Pakistan’s e-commerce platform, PriceOye.pk, has raised $7.9 million in a seed funding round led by US-based JAM Fund, it said in a statement. The round, which marks Paypal founder Peter Thiel’s first investment in the country, will help the startup consolidate its position as the leading electronics marketplace in the country.
Other investors in the round include Beenext, an early investor in Indonesian e-commerce giant Tokopedia; DG Daiwa; Mantis VC; HOF Capital, Jet.com’s investor Palm Drive Capital; and Atlas Ventures. Notable unicorn founders Immad Akhud of Mercury Bank and Asif Keshodia of Souq also participated in the round along with existing investors Fatima Gobi Ventures, SOSV and Artistic Ventures.
Launched in 2020 by brothers Adnan Shaffi and Adeel Shaffi, inspired by JD.com in China, PriceOye is a managed marketplace for electronics, providing recommendations based on the consumer’s requirements and helping them make informed purchasing decisions.
The product recommendation engine is used by visitors for product research and has been one of the important drivers for bringing in over 2 million monthly users to the platform.
PriceOye claims to have served 45 million unique users in Pakistan in the last two years, covering 37.5% of the country’s total Internet userbase.
“PriceOye.pk has grown exponentially, posting 500% revenue growth year-on-year [in 2022], making it one of the leading B2C e-commerce players in the country. With the new funding, PriceOye is poised to continue on its growth trajectory, adding new products and categories on the platform and expanding its network of partners,” said the statement.
“Being a managed marketplace helps us solve the trust issue along with our open parcel delivery options,” Adnan Shaffi, co-founder and CEO, told DealStreetAsia.
Shaffi added that the market is big enough for multiple players; however, offline players are a major source of competition. “Currently, we believe our competition is offline players since that’s 96% of the market. We compete with offline players by solving the core issue of trust (which is common in online market) and are becoming a trusted brand in the country.”
PriceOye, however, has managed to penetrate the smartphone market in the country. “We are right now the largest sellers of smartphones in the country with over 2% of entire Samsung sales being routed through our platform,” claimed Shaffi.
Pakistan’s consumer electronics market saw an estimated spend of $8.5 billion in 2020 and has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 7.1% between 2016 and 2020. But the rapid growth has resulted in the influx of subpar counterfeit products too.
PriceOye’s competitors in the space include Ali Baba-owned Daraz, along with online websites of consumer electronic brands.