Pakistani startups raised at least US$78 M venture capital in the first half of 2021, with 89 VCs from 15 countries participating in 25 deals. Ecommerce, fintech and healthtech verticals attracted the most capital. Tajir, Finja and Dawaai were among the top fundraisers.

Although this was a relatively low level of activity compared to other similar countries in Goldman Sachs’s Next-11 group of countries, investments in Pakistani startups have been showing strong growth over the past years. Compared to the first half of 2019, reported investments in the first half of 2021 increased by 11x, while the number of deals increased by 1.5x which is better than most N-11 countries.