Bykea Represents Pakistan at Asia’s Largest Summit For PE + VC - Android

Asia’s largest summit for Private Equity (PE) and Venture Capital (VC) was held earlier this week in Singapore, organized by… Read More

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Asia’s largest summit for Private Equity (PE) and Venture Capital (VC) was held earlier this week in Singapore, organized by the publisher Deal Street Asia. For the very first time, a startup was invited to represent Pakistan, to verify it’s potential and whether this was the right time for PE and VC investors to look to invest in frontier geographies like Pakistan.

Representing Pakistan was Bykea, Pakistan’s homegrown ride-hailing app. It’s Founder Muneeb Maayr told the audience that the next opportunity after Indonesia is in Pakistan, the world’s 5th most populous country with a GDP of $300 billion, with its 3 largest cities exceeding the population of Malaysia.

Muneeb cited that late-stage investors flocking to southeast Asian countries may find that they are too late to the game, and may not get the returns they expect on their investments at this stage. Countries that were next in line on the population chart were Pakistan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh. And investors seriously needed to look here to enter early enough before technology assets in these countries became costly.

There was no shortage of talent, with ample software development already coming out of Pakistan, and with a plethora of graduates from top universities around the world, and work experiences from leading global corporations, available for big bets on building mature startups out of Pakistan.

He cited that a lack of capital had forced companies like Bykea to operate efficiently, and it would be a surprise for investors to know that Bykea operated at contribution margin break-even in Karachi, a true anomaly in the ride-hailing businesses from around the world, given their big losses.

An example cited was making the entire driver-partner app in Urdu and localizing the “going online” button in the driver app to “Bismillah”. This was to ensure that people on the platform knew that they were about to start something good, serving their fellow Pakistanis. Our core value is empathy, and when you build products with empathy for the user, you build a product that will last.

Interestingly, Bykea was also cited, along with Bangladesh’s ride-sharing app Pathao, as a great service and something to look out for in the frontier geographies, by Andre Soelistyo, President at GoJek. The homegrown super app of Indonesia with a $9 billion valuation that has proven that localization can win against global giants like Uber.

To bring credence to this argument, Muneeb cited Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, where even the most resourceful companies could not compete with a local service like Bykea, a sort of David vs Goliath strategy.

Though this was a first showcasing of a Pakistan based startup at such a large global forum of private equity and venture capital investors in Asia. The encouraging news is that many new startups are emerging from Pakistan that can sell the value proposition of the next big opportunity. As the returns for investors might start growing in Pakistan very soon, as local startups solve real on-the-ground problems.

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