Recent news of Zameen.com, a major online real estate portal in Pakistan, raising and securing $9 million in series B funding from investors, sparked several businesses interest in the local online products and startups. PakWheels also announced $100,000 funding for another local startup AutoGenie last week and their first-ever mass media campaign, which btw has amazing TVCs, helped them spread that particular piece of information too. PakWheels itself raised $3.5 million from Frontier Digital Ventures, a Malaysia based venture, in 2014.
These promising pieces of news not only spread awareness among local investors but also in general public who are now getting used to the online lifestyle. Considering the fact that many people are now spending their time as well as their money in building some local products, it’s necessary to ensure that your idea is actually good enough to invest in as many startups failed due to simple reasons like marketing your product to the wrong target market. However, failures shouldn’t stop you from innovating and creating something that you love instead they should motivate you to re-analyze your strengths and observe the market more carefully. Because of this, we see new startups emerging in Pakistan every day with a promising future. However, there are certain startups that are not only perfectly timed but also address the key elements for the success of any startup which is “Product Need”. Following are some of those Pakistani startups that may not be very well known for now, but they are going to be a huge success for sure due to the fact that they not only started earlier in their niche, but their idea is actually addressing something that has a huge potential market now or in coming years.
KiaSceneHai
Being a Karachiite, I personally know the importance & meaning of the phrase “Kya Scene Hai” in our life. It’s a ritual for us on weekends to meet and then brainstorms on what to do and where to go. Although the majority of the times that “brainstorming” ended on going to some restaurant, however, there are times when you want to do something before eating. KiaScenehai can solve that for you.
The portal’s purpose revolves around one basic thing, to let people know the latest happenings in their city including events, shows, movies, etc. Currently, the website does not have enough data for event discovery functionality plus it lacks the basic options like user profiles. The idea is worth investing due to the fact that the moment Pakistan’s safety conditions improve, which they will in a year or two inshALLAH, websites like these will be the major attraction for people who are looking to change “outing” into something more than just eating on a restaurant or fast food joint.
There is much space for improvement in KiaSceneHai.pk starting with more prominent placement of Event Submission Form/Button. Currently, it is 2-3 clicks far away from the homepage when it should be on the Homepage itself. By incorporating more data and user-oriented features like “interest-based event discovery”, kiascenehai.pk can turn into PakWheels of Events website in Pakistan and the same can be said for its potential competitors.
TourPlanner
Anyone who has ever visited the Northern Areas of Pakistan knows what he/she is missing every time he/she skipped a chance to go there again. You cannot describe the environment & the beauty these places offer you. Lately, we have seen lots of positive news on both traditional media and social media about how people are visiting these places more than ever before and how the number of tourists is increasing manifold, especially in KPK.
A major concern for people when planning a tour to someplace is Accommodation and Conveyance. Tourplanner.pk can solve this problem with just some clicks. Moreover, one particular feature that makes TourPlanner stand out of the crowd is “Plan My Trip”. This feature gives you an estimate of how much your tour is going to cost you in terms of Accommodation and Conveyance. The startup can go big in the future considering the latest Jovago TVCs promoting the culture of online hotel booking in Pakistan. Jovago is a RocketInternet (Daraz.pk) venture.
Although the Online Travel industry in Pakistan is moving to its maturity stage, there is still lots of space in the niche. The most difficult part of this niche is to convince hotel operators in northern areas to offer you a better price and update the hotel rooms’ status on your website. If you can manage to automate this, you can become a major player in Pakistan’s online travel industry.
PriceGrabber
As a consumer, it’s a norm among us to get the price of something we want to buy from more than one shop to make sure that we are getting a good deal and online shoppers aren’t much different at all. With the rise of eCommerce in Pakistan, in near future, people will be immensely interested in some price comparison websites in Pakistan where they can search a product and see all the online shopping websites in Pakistan selling that item with their prices. This will help them in making an informed decision. Therefore, I have suggested this idea to a couple of people to make such a website but when I saw PriceGrabber.pk, I know we are late to the party :). PriceGrabber does exactly what its name suggests i.e. enables the users to find all the eCommerce websites selling a particular product and compare their prices to get the lowest one.
Luckily this is the only price comparison website in Pakistan. This means anyone with a better marketing plan and a bigger website can easily grab the market.
LegalAdvice
Lawyers and legal services companies are the prime target for marketing companies all over the world due to the fact that they can pay you almost triple what a normal company would offer you for your marketing services if you can show them that you have leads for them. Pakistan has witnessed a sudden surge in legal awareness in the last couple of years which has ultimately increased the demand for legal services in the country.
If you can recall the recent initiative of the infamous Axact’s sister company Bol TV Network, they were planning to (intends to) provide free of cost legal assistance to the poor people of Pakistan. They even started a portal http://www.insaaf.com/ for that purpose. Now with all fairness, I have no doubts over the intention of Axact, however, in Western countries, this is how legal companies earn millions of dollars. Let me explain that with an example. In West & Europe, any person who allegedly suffered monetary, emotional, life or any other kind of loss usually sues (obviously relative(s) in case of a deceased person) the company that causes it. Now to sue these giants, they usually make a deal with a legal firm which, in case of winning the lawsuit, keeps a specific percent of whatever amount the sued company offers to the victim & that amount is typically in Millions. So you can say that a single lead for legal firms can turn into a million-dollar case, thus, they are ready to expend a great deal of money to get that golden lead.
Now imagine a portal where thousands of people are visiting every day, searching legal information and asking questions on legal matters. Legal firms will be more than happy to pay a good amount of money if you pitch them in front of these people. Legaladvicepk.com can be that portal. The website currently is the only website in Pakistan that has some relevant information and resources. Unfortunately, the website is loosely built on WordPress and seems to be run without any clear objective or mission.
Although it is the only sizeable website in this niche in Pakistan, the opportunity is wide open and anyone with some data and a clear plan can step in and capture the market easily.
Auto Genie
Accept that we are nothing but lazy a******S who want everything to be available at our doorstep. The good news is, we can get almost everything at our doorstep now without leaving the comfort of our houses as this specific nature of humans is helping businesses to earn millions and AutoGenie is a remarkable example of such a case. I am a person who skips my car wash for weeks and sometimes for even months for one single reason i.e. my schedule (right or wrong) won’t allow me to go to the car service station and spend 2-3 hrs waiting there for my turn. Now if someone offers me he can do that for me, I am very much willing to give him a couple of extra hundreds for that.
AutoGenie does more than that. It basically acts as your personal car maintenance guy who does whatever needed for your car at the time you want it. From repairs to wash, AutoGenie can help you in your car maintenance within your timeframe. Their recent funding by the country’s largest online car portal, PakWheels proves that the business model not only has potential, but it can be a huge success in the on-demand service industry in Pakistan. As for beating them, let’s just move on to new stuff 🙂
Although these websites become operational in niches where people are still speculating the idea’s effectiveness, one or two players don’t mean much when it comes to grabbing the ever-increasing online industry of Pakistan. The internet culture or online lifestyle is increasingly evident in our day-to-day activities and businesses or individuals who can step in now will be the beneficiaries in the near future. Besides these 5 local startups, or more specifically, these niches, there are still untapped markets in Pakistan & you can be the pioneer within these categories. So do your research, make a plan and like Shia LaBeouf said: “Just Do It”. You don’t need to start big. All you need to do is to create a plan, just good enough, to grab the position before anyone else does and once you start getting some visitors, you can start building it into something that people consider valuable which eventually can attract business and investors.
