PriceOye Pakistan Acquired Early Investment From Co-founder PayPal
Since its start in March 2020, PriceOye Pakistan, an Islamabad-based company, has been selling products like cellphones, TVs, and home appliances. It was only introduced two weeks prior to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. This firm wants to build a carefully curated marketplace for consumer goods and is motivated by JD.com in China and Flipkart in India. The good news is that PriceOye disclosed that company had received early funding from a variety of investors, including Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal.
PriceOye Pakistan Serviced 45 million Unique users in Pakistan
The company’s inaugural funding round was spearheaded by JAM Fund, a venture capital firm founded by Justin Mateen. Beenext, DG Daiwa, Mantis VC, HOF Capital, Palm Drive Capital, an investor in Jet.com, and Atlas Ventures also took part in the round of institutional fundraising. Angel investors including Thiel, Immad Akhud of Mercury Bank, and Asif Keshodia of Souq were previous investors in Fatima Gobi Ventures, SOSV, and Artistic Ventures. Co-founder of PayPal has never before made an investment in Pakistan.
According to Adnan Shaffi, co-founder and CEO of the company, PriceOye has served 45 million unique users in Pakistan over the last two years, or 37.5% of the nation’s total internet population. He mentioned:
“With over 2.5 million monthly active users coming to the platform, completing research using our product suggestion engine, and then learning about various products, we are the second most frequented shopping website in the entire country.”
Let’s explore this startup’s history. When the concept for PriceOye first occurred to Adan and his brother Adeel Shaffi, they were travelling through Southeast Asia. After failing at their first two ventures, they finally succeeded with their third. The two researchers discovered similar consumer internet trends were also happening in Indonesia and India, albeit more slowly, after studying other Indonesian and Indian companies. They came to the conclusion that Pakistan will experience a comparable uptake of consumer internet services in four to five years. PriceOye was built on the principles of this concept.
PriceOye intends to launch physical experience centres around the country, beginning with three locations in upscale malls in the important cities of Islamabad, Karachi, and Lahore. Also, they will introduce related services and more product categories.