Reddit’s founder, others pour $17.5m in final close of fund for Pakistani startups

The US and Pakistan-based Indus Valley Capital announced the final close of a US$17.5 million debut fund that will target Pakistani startups.

The limited partners of the new fund include Reddit’s founder Alexis Ohanian and three other founders of unicorn companies. Executives with experience in tech firms such as Facebook, Google, Stripe, Coinbase, Uber, Careem, InstaCart, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Atlassian, WebFlow, Zillow, and Oracle also invested in the fund.

Partners at two multibillion dollar venture capital funds and early investors in Careem and Souq are also among the limited partners.

Indus Valley Capital founder Aatif Awan / Photo credit: Indus Valley Capital

Indus Valley Capital is an early-stage VC firm that was founded by Aatif Awan, who was vice president of growth, international, and data products at LinkedIn.

It focuses on Pakistani startups from industries including transportation, grocery delivery, business-to-business retail, fitness, fintech, and remote work. It also helps its portfolio companies with product strategy and growth, as well as raising follow-on capital.

With the new fund, Indus Valley Capital is looking to make more investments and to create a community of founders to build transformational companies in Pakistan. So far, it has invested in five startups in the country including Airlift, Bazaar, AimFit, and two undisclosed firms.

“I had no plans of moving back to Pakistan or building a VC fund focused on Pakistan when I left LinkedIn in 2018. But after meeting some Pakistani founders, I realized that Pakistan was at the cusp of a once-in-a-lifetime transformation that other large economies were going through,” said Awan.