Pakistani edtech Maqsad secures $2.8 million in seed funding

Pakistani edtech platform Maqsad has raised $2.8 million in a seed round, the startup announced on Thursday.

Maqsad's latest funding takes its all-time capital raised to $4.9 million, the startup shared in a statement. 

"The capital from this funding round positions the company as Pakistan’s best-funded edtech and will be used primarily to expand the subject offering and supercharge the tech behind the platform," the statement read.

The seed round, which Maqsad said was oversubscribed, was led by Speedinvest and returning investor Indus Valley Capital. Other participants included Stellar Capital, Alter Global, Johann Jenson (SVP Product at GoStudent) and other strategic angels.

Founded in 2021 by Rooshan Aziz and Taha Ahmed, Maqsad aims to make education accessible for 100 million Pakistani students via an end-to-end learning mobile platform that provides teaching, testing, and query resolution for grades 9 to 12, the statement read.

In the last six months, the Maqsad app has been downloaded over a million times, answered four million student queries, and has consistently ranked as the #1 education app in Pakistan on Google Play Store, the company claimed.

Maqsad is currently a purely B2C platform, but the company said its long-term vision is to "embed itself across the education ecosystem".

“We’re laser focused on delivering a personalized learning experience at scale and have a number of exciting AI-based initiatives in the pipeline,” said the founders.

Speedinvest, one of Europe's largest seed funds that already has an edtech unicorn in its portfolio, Vienna-based GoStudent, shared they invested in the Pakistani edtech startup because they saw potential for it to "touch the lives of millions of students and disrupt the education ecosystem".

Meanwhile, Indus Valley Capital’s founder Aatif Awan explained why they doubled down: “We first invested in Maqsad 18 months ago, before they had a product or a team. We were compelled by the vision Rooshan and Taha had for education in Pakistan".

"Investing again in Maqsad is a no-brainer as we have seen them bring together one of the best startup teams in Pakistan to build a category-leading product that has helped over a million students,” Awan said.