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Pakistan-based B2B E-commerce marketplace Dastgyr has successfully closed its latest funding round capped at $3.5M. The Seed Round was led by SOSV and included the participation of ADB Ventures, Seedstars, Edgebrook Partners, Bahrain-based Zayani Venture Capital, Dubai-based Tricap investments, alongside strategic angel investors.
Founded in 2020 by a team of former Careem and Airlift employees, Dastgyr provides a platform for mom and pop retailers in Pakistan to procure inventory items on-demand. Closing a gap in the supply chain and elevating the procurement process, Dastgyr has been offering 30,000 retailers in Lahore and Karachi, comprehensive last-mile delivery and financial solutions.
Realizing the potential of digitizing SME retailer supply & demand chains, more and more Pakistani-based startups are investing their technologies to provide on-demand solutions, the latest of which is Digikhatta recently closing its $2M seed round. Yet Dastgyr’s multifaceted approach to retail servicing arises from an apparent need as Muhammad Owais, Dastgyr co-founder highlights “Zohaib [my co-founder] and I have previously done extensive work in moving people. We’ve studied and even remedied many of the problems in transit logistics, but the movement of goods is a far larger problem for the economy as a whole. Once the pandemic rolled around, this problem was exacerbated and no one was hit harder than small businesses. We launched Dastgyr to help those small businesses like Abdul in Lahore and Saeed in Karachi, two of our very first customers.”
Over the past 12 months, Dastgyr has worked closely with London-based advisors EquiTie to enable this funding round and optimize the path to scalability. “At EquiTie we exclusively work with impact-driven founders such as Owais and Zohaib, and we’ve witnessed how their customer-centric approach has impacted the lives of 30,000 retailers and millions of consumers. We are excited to see how Dastgyr’s commitment will continue to transform the B2B logistics landscape and act as a catalyst for Pakistan’s economic growth,” said Ahmed El Hamawy, Managing Partner at EquiTie.
The E-commerce startup has been especially interested in providing its users with fintech solutions to increase their demand and facilitate the diversification of its services. Dastgyr has been reaping promising results from their newly adopted Buy Now, Pay Later model as expressed by the founders and is planning on launching microloans solutions with strategic credit partners. SME retailers are the backbone of Pakistan’s economy, representing a combined market of roughly $125 billion dollars, about 30-40% of the country’s GDP. Dastgyr aims to empower and uplift this segment with a near-perfect supply chain and financial inclusion to increase that contribution even further.
This holistic and specialized approach matched with the growing value of the E-commerce market in Pakistan gives Dastgyr its advantageous edge as William Bao Bean, General Manager at SOSV concluded “Pakistan is seeing the same patterns as India five years ago and China 10 years ago: with 75% of the population owning a smartphone, the first-movers in mobile-first services will be the winners. We are particularly impressed with Dastgyr’s culture of growth: the company’s fintech offering is truly a game-changer for the unbanked and underbanked while ensuring the success of their businesses … We are proud to have the company as part of our portfolio.”
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