Rozee, Pakistan’s largest employment platform, announced today that Shahid Hosain Kazi has joined as its new Chief Executive Officer.
Shahid Kazi joins Rozee from Finca Microfinance Bank where he served as Chief Operating Officer and until recently was also Acting CEO. Kazi has 27 years of digital technology and financial services experience.
While at FINCA, Kazi oversaw the launch of Pakistan’s first smartphone wallet SimSim, built in partnership with Finja, a fintech co-founded by Rahman. Kazi also helped the bank revolutionize loans to small businesses.
The average time to disburse a loan was reduced from 7 days to 24 hours by digitizing the bank’s 1,000 person strong field sales team. Previously, Kazi served as SEVP Corporate and Transaction Banking at Habib Metropolitan Bank overseeing a large portfolio of corporate financing and business transaction products.
Rahman will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board working with Kazi on strategy and product evolution. He led Rozee to become Pakistan’s first venture capital-funded startup in 2008 and pioneered moving job ads from print to digital in one of the first large-scale transitions in the country to the digital economy.
Under his leadership, Rozee has grown to help 10 Million professionals with 65,000 hiring managers on its platform. Over 40,000 job applications are submitted each day on Rozee. Rahman also co-founded Finja with Qasif Shahid and Umer Munawar, which is today Pakistan’s largest dual-licensed digital lending fintech which contributes to 8% of the country’s SME loans annually.
Rahman currently leads Dukan as Co-Founder and CEO, a company he started 8 months ago. Dukan is a full-stack e-commerce operating system digitizing MSMEs and their supply chains, currently used by over 300,000 sellers.
“I am proud to hand over the reins of Rozee to Kazi, someone I admire deeply. During our association of over a decade, we have innovated, disrupted, and built success together. Kazi’s expertise in financial technology and services, along with managing complex operations and large sales organizations, will be invaluable for the next leg of Rozee’s evolution,” said Monis Rahman, Chairman and Co-Founder of Rozee.
Kazi, Rozee’s incoming CEO, added, “I am very excited to join Rozee, which today is Pakistan’s largest platform connecting salaried professionals to corporate clients. Rozee’s mission of enhancing the well-being of hard-working professionals through career and financial wellness is something I am truly passionate about. I very much look forward to working with Monis again to create breakthrough innovation, as we have done in the past together.”
Rozee is profitable, has been growing 40% year on year, and previously raised a total of $9.5 Million in venture capital funding across several rounds.