Maqsad, a Pakistani edtech, announced raising $2.8M seed round led by Speedinvest and returning investor Indus Valley Capital. The deal also had participation from Stellar Capital, Alter Global, Johann Jenson (SVP Product at GoStudent) and other strategic angels.
With the latest round, the startup’s total investment comes to $4.9M. Founded in 2021 by Rooshan Aziz and Taha Ahmed, it’s the most funded Pakistan-based edtech. “Maqsad aims to make education accessible for 100 million Pakistani students via an end-to-end learning mobile platform that provides teaching, testing, and query resolution for grades 9 to 12.”
“We invested in Maqsad because we see potential for it to touch the lives of millions of students and disrupt the education ecosystem. We are incredibly impressed by Rooshan and Taha as team builders and believe Maqsad is on track to be one of the most successful businesses in Pakistan,” said Philip Specht, partner at SpeedInvest, one of Europe’s largest seed funds and already boasts an edtech unicorn in its portfolio.
A statement said: “Education presents a substantial opportunity in Pakistan, with a forecasted annual spend of $37 billion by 2032. A quarter of this goes towards after-school academic support that is often expensive and difficult to access.”
Since its launch, Maqsad has been one of the most downloaded education apps on Google Play in Pakistan, with over a million installs. Co-fpunder Taha said “Our focus on student problems is at the core of our mission, and we’ve collected feedback from over 20,000 students and teachers across Pakistan to ensure learning outcomes are being achieved.”
Indus Valley Capital’s founder Aatif Awan said: “We first invested in Maqsad 18 months ago, before they had a product or a team. We were compelled by the vision Rooshan and Taha had for education in Pakistan. Investing again in Maqsad is a no-brainer as we have seen them bring together one of the best startup teams in Pakistan to build a category-leading product that has helped over a million students.”
“Pakistan also has one of the highest student-teacher ratios in the world, with only 1 teacher for every 44 students. Maqsad’s query-solving technology (“DoubtSolve”) and interactive testing resolve a key problem for students who lack ready access to quality instructors. “We recently enhanced our assessment feature, which allows students to confidently self-evaluate, and witnessed consistent 150%+ month-on-month growth in questions attempted,” Rooshan said.
They plan to use the money to expand the subject offering and supercharge the tech behind the platform. “We’re laser focused on delivering a personalized learning experience at scale and have a number of exciting AI-based initiatives in the pipeline,” said the founders. “While currently a purely B2C platform, Maqsad’s long-term vision is to embed itself across the education ecosystem. The company has already received interest from private and public sector institutions for potential partnerships.”
