Saturday, January 24, 2009

Venture Investing in China, India and Pakistan


China continued to outperform India as a magnet for US venture capital investments in 2008. This was particularly interesting in a year that saw the venture investors feel the pinch from declining values of their portfolios. It was also a year when a company based in Pakistan became the first to receive US venture funding.

In India, the VC investment in the year 2008 amounted to $740 million across 125 deals, while it was $876 million from 144 deals during 2007. A major portion of the decline came in the last quarter of 2008 when world economy started feeling the bite of the credit crunch that precipitated the economic crisis on Wall Street.

Arun Natarajan, CEO, Venture Intelligence told SiliconIndia, "Everything got affected in the October-December quarter. VCs are much better off because the money is already available as many closed funding before the middle of 2008."

According to Srini Vudayagiri, Managing Director, Lightspeed Ventures, the venture capital space in India is dominated by non-India funds that have strong linkages to U.S., Europe and even raise funds there. That could explain the tight liquidity situation. Also, in the current environment, VCs will thrust on value addition in existing portfolio companies rather than fresh investments.

The continuing political turmoil and uncertainty made it difficult to attract serious VC investments in Pakistan. Pakistan's problem was captured well by the CIO magazine recently in the following words: "Pakistan has a serious brand problem. In the West, the mere mention of Pakistan incites images of violence, extremism, explosions, suppressed women and backwards thinking. Time Magazine called Pakistan the most dangerous place on Earth. It takes extraordinary effort and enlightened customers to realize that the actual reality on the ground is quite different." The reality is not all doom and gloom in Pakistan. For the first time in the nation's history, former President Musharraf applied tremendous focus and major funding increases for higher education in Pakistan. According to Sciencewatch, which tracks trends and performance in basic research, citations of Pakistani publications are rising sharply in multiple fields, including computer science, engineering, mathematics, material science and plant and animal sciences. Over two dozen Pakistani scientists are actively working on the Large Hadron Collider; the grandest experiment in the history of Physics. Pakistan now ranks among the top outsourcing destinations, based on its growing talent pool of college graduates. As evident from the overall results in the last decade, there has been a dramatic increase in the numbers of universities and highly-educated faculty and university graduates in Pakistan.

In spite of Pakistan's image problem, Naseeb Networks, a Pakistani online recruitment, social networking, and classifieds company, received an undisclosed amount of venture investment from two Silicon Valley VC firms, ePlanet Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 2008. Earlier in December, 2006, PixSense received $5.4 million in equity funding, led by ATA Ventures and Innovacom. While there is a history of US venture investments in Silicon Valley technology companies founded by Pakistani founders, none of these VCs have previously funded companies such as Naseeb and PixSense which have significant R&D centers and operations in Pakistan. Last year, European VCs have shown interest in funding Pakistani startups. Vopium, a Pakistani company offering a platform for almost free calls and SMS to any part of the world, reportedly received 4.2m euros in funding from European VCs.

Even as China's economy was battered by the global slowdown, venture capital investments in the Asian country last year hit their highest levels ever at more than $4 billion, 30 percent higher than 2007, according to a new report.

If not for the global economic crisis, that growth could have been 20 percent higher, said Gavin Ni, founder and chief executive of Beijing-based research company Zero2IPO Group, who visited Silicon Valley this week.

In the United States last year, nearly $29 billion in VC funds were funneled into 2,550 deals, an 8 percent drop from 2007, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.

In China, a record $7.3 billion was raised for VC funds in 2008, 33 percent higher than the year before. It seems that China's appeal to investors is not likely to fade anytime soon, in spite of the tough investment environment. The nation of 1.3 billion people has some 624 million cell phone users — the most in the world — and 300 million Internet users, also the world's largest.

"China will definitely be one of the top two or three centers of venture capital in the world," Gavin Ni told the San Jose Mercury News this week. "Even in this down economy, the China market is dynamic."

The information technology sector received the biggest share of the investments, or 36 percent, in 2008. Traditional companies, such as retail, picked up 22 percent of VC funds, while services companies garnered 18 percent. Clean tech received 9 percent, and biotech and health care companies picked up 7 percent.

At the OPEN Forum 2008 in Silicon Valley, Mike Moritz, Senior Partner at Sequoia Capital, said that Sequoia is currently not looking to go into another geography but it may consider other geographies such as Pakistan if their portfolio companies chose to open offices there. What took Sequoia to China, India and Israel were the founders of Silicon Valley companies who made a decision to locate R&D facilities in these geographies.

Speaking in a panel discussion at OPEN Forum 2008 recently organized by the Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Faraz Hoodbhoy, the CTO of PixSense, argued that Pakistani expatriates in Silicon Valley are the harshest critics of Pakistan. They are not immediately likely to ask US VCs to invest in Pakistan. However, Hoodbhoy's company PixSense has taken this path. PixSense currently has a sizable presence in Pakistan and prides itself in what Pakistani engineers have done for it to make it successful on very low budget.

Given the uncertainty of economic recovery in the United States and continuing instability in Pakistan, it will probably be a while before US-based VCs follow in the footsteps of Draper Fisher, ePlanet, ATA Ventures and Innovacom into funding a significant number of Pakistan-based startups.

Related Links:

VC Investments in India

VC Investments in China

VC Investments in Pakistan

9 comments:

Riaz Haq said...

The Russian Kommersant has it right when it says: "India has had little success with military equipment production, and has had problems producing Russian Su-30MKI fighter jets and T-90S tanks, English Hawk training jets and French Scorpene submarines."

And here's how blogger Vijainder Thakur sees India's loose meaning of "indigenous" Smerch and other imports:

The Russians will come here set up the plant for us and supply the critical manufacturing machinery. Indian labor and technical management will run the plant which will simply assemble the system. Critical components and the solid propellant rocket motor fuel will still come from Perm Powder Mill. However, bureaucrats in New Delhi and the nation as a whole will be happy. The Smerch system will be proudly paraded on Rajpath every republic day as an indigenous weapon system.

A decade or so down the line, Smerch will get outdated and India will negotiate a new deal with Russia for the license production of a new multiple rocket system for the Indian Army.

China will by then have developed its own follow up system besides having used the solid propellant motors to develop other weapon systems and assist its space research program.

Riaz Haq said...

Here are a few excerpts from a piece by Prof William Easterly published in Foreign Policy Magazine:

"We found that there was a remarkably strong association between countries with the most advanced technology in 1500 and countries with the highest per capita income today. Europe already had steel, printed books, and oceangoing ships then, while large parts of Africa did not yet have writing or the wheel. Britain had all 24 of our sample technologies in 1500. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Papua New Guinea, and Tonga had none of them. But technology also travels. North America, Australia, and New Zealand had among the world's most backward technology in 1500; today, they are among the wealthiest regions on Earth, reflecting the principle that it's the people who matter, not the places. As migration has transformed parts of the world that were nearly empty in the Middle Ages, technology has migrated with them. "

"OF COURSE, IN SOCIAL SCIENCE, no generalization is universal. The most important counterexample is China, which in 1500 had plow cultivation, printing, paper, books, firearms, the compass, iron, and steel, and yet failed to emulate Europe's Industrial Revolution in the centuries that followed. Scholars have argued that autocratic Chinese emperors killed off technological progress for domestic political reasons. For example, one Ming emperor banned long-distance oceanic exploration for fear of foreign influence threatening his power, after Chinese ships had already reached East Africa in 1422."

"This gives us a hint as to how political formation affects development: Fragmented Europe did not have any one autocrat who could kill off technological innovation, and the constant threats of living in a hostile neighborhood spurred the advancement of military technology. And because borders were relatively open around 1500, the reality that citizens could leave for more advanced places -- the forerunner of today's "brain drain" -- kept alive the spirit of innovation. "

"Most importantly, what the history of technology tells us is that the blank-slate theory is a myth. Top-down development programs simply don't work. In fact, the principal beneficiaries of Western largesse today -- African autocrats and dysfunctional regimes -- are themselves the main obstacles to development. If there's anything that "must be done" to spur future development, it's to create the conditions necessary to empower the ordinary individuals who will create new and unforeseen technologies out of old ones. There's a Thomas Edison born every minute. We just have to help them turn the lights on."

Riaz Haq said...

Can China rekindle its innovation spirit? Here's a piece on it published by OECD Observer:

The great 20th century sinologist, Joseph Needham, once drew up a list of 24 technical innovations brought from China to the West. They ranged from gunpowder and the wheelbarrow to printing, cast iron, the magnetic compass and the chain suspension bridge. By 1600 the torch of innovation had passed to the West.

Could it now be returning? In 2003 China became the third nation to put a man into space, and has busily launched satellites since. On the ground, communications companies such as Huawei and ZTE now compete head-on with the likes of Ericsson and Nokia.

Against this background, it is no wonder that China is one of the world’s largest investors in research and development. Spending on R&D has climbed by 19% per year since 1995 to reach US$30 billion in 2005, putting China sixth in world ranking. That is at current exchange rates; if these were adjusted for purchasing power parity between different countries, then China would rank third!

However, according to a new report examining Chinese innovation, some of this progress flatters to deceive: R&D spending is still low as a share of GDP per capita and far lower than the OECD average. Consider also the number of researchers in China, which while second in the world only to the US, is still very low for China compared to OECD countries, given the size of the country’s labour force. Chinese researchers may have contributed 6.5% of research articles to scientific publications in 2004, up from just 2% a decade earlier, and are second after the US in nanotechnology research publishing, for instance, but their innovation system still shoots below potential.

Safeguarding intellectual property rights is the soft belly here. China is well in line with international regulations as a signatory of TRIPS (the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), but despite clearer and tighter regulation, infringement still dogs the system. The difficulty is enforcement. This discourages domestic investors as much as investors from abroad. Worse, IPR infringement poses health and safety risks for consumers, and damages the reputation of Chinese firms. The government, as well as the Chinese Patent Office, is toughening up on IPR, though fixing the system will take time and effort.

For many historians and scientists, what makes Chinese civilisation so brilliant is that it had “another way” of doing science. According to Joseph Needham, Chinese innovators simply did not translate their knowledge into mathematics. This left them remote from ensuing scientific dialogue. Whether or not this is true, the global economy has now changed and so has China. In the end, the Chinese are set to reinforce the country’s innovative capabilities both by trying out their own approach and looking to advanced OECD countries for inspiration. If the underlying systemic shortfalls are also corrected, then China may soon be in a position not only to push to the heart of scientific discussion, but to lead the world to new frontiers of knowledge as well.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an excerpt of a piece from Venturebeat.com on venture capital in Pakistan:

Naseeb.com was definitely the example that led DFJ and EPlanet to back Rahman’s next venture, the Lahore-based online job portal, rozee.pk, in 2007. That was a time “when everything was turning upside down in Pakistan,” Rahman said. The constitution had been suspended, bomb blasts were a daily occurrence and Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. That did not scare the investors who Rahman had bombarded with data on the robustness of Pakistan’s market and the growth projections of his enterprise.
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Venture capital has always been anchored in taking a risk on an individual and an idea, where the probability for success, as Rahman noted, is “super, super low.” And risk is exactly what Pakistan needs to encourage in order to jumpstart investments and the flow of capital.

Capital in Pakistan is frozen in a different era. Banks balk at extending credit to innovative startups, even where contracts guarantee return.

That is what happened to Shakir Husain, CEO and founder of the technology outsourcer Creative Chaos, when he went in to request a $100,000 loan to expand his business

“Put together collateral for $100,000 and we’ll give you this loan,” he was told. When the entrepreneur replied that he had a $1 million contract from a client based in the United States, he was still refused. “Had I been a textile company where I could produce a letter from my client there would have been no problem. Being a software company, they didn’t know how to collateralize that risk.” He eventually self financed.

He also set out, much like Reid Hoffman, to ensure that other aspiring entrepreneurs have access to risk rather than roadblocks. He, along with Rahman and other established Pakistani entrepreneurs, has become an angel investor. This has resulted in some progress.
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The Acumen Fund, a U.S.-based non-profit which uses philanthropic dollars to make venture investments, is one resource for larger amounts of financing. Self-described as a “social venture fund” that promotes “patient capital,” Acumen has invested millions in several Pakistani “social” enterprises, which have proven to effectively serve the social needs of the poorest.

The Kashf Foundation, Pakistan’s second largest private microlender, is Acumen’s best example. Touching nearly 1 million Pakistani women, Kashf has dispensed $100 million in loans and has closed over $36 million in commercial deals with local and international banks.

Pakistan’s “non-social” entrepreneurs require similar and bold backing. They require it, not from the philanthropic or non-profit world, but the private sector. Capital markets cannot be built by anyone else. Nor can Pakistanis build them alone. This is where U.S. venture capitalists can help.

Certainly, firms on Sand Hill Road or Route 128 aren’t in a position to source deals for individual Pakistani entrepreneurs. The levels of financing, which would average around $200,000 to $400,000, would not be worth the exorbitant transaction costs. Pakistan’s weak legal system would require tough term sheets that would be a disadvantage to most Pakistani entrepreneurs. Conducting due diligence, the real value to entrepreneurs, would be a challenge.

What they can do is challenge Pakistani banks and investors to create a Pakistan venture fund that they would then match. There are already several investment firms in Pakistan, such as the Abraaj Capital Group-backed BMA Capital, that could administer the fund. Last year’s announcement by The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a U.S. government agency, approving $455 million in financing to support the establishment of five private equity funds to invest in Middle Eastern companies provides a precedent and model....


http://venturebeat.com/2010/11/16/pakistan-venture-capital/

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Times of India story on declining private equity in India:

MUMBAI: "We stay away from places that have impossible governments and impossible tax regimes, which means Sayonara to India," TPG Capital founder-partner David Bonderman said recently, tearing into the country's investment attractiveness. Bonderman, among the most influential private equity (PE) investors, said publicly what his peers quipped behind the scenes: India is possibly the least attractive of the emerging markets for PE, right now.

India's recent regulatory moves on retrospective taxes spooked PE funds, which are long-term risk investors. But it's only a part of the story going awry. Big investors into PE firms like global pension funds, university endowments and family offices - piqued with lower growth, poor corporate governance and bad returns - are cutting back capital allocations for investments in India. This leaves more than 500 PE firms in the country struggling for survival, with the sector bracing for a sudden contraction in the number of funds within 12 to 18 months.

The present count of PE firms is a staggering jump considering India had less than 20 just over a decade ago. PE firms invested $3.98 billion in the first six months of 2012 compared to $5.2 billion in the year-ago period, said a JM Financial note on the industry. The 23% decline by value probably tracked the rupee's drop against the US dollar. But the number of deals remained flat at 185, suggesting the shrinking size of investments.
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ndian PE play peaked with $19 billion investments in 2007 but fell sharply in subsequent years. Private equity investments totalled a little over $10 billion in 2011. The industry, which offers million-dollar jobs to heavy hitters, has over 1,500 people in its fold riding on the lucrative 2:20 (fund managers charge 2% management fees on committed capital and incentive fee of 20% on capital returned) remuneration formula. But, with fresh capital raise getting harder, some are already settling for lower management fees. "There is a growing discussion that the unfolding scenario could see India private equity managers being forced to accept something less favourable than the 2:20 structure," Chattopadhyay added.

"We see fewer funds competing with us for deals in recent days. PEs without a critical mass and no strong engagement with India's long-term story will get out. One can call it shrinking or maturing of the private equity in India," said a managing director at one of the world's largest private equity firms. "And there are people in my firm who think like Bonderman, that we shouldn't be here," he added, while striking a contrarian mood.


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Global-private-equity-biggies-put-India-story-on-hold/articleshow/15155080.cms

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Dawn report on Startup Grind launch in Karachi:

Originally founded in California, Startup Grind is an international community with a global presence in more than 40 cities and 20 countries.

Its mission is dedicated to celebrate the success stories of founders and innovators of business startups and encourage entrepreneurship.

The monthly interviews and startup mixers provide a great opportunity to entrepreneurs-in-making to network with ambitious people and benefit from the ‘pearls of wisdom’.

The official launch in Pakistan took place on Friday, the 3rd of May at T2F (The Second Floor).

It was hosted by Mr. Fawaad Saleem, the Chapter Director for Startup Grind and chaired Mr. Farzal Ali Dojki as the guest of honour. Mr. Farzal is the CEO of Next Generation Innovations, a consulting company that specializes in customized IT solutions and often partners with startup businesses to support their launch and operations.

The event started off with tea and networking as professionals across different spectrums of the industry engaged in meaningful networking. Before the interview began, Mr. Farzal gathered the prime issues that plagued the audience’s minds regarding startups.

The concerns focused on lack of funding opportunities, successful team-building, and making the choice between entrepreneurship and employment in the early stages of one’s career.

He concluded his talk with three lessons.

Firstly, as a startup you need to work hard and with dedication.

Secondly, it is important to hire carefully and ‘fall in love’ with the people you are hiring.

Thirdly, in order to launch a startup, it is important to work in a startup first. The learning curve of working in a successful small team is extremely high. One gets the opportunity to engage directly with the customers, take decisions, and explore areas of growth.


http://dawn.com/2013/05/06/startup-grind-launches-in-pakistan/

Riaz Haq said...

#US-based 1839 Ventures partners with #PTIB to launch $20m #Pakistan-focused #VC fund. #Punjab #Lahore #Technology

https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/1839-ventures-partners-with-ptib-to-launch-20m-fund-84321/

Punjab Information and Technology Board (PITB) of Pakistan has partnered with US-based investment firm 1839 Ventures to launch a $20 million venture capital fund for the technology startups in Pakistan. “1839 Ventures announces its international expansion and the start of a $20-million venture capital fund that will be dedicated to investing in technology-oriented startups operated by exceptional entrepreneurs who are based across Pakistan,” the company said, in a social media post. Austin-based 1839 Ventures specialises in Series A, early stage and growth capital investments in technology oriented companies working in commerce, communication and business intelligence. It invests primarily in Texas-based companies. The announcement was made last week by the venture capital firm at the Atx+Pak Launch Entrepreneurship Program launch ceremony in Austin city. Pakistan has been trying to boost its local entrepreneurship base. Earlier in May, Pakistan’s federal government announced that it will set up a $20 million venture capital fund for local startups. The startup programme was to be open to all startups – not just in IT – since Pakistan needs innovative startups in all sectors such as agri, textiles, logistics, and manufacturing, Pakistan’s Planning Commission Member Athar Osama had said in a blog post at the time. In June, Lakson Investment was granted Pakistan’s first venture capital licence in the South Asian nation. Its application for a private equity and venture capital fund had been approved by Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan last year. Lakson had set up Lakson Investment Private Equity (LI PE) in the end of 2014 and is still in its pre-launch phase. It had proposed to start making investments by late 2017.

Read more at: https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/1839-ventures-partners-with-ptib-to-launch-20m-fund-84321/

Riaz Haq said...

#SoftBank's next big crisis may be brewing in #India. No investor has written bigger checks than SoftBank's Son in giving young #startups the financial firepower to out-compete their rivals while pumping up their valuations. #WeWork collapse has ended it. https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Cover-Story/Fallout-SoftBank-s-next-big-crisis-may-be-brewing-in-India

Overfunding and bloated valuations have destabilized the country's startups

In 2014, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, the founders of Delhi-based e-commerce company Snapdeal, boarded a plane to Tokyo. Their company had just struggled through a transition from a Groupon-like discount voucher seller to a full online retail marketplace, and had nearly failed -- but Bahl and Bansal had managed to turn it around. They brought in $850 million from major investors, including sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings, Ratan Tata, the head of Tata Group, and U.S. chipmaker Intel. EBay even approached Snapdeal with a proposal to acquire the business.

Instead, Bahl and Bansal flew to Japan to meet the global tech sector's kingmaker -- Masayoshi Son, the founder and CEO of SoftBank Group. Even though Snapdeal had pulled in hundreds of millions, investment flows into India were still just a trickle. Chinese giants Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings were yet to enter the market at scale, and there were few local funds investing in technology. SoftBank was just starting to seek out deals in India, in an early display of its now-familiar playbook: offering to inject vast sums of money, and driving valuations higher than any other investor could offer young entrepreneurs.

Warned that Son had a short attention span, Snapdeal's founders brought only 10 slides to accompany their presentation. They had got through just three when Son cut off their pitch. "I have heard enough," he told them. "I will give you $1 billion for 49% of your company."

The amount was far more than the pair sought, or could even use. Ultimately, the two sides agreed on an infusion of $650 million for more than 30% of the company. "It was Snapdeal's first rodeo with so much capital," says one insider.


SoftBank's Vision Fund, with nearly $100 billion of capital, has become perhaps the most powerful funder in global technology. (Photo by Ken Kobayashi)
Dozens of entrepreneurs all over the world have had a similar experience. No investor has been more obliging than SoftBank's Son in writing massive checks to young companies, giving them the financial firepower to out-compete their rivals while pumping up their valuations. And that same pattern has played out in India, where, until recently, there was virtually no domestic risk capital, making SoftBank the biggest game in town. "SoftBank did put India on the global map," says Vinish Kathuria, a Delhi-based venture capitalist.

Since then, SoftBank's Vision Fund, with nearly $100 billion of capital supplied by major sovereign wealth funds, tech companies and private investors, has become perhaps the most powerful funder in global technology. It has fueled a wave of disruptive companies, from ride-hailers Uber Technologies and Grab to office communication business Slack Technologies.

Now, the wheels are coming off. WeWork, the office rental company into which SoftBank had invested billions, announced in September that it would list in New York, seeking an extraordinary valuation of $47 billion. The company's prospectus revealed a business model and a highly unusual governance structure that rattled investors. Its valuation dwindled, and eventually the listing was pulled.

Riaz Haq said...

Why Pakistani Startups Are The Next Big Thing
Published on December 1, 2019
Aatif Awan
Aatif Awan
Founder & Managing Partner at Indus Valley Capital

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-pakistani-startups-next-big-thing-aatif-awan/

Last 18 months saw more acquisition & fundraising activity for Pakistani startups than the previous 10 years combined. That's a clear sign of the Pakistani startup market having hit an inflection point.

Firstly, the acquisition of Daraz by Alibaba for somewhere between $150M-200M highlighted the potential of ecommerce in the country. Six months later, EasyPaisa getting valued at $410M+ in the 45% buyout by ANT Financial, showed how valuable the fintech sector was. Both Daraz and EasyPaisa had only captured a fraction of these markets at the time of these deals.

At the same time, three unicorns with Pakistani founders and a significant team presence in Pakistan, all hit massive new milestones. Afiniti, a startup developing artificial intelligence for use in customer call centers, was valued at $1.6B in its series D round late last year. KeepTruckin, building trucking fleet management solutions, raised $149M in its series D round, valuing at $1.25B in Apr 2019. And the most exciting development was Careem's $3.1 Billion acquisition by Uber in March 2019. Careem's early tech and product was developed in Pakistan, the CEO Mudassir Sheikha is a Pakistani and Pakistan is one of its largest markets. One of the largest tech acquisitions of all time, slightly ahead of Apple's acquisition of Beats, this was a seminal event that has galvanized the Pakistani startup ecosystem. Ex-Careem employees are already out there starting new companies and joining high-growth startups.

Zameen/EPMG, one of the earliest and largest Pakistani startup success stories, raised a massive $100M series D round in February 2019. They have now expand to 40 cities across the UAE, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Morocco, Spain and Romania, and have over 2,000 employees.

Finally, what's most exciting is that Pakistani startups have crossed the seed to series A chasm. Three of the largest series A rounds in Pakistan have all happened in the last 8 months: Bykea's $5.7M series A in April, Cheetay's $7.8M series A in September, and Airlift securing $12M in series A funding in November. Airlift's large series A is particularly amazing because the startup only launched 8 months ago. This would be remarkable even for a Silicon Valley startup and is illustrative of how quickly startups can capture share in the completely untapped Pakistani market.

Airlift series A round is led by First Round Capital, a leading Silicon Valley VC, known for early bets on Uber and Square. First Round has not invested in Asia in more than a decade, not in China nor in India nor in Indonesia. Yet they chose to invest in a Pakistani startup given the opportunity they saw. I believe this is not a one-off event and is reflective of how primed Pakistani startup ecosystem is to take off after a long time of slow build-up.

What's Ahead: Wapistanis and VC Dollars flowing to Pakistan
To sum it up, Pakistan is the largest market untapped by startups and venture capital today. Pakistanis form one of the biggest tech talent pools in the world and have done well across the globe, founding several unicorns (at least six by my count) and having played a leading role in many others. With this talent advantage, Pakistani startups are well positioned to dominate all major industries in Pakistan and also expand to MENA, a $3.6 trillion economy that's also relatively early in the startup cycle.

What took Indonesia a decade, Pakistan will do it faster because the broadband penetration is at a much higher baseline, because capital moves faster to global opportunities today than it did a decade ago and because Pakistan has a larger talent base both at home and among the diaspora.