Islamabad-based startup Markaz Technologies announced it had secured $2.4 million in seed funding led by Indus Valley Capital (IVC).
The investment round would also be joined by angel investors, including Kyane Kassiri from Suya Fund and executives from Careem, Deloitte, Amazon and Gojek, Markaz said in a press release.
Markaz Technologies is a Y-Combinator-backed — the prestigious US-based accelerator — startup that provides an online reselling platform to anyone in Pakistan to source wholesale products from across the country and sell them with a profit through their own social media stores, without any investment of their own.
Markaz says it is on a mission to "supercharge the rails of e-commerce and make it accessible for masses in Pakistan by empowering these micro-entrepreneurs".
"Markaz is building for all of Pakistan, with the ambition of enabling those in smaller cities and villages to source products directly from wholesalers and suppliers," the press release quoted IVC Founder and Managing Partner Aatif Awan as saying.
Awan said the startup would also create "hundreds of thousands of micro-entrepreneurs" along the way and bring them into the financial ecosystem. "We, at IVC, are thrilled to partner with Markaz in helping them realise their mission," he said.
The startup was founded in the last quarter of 2021 by Shoaib Khan, Fawad Hussain, Sameel Hayat and Umair Aslam — who have worked in Pakistan and across the globe in large-scale tech organisations like Telenor, Amazon, Easypaisa and Alipay.
Markaz will utilise the investment from the successful funding round to further scale and develop its mobile platform and improve user experience by enhancing delivery operations, payments and customer servicing.