Tuesday March 19th, 2024
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Pakistan’s Ride-Sharing Platform Bykea Raises $10 Million in Funding

The platform, which focuses on two-wheeler rides, plans to use the funds to enhance and extend its offerings in mobility and fulfillment services for consumers and SMEs.

Startup Scene

Bykea, Pakistan’s ride-sharing and on-demand delivery platform, raised $10 million from its existing backers including Prosus Ventures, MEVP, Sarmayacar, Tharros, and Ithaca Capital.

The platform, which focuses on two-wheeler rides, plans to use the funds to enhance and extend its offerings in mobility and fulfillment services for consumers and SMEs, including food and e-commerce deliveries, as well as leverage its fleet for unique FinTech use cases like cash on delivery (COD), cash-pickup services, or verification services. 

This announcement comes at a time when Pakistan has been witnessing significant growth in its transport and logistics sector. This sector, amongst Emerging Venture Markets (EVM), has recorded a QoQ growth of over 80% in capital invested accounting for 11% of all VC deals and 8% of all venture capital deployed into EVM startups during Q1’22, according Magnitt’s Transport and Logistics Q1 2022 Venture Investment Report. To date, the largest investment made in Pakistan’s transport and logistics sector was Truck it, raising $13 million in its seed round.

“These are exciting times of high growth for us and we are grateful for the continued support of our existing backers," said Jonas Eichhorst, Executive Chairman of Bykea. “With 1.7 million monthly active users (MAUs), we see an enormous opportunity to serve the middle class by offering easy, affordable, and convenient transport and logistics solutions.”

Previously, Bykea raised $13 million in Series B funding round to fuel its expansion and market reach across Pakistan. Today, Bykea operates in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad, and provides transport and delivery services for 40 million citizens in urban Pakistan.

Pakistan’s startup sector has been booming lately. In 2021, Pakistani startups raised $365.8 million in venture capital (VC) funding, a staggering 450% increase compared to the previous year, according to the Pakistan Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Report. The fundraising momentum is continuing well into 2022 with startups raising $163 million in Q1, according to a Deal Flow Tracker by Invest2Innovate, which tracks investments made in Pakistani startups.