What’s Fueling Pakistan’s Emerging Startup Ecosystem

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   Listen to the podcast (duration: 39:00) >  Based on demographics alone, Pakistan is a country whose start-up ecosystem should have been thriving for quite a while. It has, for starters, the fifth largest population in the world, approaching 230 million. And that population is both overwhelmingly young, with a median age of 22, and bi-lingual, with the fourth largest number of English speakers in the world. Add to that one of the fastest-growing middle classes, more than 100 million mobile broadband subscribers, and hundreds of thousands of tech professionals, and you have all the makings of a fertile market for new enterprises and digital services. Yet until recently, venture or growth funding in Pakistan was barely a trickle compared to similar countries in the Middle East/North Africa region or in other parts of Asia. In the last couple of years, however, Pakistan has begun to live up to its entrepreneurial potential. To gain a valuable understanding of the changing dynamics of this emerging start-up market, including continuing challenges and growing opportunities, we spoke to two experts based in the region: Aatif Awan is the founder and managing partner of Indus Valley Capital, a Pakistan-focused early stage venture fund, and Abdur-Rahim Syed is a McKinsey partner based in Dubai who co-leads the firm’s start-up work in the region.

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