In January 2024, we released a teaser of our report, with support from Indus Valley Capital, exploring the startup funding scene in the country. Instead of just reviewing the venture activity, we decided to compile a comprehensive overview of the Tech and VC Landscape. Or the Pakistan Deck, if you will. Here, we are going to share the most important takeaways from the 87-pager document.
For starters, Pakistani startups raised $75.8M in 2023 across 39 deals, representing YoY declines of 77% and 42%, respectively. As a result, the average size of the deal shrunk 64% to $2.23M while the median slipped 43% to $1.2M. Sector-wise, most of the money went towards e-commerce even as fintech led in terms of volumes.
If you follow the Pakistani ecosystem regularly, chances are you already know these numbers more or less. We also broke down the supply side of capital where SOSV emerged as the most active investor in 2023 by deals announced while Indus Valley Capital was in second place. You can check more details of the investor-wise activity over a longer term as well as their AUMs in the report.
Overall, there was a noticeable pullback from suppliers of capital as unique investors fell to just 97 in 2023. This is significantly down from 209 the year before. Understandably, VCs dominated, accounting for 37.5% of the total in Q4’23 while over three-fourths of all investors were foreigners. We also looked at how Pakistan’s funding landscape fared against peer countries as well as a detailed insight into global VC performance from exits to funds closed.
However, our favorite is the section “Technology: A Deeper Look”. It breaks down alternative data to understand the growth of Digital Pakistan. Perhaps the most telling metric here is how the information and communication sector outpaced the overall GDP for the better part of the last 20 quarters. Other indicators, such as public market performance, lead to a similar conclusion.
We can go on but don’t wanna bore y’all with words. So just download the report and sift through the slides to better understand Digital Pakistan.
