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Taha Ahmed and Rooshan Aziz quit their jobs in strategy consulting and investment banking in London earlier this year to found a mobile-only education platform startup, Maqsad, in Pakistan with the aim of “Make education more accessible to 100 million Pakistani students. . “
Growing up in Karachi, childhood friends Ahmed and Aziz are aware of the challenges of the Pakistani education system, which is especially worse for those who do not live in large urban areas (the country’s student-teacher ratio is 44: 1 ). Pakistani children are less likely to go to school for every kilometer of distance between school and home – with girls affected four times, said Maqsad co-founder Aziz.
Maqsad today announced its $ 2.1 million pre-seed round to enhance the growth of its content platform and invest in R&D.
The pre-seed cycle, which ended in just three weeks via virtual meetings, was led by Indus Valley Capital, with participation from Alter Global, Fatima Gobi Ventures and several angel investors from Pakistan, Middle East and Europe.
Maqsad will use the product to develop internal content, such as production studios, academics and animators, as well as to strengthen R&D and engineering, Aziz told TechCrunch. The company will focus on Kindergarten to Grade 12 education in Pakistan, including Grade 11 and 12 math, with the intention of expanding to other STEM subjects over the next two years, a Aziz said.
Maqsad’s platform, which provides a one-stop-shop for extracurricular academic content in a mix of English and Urdu, will be complemented by quizzes and other gamified features that will come together to deliver personalized education to individuals. Its platform features include adaptive testing that changes the difficulty level of a question based on user responses, Aziz explained.
The word “maqsad” means goal in Urdu.
“We believe everyone has a goal. Maqsad’s mission is to enable Pakistani students to achieve this goal; whether you are a student from an urban center, like Lahore, or a remote village in Sindh: Maqsad believes in equal opportunities for all, ”said Aziz.
“We are building a mobile platform first, given that 95% of broadband users in Pakistan use mobile. Most other platforms are not optimized for mobile, ”Aziz added.
“It’s not just about getting students to pass their exams. We want to start a revolution in the way Pakistani students learn, moving beyond rote memorization to a place of real understanding, ”said co-founder Taha Ahmed, who was a former strategy consultant at LEK .
The company ran small pilot projects in April and May and started full-scale operations on July 26, Aziz said, adding that Maqsad will launch its mobile app, currently under development, in the coming months in the fourth quarter. 2021 and has a waiting list for early access.
“The struggles of the students during the first days of the pandemic motivated us to launch a pilot project. With promising initial traction and user feedback, the scale of the opportunity to digitize the education sector has become very clear, ”said Aziz.
The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the education industry, heating up global edtech startups that have made online education more accessible to a wider population, for example in countries like India and Indonesia , said Aziz.
The size of the education market in Pakistan is estimated at $ 12 billion and is expected to reach $ 30 billion by 2030, according to Aziz.
He plans to turn the company into a hybrid center offering online and offline courses like Byju’s and Aakash, and expand adult courses like MasterClass, US-based adult online courses like its long-term plans, Aziz said.
“The deep understanding of the problem by the founders of Maqsad, their unique approach to solving it and their passion for impact quickly won us over,” said founder and managing partner of Indus Valley Capital, Aatif Awan.
“Pakistan’s edtech opportunity is one of the largest in the world and we are delighted to support Maqsad in delivering technology-based education that levels access, quality and across Pakistan’s youth and creates lasting social change, ”Ali Mukhtar, general partner of Fatima Gobi Ventures mentioned.
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