Venture capital is starting to trickle back into Pakistan. In the latest round, mobility startup BusCaro raised $2 million last week, bringing its total funding to $3.5m.

The round was led by UAE-based Daman Investments, with participation from US/Saudi Cartography Capital, New York’s Epic Angest, UK’s Wahed Ventures, the Aga Khan Development Network’s Accelerate Prosperity, and a mix of angel investors.

BusCaro, which offers shared commute services, was born in late 2022 — a time that could not have been less propitious for mobility startups. The world was emerging from the pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war had triggered a global crisis, Pakistan was reeling from floods, and the local mobility sector was collapsing. Airlift and Swvl had folded, and Uber had exited Pakistan. What was once the hottest space had suddenly become a no-go zone.

That’s when Maha Shahzad, former general manager of Swvl, launched BusCaro — putting its first bus on the road just a day after Swvl shut down.

The journey since then has been anything but smooth. Ms Shahzad says she received over 400 rejections before securing the game-changing $160,000 in the first year of operations that set the fledgling startup on its current growth path. Today, BusCaro claims to process more than 900,000 monthly bookings and is on track to hit $8.6m in annual revenue by December. But scaling up has brought its own financial headaches.

“Equity financing is the least of my problems — and that’s true for most founders,” says Ms Shahzad.........

© Dawn Business