Pakistan’s Bykea raises $10mn in fresh funding from existing backers

Pakistan's bike ride-sharing and delivery startup Bykea announced on Monday that it has secured $10 million in fresh funding from its existing backers, as the company looks to enhance its service offerings including "leveraging its fleet of over 60,000 driver partners for unique fintech use cases like cash on delivery (COD), cash-pickup, or verification services".

The funding was led by investors including Prosus Ventures, MEVP, Sarmayacar, Tharros, and Ithaca Capital, said the company statement.

Bykea added that it plans to use the capital to enhance and extend its offerings in mobility and fulfillment services for consumers and SMEs, including food and e-commerce deliveries as well.

“These are exciting times of high growth for us and we are grateful for the continued support of our existing backers," Jonas Eichhorst, Executive Chairman of Bykea, was quoted as saying in the statement.

"With 1.7 million monthly active users (MAUs), we see an enormous opportunity to serve the middle-class by offering easy, affordable, and convenient transport and logistics solutions.

Bykea raises $5.7 million in Series A funding

“We’re particularly proud of being able to consistently deliver three key ingredients — rapid growth (5 times our pre-pandemic scale), profitability in mobility, and the versatility of the largest motorbike fleet in the country.”

Bykea is the largest on-demand platform by transaction count in Pakistan, and has seen exponential growth in the three cities in which it operates – Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad – in the last two years. "It runs on the rails of a network of motorbikes serving transport and delivery services for 40 million citizens in urban Pakistan," added the company.

The announcement comes at a time when Pakistan's startup sector has been witnessing a volatile ride.

While in 2021 the country celebrated a record 81 deals worth $350 million, with the amount raised more than 5x of what was raised in 2020, the current year has seen both a continuation of fund-raising momentum and rollback of services. During the first quarter, startups raised a substantial $163 million, according to a Deal Flow Tracker by Invest2Innovate.

However, Swvl announced it is suspending its intra-city services “in light of the global economic downturn” while Airlift said it's cutting its global headcount by 31%. Logistics startup Truck It In also announced layoffs after securing $13 million in funding. Later, VavaCars – backed by Dutch energy and commodity trading company Vitol – also said that it has shut down operations in Pakistan, while Careem suspended its food delivery business as well.