Aditya Hadi Pratama · · 1 min readY Combinator-backed social commerce firm nets $2.4m seed funding
Markaz, a Pakistan-based social commerce platform, has raised US$2.4 million in a seed funding round led by Indus Valley Capital, with participation from Suya Ventures’ founder Kyane Kassiri and executives from companies like Careem, Deloitte, Amazon, and Gojek.
Markaz’s team / Photo credit: Markaz
Founded late last year, Markaz built an online reselling platform that allows users to acquire wholesale products and resell them to their networks through WhatsApp and Facebook.
The company currently offers more than 10,000 products on its platform from various categories and focuses on building reseller networks in Pakistan’s second-tier cities, with more than 50% of the resellers being women.
Markaz was founded by Shoaib Khan, Fawad Hussain, and Umair Aslam – who all had experience in telco firm Telenor – along with serial entrepreneur Sameel Hayat. Earlier this year, the company was admitted to Y Combinator’s winter 2022 batch.
The startup plans to use the fresh funding to continue developing its mobile platform, improve user experience, and hire more employees.
See also: The Pinduoduo model takes hold in India
Editing by Miguel Cordon and Jaclyn Tiu
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