Technology start-up: Roshni Rides acqui-hires talent from NextGenI

Roshni Rides, a Pakistan-based leading tech startup that provides a carpooling solution specifically to children and women, has recently acqui-hired talent from NextGenI, a leading consulting firm that specialises in building technology product teams for clients in Western Europe, GCC and Pakistan.

NextGenI's founder Farzal Dojki kicked off the ceremony at DotZero, Karachi, by reminiscing his invigorating journey of working with startups and building their technology team over the past five years. While talking to the media, he shared "We operate on an acqui-hire model - we build a dual-shore tech team in 4 to 12 weeks, assign a potential CTO and run the team for 12 to 36 months until Series A or Series B; this triggers acqui-hire and transfers the day to day running of the team to the principal. We've now executed 4 such acquihires since 2015, and currently operate teams for 8 Seed stage startups".

The trend of acqui-hiring talent for startups is relatively new especially in Pakistan where one company 'Aqui-hires' the talent from another company for building an in-house team, mainly to scale the product faster than they would otherwise by painstakingly hiring each individual team member.

Now ready to grow and scale their product, Roshni Rides' co-founder Moneeb continued talking and sharing how it was a huge responsibility on the shoulders of four fresh graduates (the team) when they were given $1 million from the Hult prize to build an impactful business.

CEO and founder of Roshni Rides, Gia Farooqi also shared her views to transform the commuter space in Pakistan. "Roshni Rides holds a vision to transform the commuter space in Pakistan. Working alongside partners like NGI is what has enabled us to make leaps of progress over the last year," Farooqi shared.

The team being acqui-hired also shared their experience working on the Roshni Rides platform. "It was not just an ordinary software development work but a great learning experience. As a team, we all are very proud to be a part of a startup that is solving an important problem for women in our country," shared Bari, a software engineer from the acqui-hired team.