Indus Valley Capital raises $17.5M in its debut fund to invest in Pakistani startups

Indus Valley Capital (IVC) raises $17.5 million in its debut fund to invest in early-stage Pakistani startups. While the target size of the fund was $15 million, it was oversubscribed with over 75 individual investors from all around the globe, according to reports by Menabytes.

Indus Valley Capital is an early stage venture capital fund investing in Pakistani startups. It was launched by a former LinkedIn executive Aatif Awan in early 2019.

Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian along with founders, executives, and operators from leading technology companies like Google, Facebook, Stripe, Uber, Coinbase, Careem, LinkedIn, InstaCart, Dropbox, WebFlow, Oracle, Atlassian and Zillow invested in Indus Valley Capital's debut fund. Other investors also include three unicorn founders; however, IVC has not disclosed their names.

Moreover, according to a statement released by IVC partners at two multi-billion dollar VC funds and early investors in Careem and Souq are also among the limited partners.

While it was unusual to raise funds from tech and finance professionals, it was a success especially because IVC was able to get $2.5 million in oversubscribed capital.

Airlift, which was IVC's first investment, raised $12 million in a Series A led by First Round Capital. It is important to note that Airlift was First Round Capital’s only investment in Asia in a decade. This was also followed by Airlift raising another $10 million in an extension of its Series A.

Moreover, Indus Valley Capital also put in the first cheque for Bazaar, which was one of the largest seed rounds in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

According to Aatif Awan, this debut fund will help founders build the most transformational companies in Pakistan and will turn Pakistan into a top 5 tech hubs globally in the process.