized at the time of founders that, especially in Pakistan, everything can feel so elbows up and people don't trust each other. So to kind of create space where people create a community and trust with one another, a lot of the friendships I've seen born out of our program, I still see those entrepreneurs as friends with one another, right, which is amazing. And so we started with just building out the accelerator, but then what happened was is that as we started to build, then people were like, oh, you're building this accelerator. Can you help us build our accelerator in Bangladesh? And that's how we worked in Bangladesh for the first time. Or this Australian government partnership was saying, can you train seven incubators and accelerators across Southeast Asia? Was like, yeah. Because, obviously, I remember meeting these guys from Fiji in Singapore. The same issues they were facing in Fiji with how to build angel investor communities, I knew because of Baksan. Right? The problems were the same. So to the point even earlier about Bangladesh and Baksan, always see I never see, differences. I always automatically focus on the similarities. And so we started to grow outward that way. We started to then do research because, literally, I remember someone from the World Bank came to me, they're like, can I just download all the information that's in your head of what's happening in Boxton? This is in 2014. And I said, yeah. Sure. And I was a researcher. I came in defense contracting. Was an analyst. So I knew how to write. I knew how to to do research. I believe in research. That was the first ecosystem report that came out about Boksun in 2014. And since then, we've done one in 2017, one in 2019, one in 2021. We've actually benchmarked the ecosystem then. Then we started to put out data on what was happening in Boxen. So I think now it looks like a very lovely story that Invest Innovate has done all of these things. Mashallah, yay, what's awesome? But at the time, it was literally just do what's in front of you. Listen to what, for us, the center of everything has always been founders. Like, if entrepreneurs believe you're creating value, you're doing good work. And that's how we changed our program. That's how we made it better every year. And then we kept solving for the problem in front of us. We're like, there's no angel investor community. Let's help build one. You know, incubators and accelerators elsewhere wanna take what we're doing. Let's let's customize that curriculum. Let's build in that revenue. You know, the research came out because people were like, we need good data about Boksan, so that's how that was born. And the funds was really similar. Right? The becoming an investor happened accidentally. It wasn't because I was like, I need to be an investor. I have an don't have an MBA. I still think MBAs are cool, by the way. I would love to have an MBA. But I just literally said, like, people I was, you know, we're doing all this work of helping entrepreneurs in Box Sun, connecting them to investors. And I would see all these amazing founders get these really bad terms from investors. Right? Like, sorry, vulture capital in terms of instead of venture capital. They wouldn't want 50%, 60% of your business. And I remember thinking, again, the injustice of it all. I was like, that's so wrong. Right? And I would be upset about it. I'd have founders I wasn't even working with call me up and say, hey. I just got the I I know I don't know you, but I just got these terms. Right? Can you just tell me if this is a good deal or not? And most of the time, it wasn't a good deal, but we exist. Baksan is a in so many ways, we've existed in scarcity. So every time we get something, we think this is the best we can do. Right? And I remember just being someone who wanted better for everybody. And so the fund really was born out of that. It was born out of saying, like, hey. Actually, we understand founders really, really well. We understand this market really, really well. I knew I didn't wanna do it alone, so that's really, you know, I had been a solo founder at that point for eight years. It's really hard. And doing it with Misbah, who I'd known for fifteen years at that point. And now now it's been fifteen years. At the time, was maybe, like, eleven years. I knew she brought, like, she came more even though hers her path was not linear as well, but had more of that MBA finance background. So she matched me really well. So that's really where the fund was born. But with Invest to Innovate, it was really built on this idea of how do we help build a healthy startup ecosystem in markets like Pakistan,
and that's where it came from. And so the the the ventures started in 2019,
eighteen months. Our doors in 2019, August 2019.
And so 2011 to 2019, how are you essentially funding eye to eye? Because, I mean, the the ventures part, I I totally understand. I Yeah. I'm assuming that what you're doing here is you're taking investors, and you're you're you're identifying startups, and you're basically managing that fund Yep. For for those investors. Right? So so that makes sense. It's But a pretty given model. Yeah. But, in terms of really building an ecosystem, who funds that? And and how do you make money out of it? Because Not a lot of money there. Startups aren't you you can't have, like, a subscription from startups, you know, okay, pay us, like, $50 a month sort of a situation. Yeah.
Was this the partnerships with, let's say, the Australian government or other governments? Yeah. We would get contracts from Australian government, the World Bank, the IFC, Facebook. And that all started to come later, honestly. Like, we were I was, like, I don't even know I did. Mean, credit card debt. Years. How did you manage to A lot of it was corporate sponsors. It was corporate sponsors of the accelerator. We'd bring in outside people to come in and fund it. But, you know, I think that, honestly, it was not a very lucrative business for the first seven years of the company. And, I mean, honestly, it was keeping the lights on. How do we keep the lights on? Right? And I think I remember thinking, I was like, god, I could be earning so much more money doing something else right now. But I just genuinely believed in this. I really believed. I remember even talking to my mom about it because she was like, when are you gonna be done with this? Right? And in a in a very loving mother leave, worried kind of way. And I said, honestly, I just, in my gut, I believe this needs to exist. Because it's one thing to really do all of them. Mean, I've been doing content since 2010. Right? And there have been years when there was no money. Yeah. You're doing it because you're you're having fun with it. Yeah. For a lot of those years, I was alone. And so Yeah. At the at in worst case scenario, you're not paying anyone. Yeah. I know for a fact that you guys had people on on Yeah. Payroll as And so now we've gotten really lucky because the irony is is that you're doing all this great work, but no one believes it's good yet. Right? Have to build Yeah. You have to build it. So in the building phase, I'd say it was not a lucrative business. Definitely was funding it on my own somehow and keeping the lights on and getting money here and there for, like, corporate accelerators, like, getting small projects here and there to keep always was light that way. Now, Mashata, we've built, like, a healthy business, and it's healthy and profitable in terms of these large contracts, in terms of revenue that we've brought in, in terms of even thinking about our research products, and now people hiring us for consulting. You know, we just actually came from, like, a big strategy with our the InvestInvate team about this. Right? And so we've now because we've built that reputation, because we always focused on doing good work, that led to us being able to then, you know, honestly build in, like, revenue streams that then lasted and helped build a company where today, like, the company doesn't need I mean, we we we it doesn't need someone to fund us. Right? We have contracts that come in, and it is from that angle project based. But we needed to build it to get to that point, and it was hard. I mean, there were many, many points that I was really like, I'm crazy. Why am I doing this?
I think you were also great about being flexible in terms of make the most of what you got. Right? Yeah. So if you were able to get sponsorship for eight companies, you'd run the program with eight companies. If you were able to get it for 15, you'd run it with 15. Rather than say, no, if I don't get 15 companies worth, I'm not gonna do it. So I think, you know, you really demonstrated that hustle in terms of saying, gonna I'm take what I can get. I'm gonna convince people why this is great. And and people came in believing in in consume, but also, you know, that started going from strength to strength because they saw what the output was. Yeah.
And it wasn't just me. Right? Like, I think about the team that we've had over the years. Like, you interviewed Mina Tarik now at Metric. We're now we're investors in Metric, but Mina and I worked together at Eye to Eye for four years. Right? You know, Essen Mukthar now is, like, at, like, Facebook or Meta now. Saad Hamed was with us and worked at Google then after. And, like, we just had these incredible, people that worked at the company that really kind of filled the gaps and believed in the vision. And I think I was always, I hope, really good at, like, finding good people to miss Beth's point about, like, the minute she said sabbatical, I heard, you should be working on those funds with me. But a lot of my best hires over the last ten years have been people that literally, I was like, they didn't even see it themselves. And I was like, you should come work with us. Like, this is what we're doing. Right? And being an evangelist and believing in this vision and knowing it because I think at Bhaksan sometimes things are always about a personality. And I never wanted to build something about Gulsum Lakani. It wasn't about me. I was like, this is about the work. And so I think that attracted people that also believed in the work. Right? Makes sense. Mizba,
tell me about I to I ventures. You know, what are some of the startups that you guys have? You mentioned Metric. Metric, all a huge fan of Metric. Shout out to Mina Tharik. The third episode, I'm giving a shout out, Mina. We've actually we've interviewed a lot of our companies, by the way. You've interviewed Chuck It In, Easy Bike,
a few others. Yeah. A few others. So tell me the names of all the ones that are publicly available. They're all publicly available, actually, except for one that we just We just We just closed the deal. So I2I Ventures is an early stage fund. In technical terms, we invest at pre seed and seed stage. And what that really means is that we come in pretty early in the lifecycle of a startup. And like Kusum said earlier, because we've been working with founders for so long, that DNA of founders is something that we, you know, we can identify, that we thrive on, and that we're really founder driven from that perspective. And we like founders that are building, in big spaces, that are solving big problems, that are looking at big opportunities. So while our mandate is specific in terms of stage, it's not specific in terms of sector. So we look across different sectors, but we evaluate each opportunity in terms of, how, you know, what is the potential for it to grow? How big is this market opportunity? Is it a nice to have or a have to have product? Is it solving a problem? Is it actually addressing the need or a gap in the market? And as it would be in Pakistan, are lot of those spaces because a lot is broken. So where there you know, sort of where there are gaps, there is opportunity. So we like founders that have a big vision, and then they are rolling up their sleeves and, you know, just working on getting that done. We've invested in we've just approved our thirteenth investment. We've been and invested in 12 companies that have been in the spaces of fintech. So in fintech, we've invested in अभी which is earned wage access, credit book which is working with, in the in the credit chain with MSMEs. अभी invested in metric that you already mentioned. Uran, which is focused which is a female first, fintech focused on starting with committees and then building other products for women and beyond. Uran is based in Is this Istanbul? Karachi. In Karachi, right. Actually, most of our companies are based in Karachi. Sorry, Osambad. And and also Safepay, which is building payments for ecommerce merchants, and that's all in the fintech space. We like to joke that I'm because of my background in fintech, I'm often the cynic. I'm the grumpy granddad on the fintech calls. But despite that, we found great founders to invest in, in the fintech space. We think there's a big opportunity there. And then outside of that, we've invested in marketplaces. We've invested in Taza, which is an agri tech. We've also invested in DealKart, which is looking at bringing groceries in a, in a group buying model. Not QuickCommerce. Not QuickCommerce.
I hear grocery and I...
Us too, by the way. Us too. We immediately we passed our there
is a lot of cynicism there, but ok. And actually, but what's your son the opposite of quick commerce with this one? I'd love to talk to these guys by the way. They're also based in Karachi? They're they're Karachi. They're Karachi. They should go. The the the good news is that we're going to on the fourteenth to eighteenth of November in Karachi from the twenty third to Perfect. December 3. Wonderful. We'll
connect you with everybody. Perfect. But what they... What's great about their approach is that they're looking at, middle and lower income segments and help trying to see how they can encourage group buying within those segments, gamifying the approach and actually giving them access to lower cheaper products because they not only look at tier one but they look at tier two and tier three brands. So what that means is that people have access to cheaper brands. Right. And and so I think, you know, we'd love for you to speak to them. Think you'll you can you can make up your own mind after And you don't get your groceries in fifteen minutes, but that's okay because they care about the prices actually being good for them. Right? Yes. That's what matters. We've invested in Edcasa, which is an ed tech, and is focused on helping students with exam prep. Yeah. You interviewed फाद as well. You interviewed फाद. We've also invested in Teletalk, which is a communications platform, both B2C,
but also B2B. What's Teletalk doing? I've been... They've been quiet for a while. I remember I saw their pitch maybe a couple of years ago and that was very exciting. Yeah. They've been really focused on the B2B side of things, and that is actually really interesting and exciting. So that might be why they're quiet on the B2C side. Interesting, interesting.
Yeah. And have I have I left out? I haven't been counting who I've gone through. Metric, truck it in. Yeah, truck it in. Obviously, you interviewed Sarma. This is the logistics spray, so they look at freight. Rider is last mile for e-commerce, so also logistics but a different segment. Easy bike. And Easy bike, who he has also been here. Also here. And is based in Islamabad. Yeah. We were actually just at their new facility today. How's that? How is that? Awesome. It's really exciting. That's so fun. I mean, Easy bike is one
I'm I'm I'm super excited about EZ Bike. We are too. Just wanna see what what they're gonna do. I I feel like what they're gonna be four years from now is beyond anything
that anyone is imagining right now. But that's also why, honestly, Muzambhu, we invest in the founders. Right? Because you what we're seeing today, and even when we invested in EZ Bike, I met them. They were part of the accelerator, the iDye accelerator with roamer, the original concept. Right? We didn't invest in roamer, but then when EZ Bike came about, even then we were like, ah, b to c, like, electric vehicles. How many people are gonna do it? And then we started to see as petrol prices were going up, as things were going on, we're like, there's actually a lot here. And because we believed in Ali and Hadi Yeah. That's what the bat was. I think it's all about the founders. Because with EZ Bike, it's all about the founders. A 100%. It's all of our companies. It's all about the founders. You met Samad. Right? I mean, to be in the freight space and trucking, and it's not just Samad that's, you know, Heather and Reza as well and their entire team. Like, these guys are just, like, the the grittiness that they show and that type of hustle is honestly,
like, as someone who's worked with founders in this market for ten years, like, you just you know the difference between people who are really good at talking about what they're gonna do and then people who are really good at getting in there and just doing things. Right? So that's One of the interesting part of a lot of people have asked me, you know, who are the some of the most I mean, I've spoken to a ton of startups, and they're like, who are the show short success, in your opinion, on and off camera. Right? Obviously, we have conversations on camera, and then we have conversations off camera. And there are three people I've mentioned who I believe are gonna be billionaires in Pakistan. Interestingly, all three of them are in your Surprise,
surprise.
It's insane how, you've been able to really I mean, wow.
Which ones are they?
Camera. But, but wow. And so I'm gonna I'm gonna move towards more of a your opinion on on on on the ecosystem. But tell me a little bit about how how's the funding side of things now. Post 2021, the world is in a mess. Mhmm. I'm not even gonna get into the whole geopolitical situation that's happening because, honestly, it would give anyone nightmares. But even if the current situation sustains, it seems like money for developing or emerging markets is drying up. Mhmm. Nobody wants to invest in risky markets. Pakistan is not just a risky market in terms of the economy, but also there's a lot of political up and down that's happening. And so two questions. First, are most of your investors from outside of Pakistan, or are people from within Pakistan investing as well?
And second, how do you see the, how's the the funding situation right now, and how do you see it over the next year? Yeah. We're actually, as fund, we're set up outside Pakistan so that often means that people that who have funds only in Pakistan are not able to, you know, invest in funds outside. So we do have some पाकिस्तानीs but those are all people that actually have been able invest from outside the country. So most of our investors are actually from outside Pakistan. I think in terms of, you know, where the market is today, yes, obviously, Pakistan has, seen what the global economy has seen. I think venture funding is kind of shrunk everywhere across world, so Pakistan is no exception where that is concerned. But like you said, we're also a little high on that risk spectrum. So it's usually those markets where money sort of steps back from sooner. And so we started seeing this happening at the early part of the year in the first quarter. And then, of course, it started, you know, getting more acute. Global economic trends, but also geopolitical trends in the in the global market, impacted everybody in terms of fuel prices. We, like you said, we have our own issues to add on. Even in pure economic terms, just in terms of inflation and, and, you know, the the deficit, etcetera. So I think what what has happened is that, opportunistic money is definitely not coming to Pakistan for a while. I think people that believe in the opportunity are still bullish. We're definitely, you know, medium to long term bullish on Pakistan. Our fund exists to invest in Pakistan. We will continue to do so. And there are peers in this space also that are funding startups in Pakistan. And I think that funding will continue to be there. What's going to be different this time around is that there'll be potentially, I don't think there'll be that crazy fever that we were seeing in terms of the space of deals, maybe not even valuations being crazy high, which is not a bad thing. I think we were in any case expecting. I think it became sort of like a vanity contest. Exactly. And we were expecting a bit of correction anyway to happen in 2020 too. That just got accelerated, right? So I think what's going to happen is that good business models and good founders will still find money. Yeah. Both पाकिस्तानी and from outside, whether it's a region which is a little bit more conducive to Pakistan or global investors. But I think, that that, you know, that heyday of, like, anybody being able to raise money is is not there right now, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think what has also happened is that founders recognizing this have started focusing a lot more on fundamentals. You've been speaking to a bunch of them. Right? They've gone back to basics in terms of what is it going to take to make this business succeed? What if I'm not going to be able to raise money in six months? फिर क्या होगा? Yeah. How do I build a business that is on a path to profitability?
Yeah. And so that mindset shift is also good, I think. I think it's not just I mean, so it's one thing to really pivot towards profitability. Think another is really building the foundations. And and and when you're scaling so high, you you really sort of dismiss what's really happening on the ground. We we saw the case study with AirDlift as well. There was a huge report on that. But lot of a large part of their problem was, you know, these thefts that were happening or the losses that were happening in the warehouses. Right? And this was and I understand the the founder because, obviously, he's being pushed to scare scare scales, and he can't really focus on those areas. Yeah. But if you really want Pakistan as a as a solid market, you really have to make sure that it's a foolproof,
you know, the fundamentals, the technology stack, the operations are all foolproof. Oh, that keeps your building towards whatever it's a be a market that can stand on its own. Right? So if funding dries up tomorrow, Box Sun shouldn't be start ups shouldn't be, like, literally, like, what do we do? Right? Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, like, this was a really good wake up call. But I think before you even talk about what is happening in the dry up now, you have to also unpack why 2021 even happened. Right? And that type of it was such a it was a convergence of all these factors, which was, you know, outside investors that didn't have to were much more comfortable with remote diligence. Right? They were doing diligence off of Zoom. Right? In Pakistan, which is very operationally intensive, you have to come go see things. Right? We were at I mean, we were already investors in EZ Bike, we were at their facility today. Right? Like, seeing things, the parts, like, all of this stuff. It's important to be able to see things and tangibly touch things, I think, in person. But that was one reason. The other thing was the whole co legislation happened where all of a sudden startups get set up holding companies abroad. And that happened, in, you know, last year at State Bank legislation. Right? And Misbo was actually on the working group for that. That was a game changer because all of a sudden found, investors were like, I don't have to put my money inside Boxton. Can put my money inside Delaware. Right? Which is great. The other thing was that all of a sudden, all these funds had all this money, and they didn't know what to do with it. So they just threw it at all these places. So I think when you unpack the reasons and then you come back into right now, it's the thing is what back what we need to realize is that that money was never strategic money to begin with. Right? That money was going could dry up at any time. And the fact that it could literally dry up like that means that it was never going to be there for the long term anyway. Yeah. So we always have to act like this because I always think for us, it's like we definitely rode that wave. We had so much money come into box then last year. But even you said this, it's like the pivot to profitability, that is a very problematic term. Why were we pivoting to profit profitability to begin with? Right? Why was that never not the case to begin with? And I think that also speaks to venture capital and what's valued in this space, which is growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, but never a concern about, like, is there a foundation that works here? Like, can this business survive if funding dries up? And I think with Pakistan especially, we have yes. We had a lot of early stage funding, and we continue to have a lot more early stage funding. But what happens when a company needs to raise their series b, series c round, the d round? Right? What gets them to that exit? And we still have very few players that exist there. And so now it's become just much more apparent of that case. But I think, to Ms. Bai's point, the businesses that are going to survive now are the ones that are going to be building those good foundations and building actually good businesses to begin with. Makes sense. Ms. Bai, if I were to ask you, you have that sort of financial
services background. And, like you mentioned, you're you're you're pretty cynical when it comes to, you fintech players, you have invested in a lot of them. Majority of our portfolio. I feel like when I look at there's a there's a there's an image on Facebook that has logos of all the fintech players in Pakistan. And it's mind numbing to see the just the the variety of people trying to solve their problem. But somehow and I and it's not even like they're doing a poor job. You know, they're they're doing the fundamentals pretty pretty okay. They have the app. They have the tech tag. They have the operations, I would say. Somehow, Pakistan does is not evolving into a conducive digital payments market for some reason. We've been hearing it for a very long time. But the max I mean, so, Sadhape's CEO was here. Mhmm. And, his It was a great interview. After his episode went out, you know, I saw Sadhape, there was a notification which said, you know, we have an updated new feature, now you can buy mobile top ups. And it's just I wanted to take my hair out because mobile top ups is the is the extent of the use cases that we ever end up on. And I really want to go back to your original point of of really trying to understand the problems, not just as a business. Okay. This is the potential market size, and this is what could happen. But, really, you know, you'd you use the word financial access early days when you were working on, bill by document. And Pakistan में even today 12% people have bank accounts. Majority majority of the people are locked out and for some reason they're not coming in. Mhmm. It's an ex I I I don't know what the problem is. And so how do you see particularly the fintech space? Because I know I I would say, yes, that is the biggest opportunity in Pakistan right now. Not just in the startup space, but really in the economy space. You you go towards digital payments, and you'll solve a billion different problems from taxation to, you know, transparency, black to white. Right.
But somehow it's not happening. Yeah. What's going on there? And that might be part of the the the answer lies in part of that question as well. But I think, look, there there are a couple of things. We see a lot of players in fintech because fintech is a very big space. And you can have you can have several verticals in fintech. You can talk about payments. You can talk about insurance. You can talk about mobile top ups and other services. You can talk and, again, even in payments, there's payment gateways. And there's a lot and store of value such as wallets, you know, committees and, buy now, pay later, all of that comes in fintech. So it's a very broad space and so I think we will continue to see many players in it. I think it is fragmented in Pakistan because people are trying to solve the problem in different ways. I always think of this as a push and a pull issue. I think when it comes to the government, the government has been pushing certain, digitization policies, but I think it needs to do more. And I think where it could do more is maybe look at what India did in terms of, digitizing and encouraging removal of cash. We're a cash we're a cash loving society. We love cash. We like the trust factor of cash. Right? So to be able to move away from that, we have to have incentives for people to feel like अच्छा, if I'm going to use an electronic payment,
if I going to put money in an electronic account, it's not going to disappear. Yeah, especially because I mean right now if you pay with a debit card or credit card, they charge you a rupee. Like they are they are literally disincentivizing
Yeah, exactly. Digital payments. And so that's that the the challenge is one, the trust doesn't exist to begin with. Secondly, right now there aren't enough incentives in the space, in all of these spaces. Example, for merchants to actually digitize more. And instead of, I mean, there's government is trying to work towards it, but instead of encouraging them to digitize, there's this there's this thing hanging over their head कि, oh, we'll come into the tax net. Right. The government will now know how much we're making and FBR will come after us. And so there is a deterrent to digitization. And so those that do get pushed to digitize actually don't want to pay the the charge for it and they pass it on to the consumer where they're probably one of the few markets where it's like, भाजी आप cash पर लेंगी तो discount मिलेगा, right? Like you're saying you actually get get money, you have to pay extra to be use a card and I think we, so the government needs to acknowledge that and if we really want to bring about electronic payments in a big way, there needs to be, incentivization of digitization at the merchant end. And there also needs to be some trust that is built at the consumer end. So consumers, and that will come with information, that will come with getting familiarized. And I think that's where the pull factor will come. So the pull factor will come when we started seeing a little bit of this in COVID, when people will start using electronic methods of payment and say, oh, this is actually really great. Mhmm. Yeah. I don't have to sit by waiting for the by by delivery to come to pay cash on delivery. I can actually order food and not have to be home. I can use my card online. So I think the pull factor will come when people start recognizing the convenience of electronic payments, which will happen, but it'll happen over time. I think when I look at the fintech space,
one particular question that I really have is is on credit scoring. I think Pakistan really has lacked that sense forever. And I think now with the now that we're in the data age, it shouldn't be that difficult. But whenever I think about credit, I think about how there are so many individuals doing a lot of individual analysis, and everybody is trying to build their own sort of credit rating system. And every time I've spoken to a fintech, I've asked them, you know, is there a marketplace for data in Pakistan where you can build on? So let's say, for example, the data so let's say, example, there is the राज, and then there is bazaar, and then there are so many other players in different different different spaces. How do you identify, let's say, consume by some stuff on the राज and some on Food Panda and some this and some that. That all of that data can potentially tell a lot about her in terms of her ability to pay back. Mhmm. Right? And, because there is a chicken and egg problem where every player is, like, if I have enough people and enough data, I should be able to create a product. Mhmm. So either I see two outcomes, there's gonna be a lot of mergers and acquisitions, and eventually, we're going to have that holy grail of that that that perfect mechanism to identify where anyone can plug in, and the the algorithm would know whether they have the ability to pay or not. Yeah. Or there has to be partnerships on a crazy level, which in a park in a in a country like Pakistan where there is an an incredible amount of trust deficit. Yeah. It's very difficult. Mhmm. Or there there is an opportunity for a middle startup player, I don't know, that essentially becomes your, escrow for data. Mhmm. You know, where different startups can plug in and say, okay. Here's my data, and here's your data. And we can we can learn from you, and you can learn from us. And it helps all of us really build better profiles. Yeah. Because while and and I know for a fact that, I mean, the government I've stopped, expecting anything from the government. And so I'm trying to figure out how the private sector can and accelerate. Right? And I think while we can sure say that convenience is interesting, what I've seen is Pakistani consumer doesn't respond well to convenience. Absolutely. I don't think yet. Right? Yeah. Convenience happens later. Yeah. To miss this point. For for... If I were to identify what would really encourage the Pakistani consumer, I think... So so I'll give you an example. Just, two minutes ago, before we started the podcast, my, the office boy who works here came came up to me and he was like, listen. I want, two months advance on my salary, because, you know, I'm making a house and or or some sort of a room or something of that sort. And, obviously, as an employer, I will base on some sort of human element. Does he have the ability to pay or not? This and that x y z. But he should be able to get access to that credit elsewhere depending on his ability. Right? And that doesn't exist in Pakistan, as of right now. Doesn't seem like it's gonna exist anytime, soon. I know for a fact that if I tell him listen, don't don't stop coming to me again and again. वह भी है ना कि उसका होता है particularly कि वह मेरे पास जब आ रहा है तो वह अपने थोड़ा सा ज़मीर मार करा रहा है. वह एक किस्जत का भी element है Pakistan में. He should be able to get that credit. There's nothing wrong with that. Right, absolutely. So if I tell him कि यार listen like तुम अपनी app use कर लो. दस, आठ दस महीने use करोगे ना तो करने के बाद या digital payments किया करो, आठ दस महीने बाद तुम्हें eventually यह कर्ज़ा ख़ुद से मिल जाएगा. I know for a fact he will switch because he is now has a potential product जो कि and all of them want it. Right. Everybody, every human being for one reason or the other wants some sort of credit. Mhmm. Yeah. I feel like we're unable to every I know I also know that even payments वाले भी somehow credit की बात कर रहे हैं. कहीं ना कहीं उन्होंने अपने credit is a major part of their formula. Yeah. But it's, they're unable to do it. What what are your thoughts on it? We have all these companies solving all these issues. Exactly.
So, I I mean, again, I think there are so many different levels of that problem to solve. You can start with something like Abi, which is actually providing earned wage access so these people don't have to come and ask their employer, but it's actually a right to actually access your earned salary at least. Right? And then I think, know, Oran for example through their products is building for this market. The demand is huge and the reason why is because banks have not been incentivized to invest in individuals and SMEs even, you know, forget about SMSMEs. वह SMEs भी कर लें तो बड़ी बातें. And so I think to your point about, like, what is going to happen in the future and when where that gap is, there are some And also, sorry,
what's gonna happen in the future where that gap is? Also the interoperability of Mhmm. So, I mean, or उड़ान will require someone on उड़ान to continuously build up their Yes, their sort of profile and same with अभी and so on. So, how does one sort of be able to switch from one to another and take their credit rating with them? Yeah. And I think so there are a couple of credit bureaus that are that are there in the market now. I think the challenge and the banks have a lot of data as well from individuals,
not enough obviously. But the challenge is also the sanctity of that data. Like, how clean is it? And I think, you know, we often talk about, like, AIML, and you can only feed an algorithm. It'll it'll be garbage in, garbage out. Right? So you have to get good data in to get good data out, and that's one essential issue. In terms of interoperability, I think we'll get there. I think we've seen and it's a bit of a पाकिस्तानी mindset also that I'm going to build it myself. But we've also seen, you know, it happened with wallets for example where every telco was like, I'm going to build my own wallet and and all that happened was at the end of the day, they got into a price war at the end of the agent, and the customers didn't really benefit because there was no real new in in inventive products that were coming out to your point mobile top up ad करेंगे, अब, you know? And so I think the challenge is that if you see everything as a competitive space, there's less there's not there's little, incentive to come onto an interoperable platform. I think we will get there. Each one right now is building something in their own way, where they feel like they're actually gathering data which they can verify, that they can validate and building credit models out of that. People are doing it at, you know, in buy now, pay later. People are doing it, some well and some not so well. People are doing it at an individual level, at a business level. Micro finance banks are, you know, looking at that data as well. So I think we're kind of moving to the space where hopefully in a few years we will have more focus on interoperable data exchange.
But also right now, it's kind of like everybody is looking at how to build it themselves. Because they don't access it. They're building the foundation and the scale is gonna come maybe in a couple of years when they have some sort of a working model,
that they can sort of connect with each other. Yeah. And I think the challenge is that that credit data is so important to build models on top of that we will, people are building that. There is an acknowledgement that we need to build that credit data. Right. And go from there. But I think also, like, you know, one thing that micro finance banks have been doing, for example, is that they use proxies. So they don't look at salaried individuals. They may look at farmers and they and and say if this farmer is is is cultivating this size of land, his or her ability to pay back a loan of 2 lakh, 8 lakh is this. Yeah. And I think there's an opportunity there. I think to the point about consolidation, there will definitely be consolidation because there are a lot of players building small small And there is small small happening, right? So this financial was acquired by, like, an outside player coming in. I mean, they had data that was probably, like, a part of the reason. And that's why I'm saying. Particularly आपने बड़ा अच्छा point raise किया with the farming. The reason why I'm saying this, there might be a requirement for a third party that has no products of their own but is really gathering data
to one sort of unique identifier, maybe your NIC. As I was speaking to this, you know, startup. उनको दियोसाइना I believe fund किया है. FarmDar. FarmDar. And FarmDar again has nothing to do with fintech. Yeah yeah. But the technology that they have can easily tell you Yeah. Exactly what's gonna happen with this particular farm and the ability for that farm to be able to pay and credit it. Mean, it's the argument that everyone becomes a fintech eventually. Eventually. Right? And so my my thought is everybody doesn't need to be that fintech. There needs to be one player Mhmm. That can all their job is to really take the PharmDar data, convert that into the, fintech language, be able to sell that to the through because farm that कभी यही तक eventually we're gonna plug into a,
a fintech player and and I'm just Be able to leverage that. Yeah. Absolutely. So I think the challenge, there is a privacy question there, मुसंबत, and we do need to keep that in mind. I mean, again, there are countries that are more focused on privacy than Pakistan. We're not very high on that list. Mhmm. I think Nadra could be a game changer. There's a lot of talk about how to leverage that data better. The unique identifier is coming into a place with Rust, for example. Right? So we're starting to build some of these blocks towards that. But I think privacy is gonna be a question mark when it comes to, someone's data being shared. Like, I may not want my data being shared, but I'm ok sharing it where I have an independent relationship with you. So if I have a relationship with Abi or if I have a relationship with Uran, I'm ok to let them know for them to use that data to improve my credit score. So Uran, for example, on their app has a credit score that you can see. Right. And as you become better at payments, to your point about, like, each one is tracking it at their own level, I'm, as a consumer, I'm okay with that because that's a one to one relationship. Yeah. But I might not be okay with Uran sharing that data with five other players. Right? Unless it comes to the point where I'm giving permission because I want some... To access something else from someone else. Right. So I think there will be this interplay of privacy, permission,
along with the infrastructure being built to be able to access that. How do you see रास्त by the way? Is it as revolutionary as it's being played? I think it could really be a game changer. I think it's been really slow to get off the ground. You know, there's the multiple phases of it. अभी even the first phase hasn't really been implemented all that well. कहां से आ रहा है? Like, state bank के side से आ रहा है या people are not responding to? Because my understanding is similar to UPI, right? And UPI has been incredibly huge in India. Yeah. But राष somehow wasn't able to gain that crack. It takes UPI take off right away. Yeah. I think it's really early days. I
think it's early days. I I, to be honest, I I don't know specifically, whether the issue is at the end of, the API consumption that that fintechs are doing or banks are doing, etcetera. I mean, I definitely know that there are active transactions and it started off. Started with individuals and now waiting into merchant payments as well. But I think those are teething problems. Right? So we'll get to that point. I think what's good is that it really brings down the cost and so of transactions. And that's where you start looking at other players coming and building off of that. So those rails are very important in an ecosystem. India build that with UPI. I think RAS is important from that perspective. I think we will get there. When it was being implemented, maybe two quarters ago, I know people were like, this is not gonna happen for another three quarters. And I was actually more bullish, and I think it will probably get into next year by the time it it really takes off. And that's okay if it's done right, I think. But it is a big opportunity. And because of the cost, the price aspect that it brings in, I think it could really encourage fintechs and banks and other players in the finance space to build off those rails,
and then be able to offer different products and services. Right. You mentioned Nadra, and I know that Nadra were there because Nadra is is could potentially be incredibly huge if considering they're the center point at the heart of the your the your unique identifier. And I know every time you have to sort of poke them and ask them whether this person is really who he is, I think it's a 50 rupee charge. Mhmm. Do you think that's a broken model? Because I feel like they're really just trying to milk a very small amount of requests where they could really bring that 50 to, let's say, 1 rupee, allow startups to make however many requests they want. But I think the revenue is gonna be much, much higher. Because right now, they're really slowing down the innovation. For a lot of these startups who require that verification,
the 50 rupee charge doesn't make a lot of sense. Yeah. I think it also integration questions in terms of how easy it is to get into that and the and the price obviously. So, yeah, absolutely. I think this definitely needs to be looked at, and I think there's an opportunity to improve how it's working because it really could be a game changer in terms of accessing that. Right? Imagine a world where I, you know, I can I can access different, credit services because I have a credit score? Now you as a as a credit giver don't need to know all the details of, you know, what transaction I've done with Abhi and what transaction I've done with Udaan and, you know, whatever. But you know what my credit rating is. That could be powerful in itself, right? And that comes back to that unique identifier.
Mhmm. Makes sense. Moving away from fintech, and I see that you guys have with Daza, you guys have been an Agri. An Agri, I feel like, is very exciting. I think it's it's
it's random right now, but I think five years from now, everybody would be getting into Agri. I mean, there was four companies that came up around the same time as Thaza. So I feel like everyone saw the same opportunity. So how's what are your thoughts on agri in Thaza? I mean, it's interesting because, mean, Mispa was also, like, when at Acumen, you guys were investing in agri way back when. I think it's interesting because if you looked at, you know, these players that were early on, I think a lot of Taza, Easy Fresh, Jia Kisan, which is now just Jia Technologies. There's a few other players that have come into that space. Everyone looked at it from Monday to retailer. Right? That part of the supply chain. So everyone was trying to address that particular part of it. And I think that's why we saw the most amount of activity because we saw that you could grow really fast in that. Right? If you could, like, hack that, that would be where growth was, and that would be where the venture play was. If you looked at this a couple years ago, I think it was Monday Express. That was a few years ago. Right? The traction that they had was really good, but it took them a really long time to get to the same place that Taza was able to achieve in a few months. Right? And, yes, part of it is that, like and, obviously, we're biased because we're investors in Taza's. Part of it is because Taza's really good founders that kind of brought a really fresh perspective. They kind of came from their excream, ex swivel, but also a bar was at L'Oreal for FMCG. So they kind of came at it from a different lens. But also, it was a convergence of where the agri space was moving, right, where technology was moving. And so even when you look at where when Ms. Bo was at Accuin, when we were investing back then, it was called patient capital because we were just weren't there yet in terms of adoption. Right? And I think in the agri space now, you were talking about PharmDhar and and, you know, Sherry was that's one of his investments. There's a lot that can happen in this space. It's just about where the spaces are in terms of if you are a venture capital fund specifically where you can see that type of hockey stick growth right now. I think agri as a whole is a massive opportunity in Boksan. It's massively fragmented, massively broken. And, I mean, the fact that we're a net importer of so many products, and yet we can, like, literally change that if we fix the inefficiencies in our supply chains, to me is bogus. I was like, this is crazy. This is something that needs to be fixed. I think that it's it's huge, and it's also about timing. Right? It's like, where where are the spaces that can be fixed right now? And Taza, you know, has launched a bunch of new products, recently, right, in terms of platforms that are for focused on, like, outputs and inputs that are looking at a global market, especially in the current environment that we're in. And those guys are always what we love about Abrah and Mossin and and their team is they're always thinking, like, five steps ahead. Right? They're always thinking about, like, what if Baqsan's produce could go to the world? Right? Like, what if and these very audacious ideas that I think that not a lot of other players are thinking about. So I think the agri space as a whole is massive. I think we've only done one deal in this space. We'd love to do more, but I think it's also about from a because we're venture capital specifically, which is a very different asset class, where is the opportunity for venture within that space, not what's worthy? Because everything in agri at this point is worthy. Everything in every sector is worthy.
But where do we feel that intervention is going to be important? Makes sense. And if I Sorry. Just to add to that, I think it's also that important question of matching the type of capital with the opportunity. Right? And we often tell founders, like, everyone doesn't have to raise venture money. Mhmm. But you should identify what kind of investment is right for you if you are to raise investment. Maybe you're a cash generating company that doesn't need to raise. And so I think agri is one of those spaces for sure where every model is not gonna be a venture fundable model, and that's okay. Some models will be, you know, patient capital models. Some models will have to start out being grant based. Maybe a model where you're building credit information around farmers will have to be grant based to begin with because there may not be money in it upfront, but the value that that can add later down the road would be huge. So I think it's important for us, and this goes beyond, I agree, to other spaces as well, is that what is the miss what is the match for the right type of investor,
given the right type of business opportunity? And also, why do we always attach success in how we look at Pakistan? We in every startup ecosystem, we attach success of whether or not they raise venture funding. Yeah. And venture funding is not every it's not everyone's cup of tea. Right? Like, a company might be way better off with patient impact investors. They might be way better off with revenue based financing. And I think we need to be able to support all of those types of businesses in this market in order for us to have a healthier ecosystem, not just one that's defined by success based on venture that raises again and again and again at crazy valuations. Right? So I think we name that as people in venture. I mean, we we entered venture capital to not be business as usual. And we also say to every founder, even on the sister company side, that don't think that just because, you're raising investment, it has to be venture capital. Find the type of investment that works for you. Makes sense. If we're talking about venture venture capital investment,
you know, we've seen fintech, and and and you're you're huge on fintech. There's a little bit of agri. There's a little bit of sort of ecommerce. Logistics. Logistics. If I were to ask you, what how how do you see or rather, what verticals do you see where there might be an opportunity? Maybe people aren't working there right now, but because you've been looking at this space for well over a decade, not just in Pakistan region and beyond as well, what are some of the more ignored spaces that you think can really be impactful, but haven't been touched yet in Pakistan?
I think there's always spaces within spaces. Right? So within every sector, I always think that everyone kind of floods to the same opportunity. Right? We have, like, five b to b ecommerce players. But, like, who's servicing, you know, within the spaces of, like, financing? And I mean and and I say this with some of our companies already doing this. Right? But inventory financing, SME lending, like, within those spaces. I think for us, and and we've talked about this a lot on different panels, but I would love to see more SaaS plays come out of Baksan. So Baksani companies building for the world. I know Nash is doing that with Integrity, which is really exciting as a play. Obviously, Metric is a SaaS play in our portfolio. But I would love to see more of that. Right? I think there's and also, there's a lot of problems to solve. So even in edtech, I would say that education financing is really interesting. And I say that with, like, Iran now launched StudyNapHayLater, right, which is really exciting. And so I I feel like there's still so much to do. But oftentimes we run to the same problem or we run to a problem where we've seen it done in Indonesia or in India or literally everyone says to me they're like, here is an Indian comparable. Right? And I'm like, in India right now is, like, flooded with so much capital that it doesn't really tell you much of whether or not it's working. But I would love to see people kind of saying, like, what are the and I don't have an answer, actually. But, you know, whether it's, like and I and it sometimes it is fintech, unfortunately. So I'm kind of like, maybe it's I'm just away from fintech. But fintech does a lot of these fintech is such a large vertical. Right? It's horizontally within fintech. You have many, many places that you could go, and then many spaces that you could solve within,
each sector that are there. What about you? Yeah. I think I mean, if you look at the evolution of most early stage markets, there's a troika that starts out, right? And it's logistics, ecommerce and payments or fintech. And those are usually, especially in high consumption markets, those are usually the first three sectors that start getting built up. And if you look at Pakistan, we've had a very similar sort of experience there. Yeah. Then nothing wrong with it. But those are that's often considered low hanging fruit in terms of Right. What you can get started with. Like Kusum said, I mean, a 100% agree that there's spaces within spaces where you can build. I think there are also some big opportunities where you've been from the outside, you look in. You're like, why hasn't why am I not seeing really fast growing health tech companies, for example? Because if you look at the opportunity in health around you, it's huge. Yes. You can say that about education. Again, we are investors in Edkasa. We're very proud of what Anam and Faha they're building, but they're few and far between in terms of the size of the issue that, you know, education I'm talk to you about education.
Mhmm. That's that's something that is really close to my heart. I've spoken to a few people. Again, Faaad is doing a remarkable job, particularly with their new partnership with TikTok. Mhmm. But overall, edtech has it's it's just been a a nice shiny Mhmm. Nice to have sort of a startup space in Pakistan right now. And the and the problem is very real with the with from from the out of school children to the children who are actually going to school but are not really getting educated. Yeah. The the the size of the population,
it's a no brainer. Right. So whether it's challenge all by venture. That's the question. Right? The question is
is that is what are the business models within that venture can solve? Should people focusing on edtech, you know, which are the different sectors that they're looking at, the different stages of that issue, every company that's in education may not even be investable. Right. There might be grant models that are required at certain levels. There might be strengthening of public systems that might be required. I think the the... I agree with you. Like, it's such a big, big question and big gap in Pakistan and, therefore, an opportunity as well. But I don't think there's a one size fits all answer Yeah. Or one magic wand that you can sort of wave and say, okay, all of the education issues have been solved. And I think people will do that at different ends. Now you mentioned Fahadin at Casa and Anam and what they've done is taken one piece of it that is monetizable, that is something that people are already paying for, which is tuitions, after school classes and saying, okay, how can we do this better? How can we bring in technology? How do we leverage this so we can get to even more people than what people are being able to do with in in house, in person, academies, etcetera? Every aspect of the education problem can't be solved by technology. Right? And so I think it's important to break it up into different pieces so that you can see what is the solution for each of those pieces. And
so much of it is so structural, right, in terms of the problems itself. And I think with, you know, when you look at what the Citizens Foundation is doing here in Pakistan, right, obviously, there's a lot of low cost private schools. There's a lot of, like, interventions, and not one intervention can solve the entire problem. Right. And so I'm really passionate about education as well. I'm sure you are too. It's just that for us as investors, we're like, is that the problem that venture should solve, not even can solve? Right? Like Right. Venture money kind of ruins some sectors, honestly. Like, it just kind of forces people to say, like, I need to grow this fast. But education is not something that can be solved tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. It might even be solved in a generation. Right? So who are the players that can put in the right building blocks in place, whether it means it's from the teacher training perspective, whether it means it's from a curriculum perspective, whether it means, like, from a structural, like, school perspective. And, again, to the point of technology, I mean, when Ed Kosa first started and Fajat talked about this in his interview, they started with distant learning. Right? And these, like, very hard to reach schools. Really amazing, like like, B2B program that wasn't going to be the venture side of what they do. Right? And that's okay too. Like, what they were building there had a tremendous amount of impact. In some ways, arguably, more social impact than what the tuition side does, which is solving for kind of more middle class consumers. But, that's also within HealthTech. Right? It's like, how do you solve these, like, very large problems, and whose type of money solves that problem? Makes sense.
For a lot of, Pakistani startups, when they're looking at the problem to solve, obviously, they're looking at Pakistan. It's a huge problem to solve. But for a lot of people, obviously, they're also looking at Pakistan's economy, and they're thinking how exactly what is the scale or what's the multiplier that you would potentially take out of it. And I think a large a large part of that reason was why Airlift was forced into sort of identifying a model where they can go to South Africa as well and here and there and so take what what they're creating and make it regional. Mhmm. इसको मैं इस तरह से probably switch करूंगा. क्रितिम हम China, when we look at China for example, and we look at China building iPhones today. Mhmm. We have to really go to the nineties and imagine que Chinese products were considered as these sort of low grade, you know, large scale produced Mhmm. Products. And it took them three decades from starting with plastic keybaltia Mhmm. To, you know, x and then y, and then today where they're creating cutting edge technology and really Yeah. Building the products of the future. Mhmm. And so I look at Pakistan, and I and I'm wondering, do you think our startups over the next decade can be regional? Because I look at Indonesia, for example, and now they're, like, a huge market with tons of unicorns. And I look at Indonesia particularly because I feel like we have a very common trajectory there Mhmm. Both in terms of the culture of business, also in terms of how corrupt economy has been, and they've been able to sort of fix that and and create a better model. Even with India so a lot of these so every time we we're doing some trying or beginning to try to do something in Pakistan, there's already someone who's who's five steps ahead globally. Do you think is your viewpoint different where you can potentially, as an investor, say that, okay, maybe DealGart, if it's successful in Pakistan, maybe the real money will be when we take it to Egypt and and Nigeria and and South Africa. 100%. Yeah. I mean, I think we're a 100%.
We're seeing that with Abi already. Right? Like, Abi is already just set up in The UAE. They're launching remittance payments. With Perif, they, you know, are talking about Bangladesh as well as another place. Like, they're because fintech is quite leaner, it's not super operationally intensive. It's much easier to move. And, also, because with earned wage access, a lot of other markets are relatively, like, early in those spaces. Right? So it's easier to to do that. But I definitely believe that I mean, I always noticed the similarities among cities. Right? And I think Girachi is so similar to Taca. I think Taca is so similar to Cairo, so similar to Jakarta. Why not? Right? But, also, it's about when you go. Right? And it's about not saying, like, I need to go regional because that's everybody else is gonna say, okay. How do you justify this valuation? Right? But instead, say, what is strategic for us? When have we captured enough of this market that we can actually comfortably go to another place? And not saying growth for the sake of growth, right, which is was happening a lot last year. And actually say, like, at what point is it strategic for, as an example, Truck It In, which is building so such a cool like, their approach is so interesting. Right? And and you talked to Sam with it for two hours, which is awesome. But with, like, you know, Truck Logbe in Bangladesh. Right? There's so many similarities of companies that you might see that are a few years behind. Could you acquire that company? Could you merge with them? Could you partner with this one that's doing it? And so less about, like, I need to because everything is about I. Right? It's, like, I need to grow and launch, and instead say, I can partner. I can acquire this player. And that's happening outside into Pakistan a lot right now. I think we'll find find my adventure. I think, Patriarcat I
think I think to that point, I think the answer is yes and no, both. Because yes to what कुसुम is saying, this regional opportunity, there's absolutely no reason why पाकिस्तानी startups cannot take advantage of it. But at the same time, to your point, Kals, about, like, the timing being the right, right? It's, Pakistan itself is such a big opportunity. When have you found, when you find the product market fit over here and you're able to scale, that might be the right time for you to start looking at other markets. Because people are looking outside in wanting to come to Pakistan because they see the opportunity over here, right? And so again, the acquisition of Find My Adventure but also तेज़, Baizutpay. Yeah, Saris invested in जुगनू in the B2B e commerce side. So I think people are looking from the outside looking at Pakistan and saying, wow, this is a great opportunity. I also think that it shouldn't be too premature for when पाकिस्तानी companies start looking regionally. But absolutely, I feel like, why not, have them grow beyond Pakistan and actually have world class products? And I think, you know, you have an example of Cloudways which had a huge exit recently, completely homegrown, great product. And Bootstrap. Bootstrap completely, didn't raise any venture money. Built in Pakistan for a global product. And look at the success that they had with that. So, absolutely, we we have the talent and the opportunity for companies to start building regionally and go outside. Yeah. But we also have a lot over here that we can address. Yeah. We're a massive market, and I don't think any company yet has fully captured Pakistan. We're at the one hour thirty minute mark, and, I'm responding to the constant protests from all of you guys. Want to start wrapping up soon. But,
I think one of the one of the questions that I have with in terms of the entire startup ecosystem and the entire language that's being used around it, not from within the space but rather from the people who are looking at the space. For them, this is that one sort of, you know, I don't know क्या होता है वह जो apple होता है वह सारे मस्ते solve करता है but, that one thing that's going to solve all of Pakistan's problems, you know. That's one thing that's going to make us rich and and this is the oil of Pakistan. And the problem is that while these are very legitimate problems, most of what I see happening is, startups essentially getting rid of inefficiencies. Right? So, it's really what it's doing is leakages जहां जहां पर हैं, चाहे वह farming के अंदर leakages हो रहे हैं, waste हो रहा है, उसको कम किया, optimize किया, पैसे बचा रही है. Financial payments के अंदर, you know, make it quick, make it efficient, make it transparent. Leakages को रोको, पैसे बनाने. So value आपको बड़े clear नज़र आ रही है. But when it comes to really Pakistan की जब, you know, when you talk about the Pakistan's economy or political economy, unfortunately, historically, what we've seen is that we have a wealth generation problem. We don't have a, you know, an optimized for a lot of people, what they're looking at is where are we spending our money? The fact is we don't have enough money. So yesterday, yesterday I was looking at a very interesting stat. A lot of times in Pakistan we talk about the defense budget, right? Pakistan's entire defense budget is $7,000,000,000. The state of New York spends $10,500,000,000 on the New York police. So, I mean, just look at the discrepancy. Mhmm. The fact is you don't have you it's not that whatever money you have is just being spent in an inefficient way. You really have to increase the overall pool as well. Mhmm. For a lot of the companies who are doing work and they have to do that work, it's an incredible amount of that it's an incredible work that they're doing. But, really, nobody's looking at how to generate that additional wealth. Mhmm. And a lot of that is going to, a, come from exports, and a lot of that is going to come from, you know, giving jobs to a huge youth population. And so this is beyond just startups and venture capital money. This is Yeah. I I want your opinion on on really how do we and particularly yours because you have that sort of background of, you know, politics and and and all of that. How do you take Pakistan's economy to a point where we've talked about handouts. Our entire economy has worked on handouts. Right? How do we make that economy sustainable so that there's more money for the consumption products that we're creating over here? Mhmm. Because essentially, on year, we're running out of money. Yeah. Right. So we're always in the same default place. Yeah. Yeah. And the fact is que if we don't fix that, all of this is wasted. Yeah. If we fix that, this is the logical outcome of that irrespective. Right? So, one of the for for example, you guys mentioned SaaS, I think that's an incredibly huge opportunity for Pakistanis to actually generate that wealth. Yeah.
But beyond that, how can what can we possibly do? Because I'm trying to get smart minds to give me an answer to that problem. I mean, honestly, the I wish I could say that there's going to be one solution to it, but I would actually say that the biggest problem is that we've unfortunately, from a political standpoint, we've never had leadership that has been strategic in this country that have said, how do we rebuild the foundations from an economic standpoint? I mean, these are much smarter minds than than me on the macroeconomic front. Right? But we've when we think about the foundations of this country, it's like, every time, why are we always getting into a default? Because we've never had people think beyond, like, a year or two years. Like, we need to rethink, like, the next ten years. Right? And I think because we're always in a place of, like, we're only gonna be in power for this many years. I don't want this person to get credit for this thing that I do now that's gonna happen in five years. Right? So we're always doing these short term things that don't actually take place. And I wish I could say that, like, you know, like, an acquisition in Baksan is gonna be the thing that takes us forward as a country. But until we fix these broken policies and these broken institutions, with people who are really smart that we don't just get rid of because they they don't fit our political agenda. That's, you know, without getting politicized about it because for me, that's an equal opportunity. They get whoever's been in power in this country since the beginning. I don't think we can actually address things, to be honest. So that's not an answer to it. It's more just a frustration that I've seen or I've had over the years of, like, why can't we be better than this in terms of why have we never had real leadership that has put not a personality. They've put them put, like, the country above personality. Right? And when it comes to that, then we actually say, like, how do we address these problems? Right? And we've had, like, you know, we've had really great economic minds that almost ran things here and then no longer did. But you listen to how they talk about things, and you're like, why can't we just do what he said? Yeah. Why can't we just implement those things? Right? And I just think there's always these warring feelings of, like, people that are rent seeking, that want this, that are we're we're so extractive in how we how we behave as a society that I never think then we actually can't come from a place of abundance. We never say, like, how can I bring the pool for everybody rather than just for myself or for my party or for this person or whatever? And so that that to me is, you know, just something that I feel as a frustration. It's not an answer to your question.
Miss Pa, what do you think? I mean, I and I and I'll add to this. I think, while we, you know, politics or political leaders generally tend to respond to public sentiment. Mhmm. Right? So when they're saying, okay, I wanna get elected again, these are just my thoughts. But a lot of people are these days saying, this leader, इसको तो सिर्फ़ power चाहिए. Obviously इसको power चाहिए. That's just entire job description. So, वह तो एक logical वह है ही. But I think in a democracy any leader who's trying to do take stupid decisions because that will get him votes in the next election. का outcome यह नहीं है कि मैं कहूं कि वह leader stupid है और उसको बेहतर decision देना चाहिए थे. उसका outcome यह है कि यार public क्यों इस decision के ऊपर उसको vote दे रहे हैं? And so what I'm trying to really figure out is how do you let, how do you identify? Because I've spoken to a lot of people on the podcast apart from Gonzalo from the World Bank, the only non-पाकिस्तानी here, जिसने economy की बर्बाद की थी. He was actually the one who gave me very legitimate, structural, pointers on what needs to be changed. Mhmm. More often than not, you talk to a lot of Pakistanis and a lot of great minds, and they'll give you they'll start and end the conversation with we need structural change. Yeah. You ask them, what is that structural change? And they'll be like, that's what the politician did. That's what I'm trying to figure out because, again, like I mentioned, a lot of our because what happens is then the politician takes that decision, and then that is this isn't gonna easily be manipulated because the public doesn't know enough. Yeah. We saw that with the with the what was that? Real estate amnesty scheme. Yeah. That's the dumbest,
you know,
bubble creation in front of everyone. Everybody was participating in that topic. Yeah. I think people want that short term game. Right? So. So, so trying to really understand in terms of how do you, it's a very stupid move ना कि यार imports बंद कर दो, बिल्ली बिचारी खाना नहीं खा सकेगी यार. That's not really solving anything in the Yeah, long I
think for me there's like accountability is at the root of it all, right? So accountability at a grassroots level where I know who I'm going to hold accountable if I don't get बिजली पानी or gas in my house tomorrow when the winter comes, right? As opposed to some politician who's kind of in Islamabad and is not, you know, directly engaged with me. And I mean, there's, like, there's, contentious politics in a lot of countries, right? But I think what Kusum was saying as well, we need a sort of a national, I think coming together of, like, accepting a a few things that we will, that everybody will be That nobody's gonna play politics on. And you don't play politics on. He said, we are going to commit to building these few things in Pakistan. To your question about structure, that's one way to do it. And then institutional building. Once you build institutions, they owe outlast people. And what we need is institutions to be built on meritocracy, on, you know, starting off with, you know, things on paper on paper in theory, hiring the right people for it. It all comes back to education and poverty. So, it's a vicious cycle like you said. उसको पता नहीं है जो आदमी vote दे रहा है, औरत vote दे रही है, उसको पता नहीं है कि उसके rights क्या हैं? What can they come out? और उसके लिए बेहतर call क्या है? What can they out? उसके लिए बेहतर क्या है? Right? What can they demand? And at the same time, where can they hold people accountable? So, I feel like this gap of like and this vicious cycle of like, ok, you know, you give them a बिरयानी and they'll come to your rally or that you promise them a house loan and they will vote for you. What happens when they don't get that house loan? What happens when they don't, you know, get beyond that one बिरयानी at the rally? What happens then? That दो ग़रीब आदमी जो है उसको तो कल काम पर जाना है, उसको पैसे earn करने हैं. He is not going to go out and do भूख her ताल or move on strike because he has to feed his kids or she has to, you know, feed her family. So, it's this cycle of poverty and education that makes things harder and of course corruption adds a whole other aspect to it. But I think accountability and and committing to a national agenda of saying here are a few things that everybody says we're not gonna touch. उसके ऊपर you build things as per, you know, you want more of a social state, you want less of a social state. You believe more in sort of free hand of state or more, you know, involvement. Fine. But there's some some acceptance and acknowledgement of basic aspects of building the structure. Otherwise, you come to this point of, like, know, that reminds me of that English show, yes minister and yes prime minister, where the bureaucracy
is the only one that's constant and is running things. But but they're also, you know, what is their incentive? And, also, what's the leadership there, right, of who's directing them? But I think to to the point of giving, like, a good example, right, of last year, there was really groundbreaking legislative change that happened for the startup space in Pakistan. Right? I was mentioning the holding company legislation, but then also, like, generally, the regulations for the fintech space came down. If you asked us, grumpy granddad and myself,
if we were I should treat that a grumpy grandma. Yeah. Grumpy daddy. Daddy.
If if we were bullish on fintech three years ago, we would have said no. Right? Because the regulations were, such that it didn't, you know, it didn't allow for that. Or if you said with the SECP building a sandbox, right, allowing for people to actually build and try and test innovative products. Right? All of those things happen not only at the policy level, but those were game changers for this space, right, in terms of we genuinely saw, like, actual tangible returns. And then the government saw that in doing so, and, actually, it was because of leadership at the State Bank, leadership at the SECP, that really allowed for voices in the room. Like, Misbah was on one of the working groups. All of us were advocating for that change. Oftentimes, we're on these working groups that were like, what are we? What are we doing? Yeah. And this this was the first time that I genuinely felt, like, I was like, wow. Like, I've been the biggest critic of, the policy environment for the startup space in Baksan. This was the for me, this actually validated and vindicated because I'm like, if you can change the policies, this can unlock so much. This was a a working group for the straight back? Yeah. Yeah. So several several working groups,
have been part of things where in the State Bank. At the State Bank, we're looking at whole co legislation, at the CCP level about defining startups, sandbox engagement with people and the stakeholders. So I think that was, you know, like Kulsum said, there was a real desire to engage with people and actually listen. And that comes from top from the top down. Right? Right. And then, sentiment policy bureaucracy too. Right? Because,
the bureaucracy actually was, like, then working, like, because the leadership was there to actually direct that. And I think you had a really great case study of what can happen. And by reducing those regulations, it unlocked the entire fintech sector. Right? By unlocking the fintech sector, yes, all these people are doing stuff in these different spaces, and, yes, there's noise. But we're seeing real change happen because of these fintech players that are coming up in this market. Right? And when we talk about wealth creation,
it starts from the top. Right? It starts from policy. And I think one last point on that without getting too political. It's also these are also spaces where people, you know, there are maybe in fintech, are banks that are incumbents. Maybe in agri, there are RTs that are incumbents. Maybe, you know, in ecommerce, there are these old old school distributors. But when you come to the point where you don't have a lot of vested interest, you can make refreshing changes. Right. I think the challenge with taking this example and this experience of the regulators really engaging and building, in a positive with a positive mindset, it's very hard when it comes to more traditional industries. If you talk about sugar or textile or steel Right. Or gas, oil and gas, right, or or automotive, suddenly there you have a very different power dynamic. And I think that's also why this kind of, attitude has not been seen to permeate in those kind of industries to bring about that kind of structural change because there are a lot of people pushing back at that. Right? Makes sense. We keep ex extending taxes on salaried and not necessarily other sectors. Yeah. And yet we're not improving efficiency in those areas where we can then become globally competitive, and, you know, and and help
create wealth across the board. I think that's where, for a lot of times and a lot of historically, what we've tried to do is we try to look at where where the government is going to lead the change. And and now because of champions like you guys have been actually been pretty bullish in terms of the private sector driving that change. And so if I were to sort of handpick something from, let's say, Taza, from within your own portfolio, I think a a a very potential opportunity in terms of wealth creation would be Agri where sugar will eventually bend down to them if they play it right. So I was I believe I was speaking to Easy Fresh. I think that episode hasn't come out yet. But they gave me some very interesting insight on how, essentially, what they're gonna be is the toll, if if if you guys know of Mhmm. You know, the the ones that, distributes bananas all over the world. Yep. And and if if you can optimize the supply chain in Pakistan and begin to look at markets in Dubai and I was in Dubai and Saudi couple of days ago, that's such a huge opportunity. अगर हम agri की बात करें, अगर हम meat की बात करें. In fact, was a a meat company जिसका IPO हुआ था कुछ और साथ पहले and recently been acquired by a Saudi company. Yeah. क्योंकि, you know, there's just so much opportunity there. Yeah. And that's what Thaza moved into a while ago by the way. Yeah. And so what I'm thinking is कि it's it's not that venture capital is going to exclusively just stick to consumption. I think with the जो economy की स्वीरतेहाल हो रही है they're gonna start thinking regionally. When they have that ecosystem developed, I think a lot of and while I do understand कि farm के ऊपर venture का capital नहीं लगेगा, right? But it's what the venture capital is gonna do is create that ecosystem that's going to attract a lot of other money. Like for me for example मैं बजाज से एक plot की file ख़रीदूंगी वह double हो जाए. तो कल को जब मुझे पता है कि एक farm है जिसके ऊपर हम x y z पौधा लगाकर उसको export कर सकते हैं with all of the insights provided by ताज़ा and the distribution provided by ताज़ा, I can put my money into that farm and and make more money. And so the investment then starts driving towards that and and that's where the money start again SaaS products हो गई. Farm agree उस तरह से हो गया
और इस तरह के I'm trying to identify the areas. But we're already seeing that happen because there are people who are looking for investment opportunities that may not be venture capitalists. They may be people that have run businesses and made money. They may be people that have inherited wealth. But they are looking at opportunities. Of course, startups became, you know, the in thing and a lot of people were like, how do I invest in startups? But I think there is an interest because a lot of people are cash rich right now. There is an interest to invest in business models that are going to do well. And I think it's up to all of us to support that in the ecosystem and help these companies
access funding even if it's not venture funding. Yeah. I think another great example, of what you were talking about in the agri is in the electric vehicle space. In the in the EV space as a whole. Right? When we think about what EZ Bike is doing, it's not just putting bikes out there. Right? It's actually saying we have to build the swapping stations. We have to do this. It's you're building an ecosystem. And I think about this, like, I always think about this even with our journey with Invest to Innovate, but even with all of these startups, oftentimes you're building the road in front of you. Right? And in building the road in front of you, all these other opportunities come up. Right? And so in the swapping, sorry, in swapping, there's, you know, an opportunity there with people that are maybe servicing that space, of people that want to maybe think about, a SaaS play within, within players that are doing electric vehicle or charging. Right? There's so much around that that makes it really exciting as a play. And so if you only looked at easy bike and said, here are these electric vehicle mopeds, it wouldn't be as exciting. Right? But for us, the reason we were super excited, we're like, wow. There's an entire sector here that has not developed yet. And if you look and say, like, the futuristic vision of this, and the guys that are going to build it are, like, the guys, like, you know, Hadi and Ali are always thinking about the next steps and who's gonna do this and what's and who what this partnership is gonna do.
The exciting thing is what's gonna look what it's gonna look like in five years from now. I'm gonna ask you the last question in this space, then we're gonna move towards the end. You guys didn't get into tourism.
Why is that? We've looked at stuff in the tourism space. We love the tourism space, I think, as tourists and travelers. As consumers. As consumers. I think we did look at a few plays in this space. I think the challenge right now with tourism, and I've I've had plays in that have come through the accelerator program. Right? So I've seen a bunch of plays that have done that. We've looked at find my we looked at find my adventure. We love those guys. I think for us, we didn't pull the trigger because we were I think right now in the way that the the economy is moving is that is travel a nice to have right now? And we invest very exclusively the way that we think about us at Aidai Ventures is we invest in have to have problems. Right? And while travel and tourism is a have to have, it's a massive opportunity. Does it become less of a have to have and more of a much more nice to have as people are becoming as consumer spending is shrinking? But that being said, from a from a consumer perspective, you know, we've both have traveled so much outside and inside Boksan. Like, for me, the the my I feel like my love letter to Bhaksan deepens every time I travel here. Right? So I think the tourism sector is massive.
We just haven't pulled the trigger yet. We haven't found something yet. Makes sense. Guys, I'm gonna ask you the last question that I generally ask all of my guests, and, I'm gonna break it down into two areas. I want you to give me an answer based on your industry or rather your your space, and that is the startup space, and how do you see that space evolving. And I want then a a a generalized view of how you see the entire space evolving. You know, you've been to a bunch of different countries. You have a, you know, a Bengali, Pakistani, very unique experience there as well. And then, you know, you've been with with with the nature of your work, you're really juggling around a lot of different perspectives and a lot of different people as well. How do you see Pakistan twenty eight years from now in 2050? Knowing what you know now, seeing what you've seen throughout your life. We'll start with you, Kulsum, and then we'll come to you, Misbah. Mhmm. From the startup space perspective,
this is where I would like to see Fox on aspirationally. I would love to see a space that is when when I talk about a healthy and growing startup ecosystem, that is thriving, so not just surviving. Right? So when I say that, I mean one that is more inclusive. I think right now when we look at and as the only only female led fund in the country, we've invested in women led companies, but I've worked with a lot of women in this space. It is just drastic in terms of how much we're getting in terms of women versus men. And and I would love to see that shift. I would love to see the status quo start to towards being more inclusive, generally not just towards women, but also people that may not have an outside degree, right, and be able to raise funding and and may speak or do better than they speak English. Like, that should not be something that holds you up back in building a company. So from a bigger perspective, I would love to see a healthy, thriving startup ecosystem that is on the global radar in a real way. That isn't something that surprises people that, oh, I didn't know Bucksmith could do that. Right? The amount of times that people are like, wow. Like, your pictures make me think, like, I didn't know Boksan could be that way. I was like, I want people to not be surprised anymore. Mainstream. Exactly. I wanted to be part of the mainstream that this is what's cool, and I wanna see real success stories that come out of here. Right? Not just, in terms of what those exits mean. So what GREEM did for the region, I would love to see that happen in terms of what an exit from a from startups here bring towards creating more companies in their wake.
That would be my my big And beyond startups, how do you see the overall, I mean, the economy, the politics, the society evolving?
Oh, gosh. I mean, I don't I don't know what I see evolving because I think if I saw if I was to predict based off of what we're seeing right now, it's it's quite sad. And use it's hard to stay optimistic. But I think I wouldn't be doing this work if I wasn't an internal optimist. So I would love to see, like, real leadership. I think what I love seeing is that in some of the elections, some of the these smaller, like, you know, Awami workers' parties, like, all these, like, things that are more progressive and and different types of voices come up, I would love to see that diversity at the political level that we don't see now. To me, that would be cool. And it starts out with, like, voting, you know, in these elections, right, of, like, voting for a party that may not, you know, may not win, but knowing that, like, puts a little bit more power behind them or showing up. And I have friends that are part of these worker parties and part of these different parties that are coming up. And I would love to see that diversity of voices. I would love to see, like, real leaders that actually put the structural change in place. It's hard to say be optimistic when you see kind of all these, like, people that are just fighting about things that aren't important. And I would love to have us not be in default all the time. So those are my wishes. It's not what I necessarily see happening, but I would love, love for that to be the case. Makes sense. Ms. Bha, what about you? She already said everything I was going to say. Not fair. You know, I was thinking you would go first and then I could follow back.
So I think, yeah, very similar thoughts on the startup ecosystem. I think I would have I would love to have seen, you know, good founders build businesses create valued, like, to your point about creating wealth as well, and show that it can be done in Pakistan, that it's a bankable country, that it's, the talent can be bet on, that there is opportunity over here. We don't we have to see some, real life examples of that. And if it's startup exits, great. If it's unicorns, great. If it's a thriving, you know, stock, stock, sort of IPOs coming and getting listed in public markets, great. All of those things will add to this, you know, like Kulsum said, not having to convince people that Pakistan is they should be taking a bet on Pakistan. So evidence based success would be great. And I think, you know, we have all of the building blocks to get there. And I think, Inshallah, we we're already on our way over there. I think at a broader at a broader level in terms of the country, for me, I mean, it's a bit of a it's a bit of a negative view. But so far, things have been getting worse every year, just because I feel like we take two steps forward and take one step back. And I want us to have moved past that. I want us to have moved past that that that deep low point and then start building towards it. Now whether that means reconciliation of sorts, whether that means a revolution, whether that means that we come to terms with what we are, you know, sort of driving away in terms of value and, you know, as as the world around us is, like, when we look at climate, for example, right, when a wake up call before we actually have a wake up call Yeah. That's too drastic. And not just from a climate perspective, but also in terms of the economy and politics and poverty and education and health care and, and all of those things where I feel like I I, by that time, I want us to be on that trajectory of improvement, and and have, not have to sort of slide back into something like which we always do every few years. Makes sense, makes sense. Guys, thank you so much for coming in and sharing all that insight.
Thank you. Thank you for having us. We have been again at two hours. Oh no. Sincere apologies on that. But there were two people this time around and so I had to unpack both of those incredible minds. Thank you so much for coming in and sharing all the insight. यहां पर कहीं पर easy पर suggest कैसे साधा पर आ रहा होगा? If you'd like to support the channel, accept anything from one to two as much as you'd like. It's a thought that counts इसी के साथ साथ. We are doing something very exciting for season four which is starting in a couple of months and for that we're starting sort of these branded segments. So if you are from a brand agency or any of those, you can reach out to us. The email address is somewhere around the channel so you can check that out. But, anyways, this was Sayyel Muzamelas and Teddy. You were watching ThoughtBank. Thanks. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.
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