r/PakStartups

A few months ago, I had an idea to solve the Visa problem. People lose thousands of rupees due to incorrect routes leading to rejections and wasted time. Consultants are often not knowledgeable about all countries and try to fit applicants into a few known ones. To address this, I built Vizarank.

I wanted a tool that analysed a predefined set of data against an intended route and ranked the top four destinations. I developed multiple AI agents and optimised them for each visa pathway. Since AI has a knowledge cutoff, I ensured it had access to up-to-date policy data for responding to potential pathways.

I launched Vizarank on 2nd July 2026 and have since made several iterations based on user feedback. I currently have 96 organic users, and the initial response has been promising. People seem to like what they see, but none have paid yet. I definitely have much more value to add to this product, but I still need to validate the current version before putting more effort into it and building something that no one wants.

A year ago, I quit my job for a remote position, but then the client left due to financial constraints. Since then, I’ve been working on this idea. Having no prior experience in business, I never considered securing funds for it until I realised building the product was the easiest part and I’d overlooked the most important aspect.

I calculated the cost of Meta ads and need to spend at least PKR 3000 a day to expect at least one paid conversion (did my own research, not validated yet), which means I need to spend PKR 90,000 a month. This will break even, covering operational costs and ads.

At this point, I can take the risk, but it’s a one-shot deal. If it doesn’t work out, the funds will deplete quickly, leaving no room for survival. So far, I am a solo developer working on it, the business has been self-funded, and I don’t have any backup plan. I am stuck in a do-or-die situation. I'm having a hard time securing a remote job again, and if I go back to the 9 to 5 onsite role, this idea will be as good as dead.

I need someone to teach me what should be the approach from this point ahead so that I can achieve this dream and build something that gives me financial freedom.

Assalamualaikum everyone,

I’ve been laid off for around 4 months as a software engineer (MERN stack). I’m currently applying for jobs, but since I have some free time, I’m also considering starting a small business on the side.

My current situation

Savings: PKR 1.6 million

Monthly expenses: around PKR 100k

I’m still actively applying for software engineering jobs.

I’m considering investing PKR 200k–300k initially to test a business idea.

The idea

I’m thinking of starting an online newborn/infant clothing store, mainly targeting babies from newborn to 1 year.

The store would offer:

Newborn clothing bundles/packages

Pre-made gift bundles

Customized bundles — customers can pick different items and create their own bundle

Personalized gift notes

Individual clothing items as well

The main focus would be making it convenient for people who want to buy newborn clothes as gifts, especially for new parents.

What I’ll handle myself

Since I have a software/technical background, I’m planning to handle most things myself initially:

Website development

Meta/Facebook & Instagram ads

Social media pages

Product listings

Basic branding/marketing

Order management and customer communication

I would start small rather than putting a large portion of my savings into it.

What I need advice on

For people who have experience with e-commerce, clothing businesses, or similar businesses in Pakistan:

Is PKR 200k–300k enough to properly test this idea?

Is newborn clothing a reasonable niche to enter, or is it already too saturated?

Would you recommend keeping inventory, or starting with a smaller/low-inventory model?

What are the biggest mistakes I should avoid when starting?

If you were starting this business with PKR 200k–300k, how would you allocate the budget?

Do you think the newborn gift bundle/customized bundle angle has potential, or should I focus on individual clothing items?

I’m not looking to put all my savings into this. I mainly want to use a small amount to validate whether there is real demand before investing more.

Would really appreciate advice from anyone who has actually run an e-commerce/clothing business in Pakistan.

JazakAllah khair!

Hey everyone, looking for advice from fellow Pakistani e-commerce sellers or buyers who regularly deal with fragile items.

We run an online store selling fragile items and our current shipping situation is becoming a nightmare. Despite putting immense effort into our packaging—custom fit-to-shape thermocol/styrofoam, multiple layers of bubble wrap, heavy-duty cardboard boxes, and bright "FRAGILE" stickers—our parcels are still reaching customers completely smashed.

Here is our experience so far:

• Trax: Absolutely terrible experience. They managed to break 7 out of 10 parcels despite being packed as described above. To make matters worse, they refused to issue any damage refunds. Their official argument was that they would "look at warehouse CCTV footage to identify if the package broke inside the warehouse." If it didn't break on camera in their warehouse, they won't take responsibility—which is completely nuts considering most damage happens during transit/handling!
• Dot Logistics: Marginally better than Trax, but we are still getting unacceptable rates of breakage.

It feels like courier handlers in Pakistan just throw or drop boxes around regardless of fragile warnings.

For those running e-commerce businesses dealing with glassware, ceramics, decor, or electronics:

1. Which courier/logistics service has worked best for you in terms of low breakage rates? (PostEx, CallCourier, TCS, Leopard, Rider, etc.?)
2. Is there any courier that actually honours damage claims or offers proper transit insurance for fragile goods?
3. Any specific packaging tricks that finally solved this issue for you?

Would appreciate any recommendations or shared experiences. Thanks!

My girlfriend and I want to build a business together. She has 3–4 years of e-commerce operations experience, I’m learning tech/AI, What would you build or start?

I'm in Pakistan and trying to figure out what kind of business my girlfriend and I could realistically start.

I'm not an AI automation expert or anything like that. I'm still learning programming/software/AI and I've built a few small things, but I'm basically at the stage where I'm trying to get good enough to actually build useful stuff.

My girlfriend has been working in e-commerce operations for around 3–4 years, mostly around COD orders and courier problems.

Her day-to-day is basically tracking shipments across courier portals, checking why deliveries failed, calling customers, fixing address issues, coordinating with courier offices, updating Excel/WhatsApp groups, following up on reattempts, dealing with returns, etc.

So she knows the ugly operational side of e-commerce much better than I do.

She doesn't run the businesses herself though. She isn't doing ads, product selection, finance, store strategy, etc. She's basically the person making sure orders don't get stuck and disappear. I'm interested in e-commerce too, and I can handle the technical/marketing/sales side if I learn what I need to learn. We can both put around 3–4 hours a day into something, and I personally have a lot more time available right now.

My first thought was something around e-commerce operations, maybe eventually using software/automation to remove some of the repetitive work.

But I'm deliberately trying not to start with "AI agency" or "AI automation" because I don't want to build some bullshit around a buzzword.

Maybe there's a completely non-AI business here. Maybe there's a service opportunity. Maybe COD operations are already a terrible market. I genuinely don't know.

For people who've actually run e-commerce businesses or built something in this space: if you had these two people and their current skills, what would you investigate first?

Especially interested in what problems Pakistani e-commerce businesses are actually willing to pay someone to solve.

I'd rather spend the next month manually solving a real problem for 2–3 businesses than spend six months building an "AI platform" nobody wants.

Hi fam,

As the title says, I am starting a dropshipping business in the US.

Background: I have got the store up and running and the supply chain is sorted. The product is validated, just about to start my first meta ad campaigns. I have designed videos, image sets, carousel for the first campaign.

Looking for advice here on meta ads. If you have ran a similar campaign, what has been your experience, CAC, CPM etc?

Apologies if this isn't the correct sub to ask this question.

Edit: please do not ask me to DM you. Will ignore any dm requests. Share the info here for everyone else to benefit as well. Help the fam grow.

I worked in a startup for 8 months remotely and they are planning to open an office in Multan, they planned on opening one in isl, Lahore, Multan and Karachi ( the list and the possibilities, not in every city yk), so now they are planning on opening their first office from Sargodha.

They already work with international clients and don't have that much worries when it comes to clients but it comes to recruitment especially video editors that they are struggling with and it's the main reason why they want to move to another city with better opportunities and scale their agency. Is it good to start from Multan? I was asked for my opinion but my mind is empty in this case.

Please help me out.

Multan is scaling better in this, but for the marketing agency would they be able to find the talent there. I know there are a lot of people who are working in a startup here and they'd know about locations and analytics of everything better..please lmk. Thanks.

I have 10+ years of e-commerce experience, including working with some of the industry’s biggest players, and I’m looking to invest in and mentor an established e-commerce business.

Ideally, the business should be:

• 2–3+ years old
• Already profitable / have healthy contribution margins
• Have a proven product and customer base
• Have potential for further growth

I can bring capital, e-commerce expertise, mentorship, industry connections, and growth opportunities.

If you’re a founder looking for a strategic partner not just funding , DM me.

Happy to schedule a call and explore if there’s a fit.

Hi! I’m going to Pakistan to be with my husband and I want to start selling PLR/MRR digital products while I’m there.
I was originally planning to use Gumroad, but I found out they have restrictions around reselling other people’s digital products, so now I’m looking for alternatives.
For anyone in Pakistan who sells digital products, what storefront do you use? I’ve been looking at Payhip, but I’m also confused about which payment processors actually work in Pakistan.
I’d love to hear what other people are using and how you receive your payments. I’m pretty new to this, so any advice would be appreciated!

Hi everyone,

I'm building a cloud-based stock management and billing app made specifically for small-to-medium pharmacies in Pakistan — meant to replace the offline desktop software most pharmacies currently run, the kind that's tied to one computer with no backup and no way to check your stock or sales from anywhere else.

What it actually does:

- Tracks your medicines batch by batch, with expiry dates, so nothing gets sold past its expiry and you always know what's running low

- Bills customers at the counter — cash or credit/khata, with a proper running balance for regular customers

- Lets you give staff their own logins with different access levels (a cashier doesn't need to see your cost prices)

- Works from your phone, tablet, or laptop — not tied to one machine

It's real and it works, but it hasn't been used by an actual pharmacy yet — that's exactly what I need now. I'm looking for a small number of pharmacy owners in Pakistan willing to actually run it against their real inventory and billing, and tell me honestly what's broken, what's missing, and what's genuinely useful.

In return: free access for a full year. This becomes a paid monthly subscription once it's out publicly — this is the chance to use it free and help shape what it becomes before that.

I'm onboarding gradually rather than all at once, so it might take a little while to hear back if you reach out — but I read every message.

If you own or manage a pharmacy (or know someone who does) and you're open to trying something new, email me at [your email] with your city and roughly how many products you stock, and I'll follow up.

Happy to answer questions here too.

Guys we have a digital marketing agency and we have been building brands for over 3 years now on Shopify and FBA, recently we launched a small scale initiative where we help small scale investors - people who have 13-15 lacs PKR find a product, build a store, run ads, get revenue within a week

Our profit split with them is simple, we take 50% of the profits since we run it up from scratch while they simply observe how their ads work.

We source products from china and sell to the US only as that's where we had most success.

Yesterday I posted here and my inbox was filled and now we have closed 2 clients for FULL ecom store build up from scratch.

Right now we are providing Shopify store management, ads creation and ABO/CBO marketing strategy, organic sales via SEO/AEO are exploding on some of our businesses because of Gemini and chatgpt since it's a good time to get in. We are interested in helping clients who want to sell in US/EU.

Those who already have a local store be it online or physical, we are more inclined to work with that.

Hi guys,

So, I have a small startup we are at early stages. We are looking for funding and going to VCs. If we don’t secure any funding I was thinking of hiring a small GTM team in Pakistan.

The question is the landscape good enough? And are there genuine GTM specialist that could get paying customers in Asia, middles east and America.

Also I don’t mean agencies. I have had bad experiences with them with no result. Just promising x numbers etc.

I am trying to estimate the financials for Crumble Pakistan across all their branches.
What would be their total annual revenue, gross margin and net margin?
Can anyone in the local F&B or startup space help me give a rough estimate of these numbers?

I was working on a project from months and I have kept it to myself all the time. Now it was near to launch I shared it with a friend to get some advice and the next thing I know they’ve started to work on the same project.
I know this happens a lot but I am not a developer myself. I have worked so hard on it and it feels so bad honestly.
I know the amount of hard-work I’ve put into this will always remain ahead of them but still.
Also I thought you always need a team to launch such saas products.
It is related to trading.
It’s almost complete and ready to ship. If I can get ideas for marketing that would be awesome.
Thanks.

o

Hey everyone! I’m building an online art marketplace in Pakistan and would love some honest feedback on the website and overall operational flow.

I’m especially looking for feedback on the buyer, artist, admin, courier process, potential bottlenecks, unnecessary steps, and what could be automated.

Website: https://artbazaar.pk/

If anyone with experience in e-commerce, marketplaces, operations, or logistics could take a look, I’d really appreciate it. Brutal honesty is welcome!

Hello all, im a founder of a fintech startup and we’re now planning on starting our first preseed fundraise. Technically at our current stage we’re not pre seed bec we started in 2024 and our GTV crossed 1M PKR this year but to keep room for future fundraise and to apply for regulations we’re planning on initiating a pre seed fundraiser so if anyone has reached out to VCs, PEs, Angel networks do tell me how it went and what I should prepare for

So I recently created a simple website that shows Karachi's every cinema timings in one place
Website: https://beta.systemsengineering.pk/
just a fun side project
I would like to hear your guys feedback and website is still not completed yet but its usable

Hi everyone,

I’m a Product Lead & Builder based in Pakistan. Over the past few years, I’ve built and scaled fintech platforms for international markets from here. Now, I'm turning my focus locally to build an inflation-hedged, Shariah-compliant micro-savings/wealthtech product specifically for the Pakistani market.

I hold the technical and product build entirely, but I am looking to connect with people who have experience in: * Pakistani Fintech / Banking Regulations (SECP Sandbox, NBFC/EMI frameworks, or SBP rails)* Financial Compliance & AML / e-KYC* Asset Custody, Vaulting & Banking Partnerships

If you’re a legal/compliance consultant, banking operator, or fellow founder working in this space, I’d love to grab a virtual coffee.

Drop a comment or DM if you're open to connecting!

I am not sure if this is the right platform to post this,
we are in development phase of our Project, looking to buy 8-10 all-in-one desktops. I do not live in Pakistan, and my father (my partner also) in pakistan does not have high knowledge of computers. Was wondering where i can lead him to look for these desktops.
Are there any certified refurbished brands in Pak?
Thank you,