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Lahore-based Airlift has secured $85 million in what is said to be the biggest private funding round in Pakistan’s start-up community.
The new firm started out as a bus-booking service, like Uber, and has diversified into an online shopping platform, catering to customers in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. As a mass transit business, the company recorded more than 30,000 rides a day.
The latest Series B funding has been co-led by Harry Stebbings of 20VC and Josh Buckley of Buckley Ventures.
It has also been participated in by Sam Altman, former president of Y Combinator, Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter and Medium; Steve Pagliuca, co-chairman of Bain Capital; Jeffrey Katzenberg, ex-chief executive of Disney and Quibi, and Taavet Hinrikus, founder and chief executive of TransferWise.
The new capital will be used to expand Airlift’s business globally, said co-founder and CEO Usman Gul on Twitter.
“A year ago, Airlift halted operations on the transit service, and diversified into last-mile delivery to build the rails of commerce. Today, our team closed $85 million in Series B financing to scale quick commerce across continents,” Gul said.
(Writing by Cleofe Maceda; editing by Seban Scaria)
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