Aug 18, 2021: Airlift Technologies has achieved the largest single private funding round in Pakistan’s history ahead of plans to enter the private overseas market, as the country begins to enter the regional startup financing boom.
The Lahore-based online shopping delivery firm raised $85 million in Series B financing, co-led by Harry Stebbings from 20VC and led by Josh Buckley, with participation of former Y-Combinator president of Buckley Ventures Limited, Sam Altman.
According to venture capitalist fund Invest2Innovate’s data tracker, this will be the biggest round for Pakistani startups so far.
According to Usman Gul, co-founder of AirLift, “Pakistan’s e-commerce market is in the very early stages, but change is happening very fast and we are seeing a change in attitude, we have a lot of people who didn’t shop online before.”
Investment in Pakistan, with a population of over 200 million, the world’s fifth most populous, with a new tech industry, reflects the wave of cross-border investment in India. Pakistani startups, most of which focus on e-commerce, collected a record $ 101 million in the first half of this year, compared to $66 million in 2020, according to Invest2Newet data.
For Airlift, the funding comes as the company halted its main business after the onset of the pandemic, with a 30-minute delivery in e-commerce around September, a turn around from their original business of selling air-conditioned bus rides.
This Pakistan start up is now entering a space that is competitive around the world, with grocers and e-commerce startups such as Dunzo, Gorillas, Getir, and Goff fighting for fast delivery to traffic-rich cities from Delhi to New York and London.
Airlift’s fundraising is equivalent to the total amount raised by Pakistan’s startups in the first half of the year. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, it also eclipses the largest public offering of the country’s private sector.
It now plans to expand its operations to 15 of Pakistan’s cities by the end of the year, up from the current eight. It is also on the job with plans to double its core workforce to 400 by the end of next year. The company is striving to enter the developing market abroad in about three months. “Very soon we noticed that the distribution of consumer goods was severely disrupted,” Gul said. “I ordered groceries and had to wait six hours for this delivery. So we wanted to change it.”
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