Founder Pakistan

Mobility Startup BusCaro raises $500k in an angel round

BusCaro a Mobility startup based in Karachi, Pakistan recently announced a $500k angel round, angel investors in the round include Kashif Rehman of Hefezat Technologies, Safee Shah of Byte, Muhammad Yusuf Jan of Dot Zero Ventures, and others.

BusCaro was launched in July 2022 by Maha Shahzad, an industry veteran of over 13 years in companies such as Foodpanda, Careem, and Swvl where she led the Pakistani division as a general manager playing a role in achieving significant revenue growth while paving the way towards profitability.

The mobility market in Pakistan is worth approximately $7 billion according to several reports, With rising fuel prices and little to no public transport in metropolitan cities like Karachi, it creates an opportunity for players to move into this market.

The mobility space in Pakistan currently includes players such as Uber-owned Careem, InDrive, and Bykea. Players in the past such as Airlift technologies and Swvl have tried to get ground in this space but had no luck.

A variety of reasons were behind the failure of players in this space such as price wars which drove the prices of supply up, Unhealthy economics, High user acquisition costs, and Misplaced focus where players only focused on an ad-hoc demand, whereas Pakistan has a use case of subscription-based model in the offline sector.

The startup plans to learn from the work done by past players in this space and aims to do things differently in this space. BusCaro is currently operational in Karachi and is adding new vehicles to its fleet, BusCaro also plans to expand into other metropolitan cities like Lahore and Islamabad.

While speaking to Founder Pakistan Maha Shahzab also mentioned that the startup is also running an ancillary vertical where it plans to earn revenue through advertising. She also mentioned that the startup has positive unit economics, high LTV/CAC ratios, and solid customer retention.

The mobility space of Pakistan has recently gone through a shift where Uber decided to exit all the cities except Lahore. The company is still operational through its subsidiary Careem which it bought for a sum of $3 Billion in 2019.

With a population of 220 million, it is predictable mobility sector in Pakistan will only grow players like BusCaro and other mobility players will change the map of the market.