Pakistan’s PakWheels drives to the head of the pack with $3.5M in funding

Thanks to the enormous success of Craigslist, online classified ad sites have been popping up all over the world in recent years, all trying to become the number one destination for secondhand goods and services. Even in Pakistan, which has just 30 million internet users – about 16 percent of its overall population – many would-be entrepreneurs and big names alike are trying to get a piece of the pie.

One of these Pakistani startups is online car portal PakWheels, which last week leapt to the head of the pack with US$3.5 million placed in its coffers by Frontier Digital Ventures. The Malaysia-based VC fund primarily focuses on online classifieds businesses in emerging and frontier markets, and Pakistan certainly qualifies. It is, in fact, Frontier’s second investment in a Pakistani startup – the first was online property listings site Zameen.

PakWheels has been in the business for a surprisingly long period of time – 11 years and counting. “PakWheels.com was started in 2003 with a simple idea of bringing auto enthusiasts in Pakistan together on a platform, letting everyone share information and pictures of the cars they drive, and a forum to talk about automobiles,” says CEO Muhammad Raza Saeed.

From there, it rapidly grew into the go-to place for auto enthusiasts in Pakistan, and Saeed is proud to say that PakWheels has the largest classifieds section in the country right now. Over the last 12 months, the site received over 240 million page views, and now has 500,000 listings in total.

“Pakistan’s internet user base is expected to grow to 100 million users by 2019, and we want to be the go-to place for anything and everything to do with wheels for this online population,” Saeed says. “This round of funding will help us strengthen our leadership position, improve existing services and build new offerings.”

See: Pakistan, the Next Frontier for Entrepreneurs and Investors

He adds that the funding will go into marketing campaigns, efforts to expand into all major cities in Pakistan, as well as hiring new talent.

PakWheels will continue to face stiff competition from the big boys such as OLX and a new entrant in the form of Rocket Internet’s Carmudi, though Saeed doesn’t appear to be very worried about them. He believes they still hold the advantage as PakWheels focuses solely on the automotive industry, which has resulted in a “cult-like following” of its brand.