Pakistani-American VC at Top Silicon Valley Firm Leads First Investment in Pakistan
By Riaz Haq
San Jose: Kleiner Perkins, a top Silicon Valley venture capital investment firm, is leading a series A round of $17 million investment into Pakistani start-up Tajir. The startup operates an online marketplace for small store merchants in Pakistan. The announcement came via a tweet by Mamoon Hamid, a Pakistani-American Managing Partner at Kleiner Perkins who led the investment. Last year, Tajir raised a $1.8 million seed round. The company's revenue has increased by 10x since its seed round.
Here's what Hamid tweeted: "Made my first investment in Pakistan, my country of birth, and a place I called home from the ages of 10 to 13. Feels special. This also marks @kleinerperkins first investment in Pakistan. We are thrilled to announce our investment in @tajir_app_pk"
Tajir has been cofounded by two brothers, Babar and Ismail Khan. The company lets stores place orders for inventory through its app and allows customers to compare the prices of goods, purchase inventory and have access to 24/7 ordering with a next day delivery.
Mamoon Hamid, partner at Kleiner Perkins (who is himself originally from Pakistan), who led the round told Forbes magazine that given Pakistan’s prevalent bodega (small retail outlet called kirana store in South Asia) model, what Tajir was doing was very compelling. “Their software and mission to improve that supply chain and availability of products and pricing and digitizing that process made a ton of sense,” Hamid says. “I thought that would be the first foray for a company to make an attempt at doing a lot more to be a consumer company, not just a wholesale company.”
Other investors joining Kleiner Perkins include YC Continuity, AAVCF, Fatima Gobi Ventures, Flexport, Golden Gate Ventures, Liberty City Ventures, VentureSouq, and angel investors including Under 30 honoree and CEO of Figma Dylan Field, and Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen.
Mamoon Hamid has a bachelor's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University, an MS degree from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Here is how Mamoon has described Tajir on Kleiner Perkins website:
"Tajir is Pakistan’s largest tech-enabled retail network — a one stop shop for sellers to compare the prices of goods, purchase inventory, and enjoy the convenience of 24/7 ordering with next-day delivery. They’re already servicing thousands of neighborhood stores in Lahore and have been growing in large part from word of mouth from the goodwill they’ve built with the seller community".
(Riaz Haq is a Silicon Valley-based Pakistani-American analyst and writer. He blogs at www.riazhaq.com)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Back to Pakistanlink Homepage
