After the start-up culture, the foreign funding culture seems to be picking up as well. Venture capital and angel funds have been almost non-existent even amid the rise of digital entrepreneurship; however one can see now some foreign inflows boosting some key successful marketplaces and online ventures.
One such start-up has been Zameen.com, Pakistan’s leading real estate portal that has raised $9 million in venture round. The property website connects buyers with sellers and owners with renters across the country. It was founded by two brothers, Zeeshan Ali Khan and Imran Ali Khan, in 2006, and was later joined by the French property portal authority Gilles Blanchard as an angel investor in 2012.
Besides the angel fund, the organisation’s first received foreign funding in 2014 when Catcha Group and Frontier Digital Ventures – two key venture capital firms in the ASEAN region – invested in the online real estate portal. And now after a year, the firm has been successful in raising $9 million investment from three well-known international funds in its latest venture round to Zameen.com’s parent company Zamzama Property Group.
What has been remarkable about zameen.com is that it is a home grown venture that has been able to attract global property portal experts and leaders to its human capital. Talking to BR Research, Zeeshan Ali Khan - the co-founder and CEO-Zameen.com – highlighted that the foreign funding received will be used for further expansion; Zameen.com has been growing rapidly with the foreign funds being used for expansion, which includes increased operations, penetration, listings and website traffic.
The office premises, employees and presence have been some key areas that have seen dramatic growth; from one million visits in November 2014, the real estate portal has seen a growth of over 100 percent in online traffic to 2.1 million last month. Similarly the number of employees has multiplied from only 90 in 2014 to over 300 in 2015.
Coming to the competition, ‘It has actually helped us’, Zeeshan Ali Khan admitted, saying that it only helped Zameen.com to become more focused and poised for growth locally and globally. The real estate website not only plans to increase its domestic presence by graduating from 17 cities to the countries major cities, but is looking into global penetration.
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