Mahaana, an Islamabad-based digital wealth management startup, raised $2.1 million in pre-seed funding from Vostok Emerging Finance, SparkLabs, and IGI Holdings.
Tell me more: Mahaana wants to bring 401K-inspired (U.S.) savings and retirement to Pakistan.
It is betting on the trend of financial digitization in Pakistan, such as PRISM, RAAST, digital onboarding, etc.
As an SECP-licensed non-banking finance company (NBFC), Mahaana can accept money from customers for investment in the company’s retirement products – at a later stage.
No word on the kind of products, but it will look something like Vanguard or Fidelity ETFs in the U.S.
Investors will be charged a percentage of assets under management when it launches in September.
Okay, but why: Only 0.02% of Pakistanis have retirement accounts, according to Mahaana.
Most Pakistanis invest in real estate or deposit cash in CDs and savings accounts.
Mahaana believes it’s possible to grow your money in other ways or at least diversify your investments to create a solid safety net.
Origins: Mahaana was founded in 2021 by Muhammad Shamoon Tariq.
In his previous life, he was a Partner at Tundra Fonder AB, a Swedish asset manager specializing in frontier markets.
You should know: Mahaana was part of YC’s W22 batch. To date, it has raised $2.6 million in funding.
In the investment category, it competes with Ktrade and Elphinstone.
Zoom out: For startups to exit one day on PSX, we need to invest in education and enablement. And startups like Mahaana enable new use cases while at the same time increasing awareness.
