Maqsad is a Pakistani education technology business that announced a $2.8 million seed round headed by Speedinvest and returning investor Indus Valley Capital. The founders of Maqsad announced in a statement on Thursday that Stellar Capital, Alter Global, Johann Jenson (SVP Product at GoStudent), and other strategic angels also participated in the oversubscribed round.
Maqsad, founded in 2021 by Rooshan Aziz and Taha Ahmed, intends to make education accessible to 100 million Pakistani children with an end-to-end mobile learning platform that provides teaching, assessment, and query resolution for ninth through twelfth grades.
This fundraising round, which increases Maqsad’s total capital received to $4.9 million and establishes the company as Pakistan’s best-funded edtech, will primarily be used to expand the subject offering and supercharge the platform’s technology.
Maqsad is now a B2C-only platform, but its long-term goal is to become an integral part of the education ecosystem. Private and public entities have already expressed interest in forming collaborations with the company. Maqsad Founder Taha Ahmed said:
“Maqsad provides students with an amazing learning experience at a fraction of the cost.
“At the core of our mission is a focus on student issues, and we’ve collected feedback from over 20,000 students and teachers across Pakistan to ensure learning outcomes are achieved,”
Co-founder Roshan Aziz stated that the company has recently updated its evaluation tool, which enables students to confidently self-evaluate, and has seen a month-over-month increase in questions attempted of over 150 percent.
“We have a number of exciting artificial intelligence (AI)-based projects in the works,”
In the past six months, the Maqsad app has been downloaded over a million times, has responded to four million student questions, and has maintained its position as the most popular education app on the Google Play Store in Pakistan.
Education presents a major opportunity in Pakistan, with an expected yearly expenditure of $37 billion by 2032, according to the statement.
A quarter of money is allocated to after-school academic support, which is frequently costly and difficult to obtain.
With one teacher for every 44 students, Pakistan likewise has one of the highest student-to-teacher ratios in the world.
The query-solving technology (DoubtSolve) and interactive assessment provided by Maqsad alleviate a significant issue for students who lack ready access to qualified instructors. Partner of Speedinvest Philip Specht stated:
“We invested in Maqsad because we believe it has the potential to impact the lives of millions of students and disrupt the education ecosystem,”
Speedinvest is a venture capital fund with over €1 billion to invest in pre-seed, seed, and early-stage technology firms worldwide.
The company is one of Europe’s largest seed funds and already has an edtech unicorn in its portfolio, Vienna-based GoStudent. The founder of Indus Valley Capital, Aatif Awan, stated:
“We invested in Maqsad for the first time 18 months ago, before they had a product or a team. We were inspired by Rooshan and Taha’s ambition for education in Pakistan. “Reinvesting in Maqsad is a no-brainer, as they have assembled one of the best startup teams in Pakistan and created a market-leading product that has helped over a million students,”
Indus Valley Capital is a Silicon Valley-based early-stage venture capital fund focused on Pakistan. Indus Valley was the first venture capital firm to invest in leading Pakistani firms such as Bazaar and BridgeLinx.