In this episode of the McKinsey on Start-ups podcast, McKinsey executive editor Daniel Eisenberg speaks with investor Aatif Atwan and McKinsey Partner Abdur-Rahim Syed about the burgeoning start-up ecosystem in Pakistan. An edited transcript of their conversation, which took place earlier this year, follows.
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Daniel Eisenberg: Based on demographics alone, Pakistan’s start-up ecosystem should already have been thriving for many years. It has, for starters, the fifth largest population in the world, approaching 230 million. And that population is both overwhelmingly young, with a median age of 22, and bi-lingual, with the fourth largest number of English speakers in the world. Add to that one of the fastest-growing middle classes, more than 100 million mobile broadband subscribers, and hundreds of thousands of tech professionals, and you have all the makings of a fertile market for new enterprises and digital services.
Yet until recently, venture or growth funding in Pakistan was barely a trickle compared to similar countries in the Middle East/North Africa region or in other parts of Asia. In the last couple of years, however, global VCs and other foreign investors have begun making significant bets on local start-ups as many regulatory and cultural barriers have started to soften.
To gain a better understanding of the changing dynamics of this start-up market,...
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