All Answers: Re: [pakgrid] Venture Capital in Pakistan

Salam Usama,
I am going to be in Pakistan in December, Any chance that you are around Lahore in this time? I would like to understand what you are doing now a days and how see how i can get help to build a VC in Pakistan.

Salam,

Najam us Saquib (http://techtalk-ns.blogspot.com/)
+49 175 4300097

From: Usama Shahid <usama.shahid.89@gmail.com>
To: pakgrid@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2012 4:06 PM
Subject: Re: [pakgrid] Venture Capital in Pakistan

Dear All,

Let me first briefly introduce myself. I founded GradOven, a Youth Empowerment Organization a couple of months back in Islamabad. The idea is to help and provide a platform to the Pakistani youth to kick-start their careers. Our focus is to help the budding entrepreneurs in whatever way we can to set up their businesses properly so that they can avoid the mistakes founders make. The details of what we do can be found on our website http://www.gradoven.com.

Since GradOven's inception, I have been getting proposals from different teams who want us to help them by providing them office space, seed capital, guidance etc. Many of the proposals I got were in the position to grab VC funding had they been based in the US, UK or Europe. But because no VC culture exists in Pakistan, these people are not finding the right opportunities.

We, ourselves are looking for investors to start an innovative venture to support the higher education in Pakistan. We even approached HEC & ICT R&D Fund in this regard, but they refused to invest because we are "too young" for this. (I guess they don't know what Facebook is and how Mark Zuckerberg started it.)

The point I'm trying to make is that there is a LOT of potential in Pakistan. Young people like me need support from people like you and I can assure you that we can change Pakistan as you know it.

Just recently, I was approached by some investors in KSA and UK who are Pakistanis. They are offering reasonable investments against reasonable equity stake as Seed Fund to innovative startups. They say they are even willing to bring in the foreign VCs to invest in Pakistan once the pilot projects of these startups are successful. There are countless other Pakistanis living abroad who can do the same. Unfortunately, we have many entrepreneurship supporters in Pakistan who motivate the youngsters to start their own companies/ventures but none of them takes the risk of even investing a few thousand rupees in the bright kids who dare to start their own ventures. I feel really sad to see that overseas Pakistanis are more optimistic and ever-ready to help their countrymen than Pakistan's own entrepreneurs.

We are in the planning phase to launch an Angel Investment division under GradOven to which the investors I mentioned above will invest their money in. We are also getting in touch with many of the leading entrepreneurs who can serve as mentors and advisers to the young entrepreneurs if not invest in them. The good thing is that in Pakistan, because of cheap labor and operational costs, majority investments required are not more than a few tens of thousands of dollars especially for the Internet/Mobile related startups. But their turnovers can be great if they can only launch them in the right way.

We welcome all of you to join the cause. If needed, we are open to start a separate investment firm where we can use GradOven's platform to source the young entrepreneurs for you to fund. Interestingly, not all young entrepreneurs are in the seed funding phase. A lot of them are looking for Round A funding. If you decide to help us build a better Pakistan, please let me know. I can be reached on usama@gradoven.com.

Thanks.

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 12:58 AM, mansoor malik <manmalik@hotmail.com> wrote:

Our market is not ripe for Venture Capital as of now and we have to evolve ANGEL FUNDING schemes for a few years before maturing it for attracting Venture Capital.

Mansoor Malik

To: pakgrid@yahoogroups.com
From: afaque@breezecom.biz

Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 18:23:31 +0500

Subject: RE: [pakgrid] Venture Capital in Pakistan

To the best of my knowledge/memory, I gathered the following after various discussions with TMT Ventures over a couple of years:

0.       They raised a total of USD 5 million fund and had made 10 investments in total.

1.       AKNM Tech was a successful venture/investment of TMT Ventures. It was/is one of the largest VAS based service providers in Pakistan.

2.       There was another portfolio company which they sold to ME investors. Forget the name. Modest success, however, nothing compared to AKNM Tech.

3.       8 other investments were either shut down or sold to various investors for throw-away prices.

Reasons for not doing good (their own findings)

1.       TMT was being run by a bunch of financial analysts; hence, not the right skills for a Tech VC business in a country like Pakistan.

2.       They overstretched themselves by investing in 10 companies. In Pakistan, since u don't have the eco-system, the VC has to be the God Father. I.e. the VC provides the Seed, Round A, Round B, etc.

3.       So once u make the investment, you have to provide the start-up serious advice/mentorship/market strategy, and fund it all the way thru… They lacked in both the aspects…

In short, some of their bets were pretty decent in the space of Animation, Gaming, mobile commerce, online stock trading, etc. They just couldn't execute (properly nurturing them) on them properly.

Sincerely,
Afaque Ahmed
Breezecom

Mobile: +92-321-2490320

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

We have migrated our DOMAIN from BREEZECOM.AE to BREEZECOM.BIZ

My New Email Account : afaque@breezecom.biz

Our New Website URL   :   http://www.breezecom.biz

From: pakgrid@yahoogroups.com [mailto:pakgrid@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Zahir Syed
Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2012 12:12 PM
To: pakgrid@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [pakgrid] Venture Capital in Pakistan

As far as I know there are no VC in Pakistan.

There are 4-5 firms who have taken the VC license and only one TMT Ventures started its operations. Unfortunately, TMT ventures did not succeed.

Regards

Dr. Zahir Ali Syed
Co-Chair MIT Enterprise Forum of Pakistan

On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 7:40 PM, nsaquib <nsaquib@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi,
Do we have any VCs in Pakistan? If yes i would like to know their information. Would be nice if some one can share some public information or private (PM).

I am interested to participate in a VC or if some one is interested to start a new VC in Pakistan, please contact me.

Thanks,
Najam
http://techtalk-ns.blogspot.com/