The Lahore-based startup, Inventhub, has closed an undisclosed amount in a pre-seed funding round led by Fatima Gobi Ventures.
Other investors in the round included Ahmed Habib from Venture.d, Deosai Ventures’ Shehryar Hydri, Arbisoft’s Yasser Bashir, and Abbas Yousafzai of ConradLabs. Returning investors also participated in the round, including Walled City Co.’s Shoaib Zahid, Kashif Shakoor, and Anees Khawaja, along with Draper University Ventures’ Tim Draper, Redis Labs’ Taimur Rashid, and UBS Hong Kong’s Tayyab Malik.
Over the past two years, the Pakistani startup ecosystem has seen exponential growth, with startups raising more than $300 million in 2021 alone. However, much of this funding was concentrated in three major sectors, i.e., e-commerce, logistics, and fintech.
Led by co-founders, Usama Abid, a hardware product designer, and Usman Maqsood, software engineer, Inventhub is a secure web-based collaboration platform for electronics product development.
This investment will help develop Inventub’s aim of democratizing the process of electronics product design thus improving product quality and providing a faster time to market.
Usama Abid, stated,
The electronics industry is made up of fragmented and siloed processes, making it difficult for individuals and smaller startups to develop new products. The explosion of digital products has also led to a new level of personalization and customization. Managing the necessary steps – from components procurement and design to manufacturing, assembly, and distribution – is time-consuming and complex.
The CEO and co-founder went on to add, “Inventhub is here to change the game for developers: providing a remote-based collaboration of electronics design resources, improving productivity as well as streamlining data organization and shareability. Now, multiple designers, developers, and project owners can work cohesively across different project components including bills of material and partner resources.
Co-founder, Usman Maqsood, also commented,
With an acceleration in remote work, processes have evolved to allow for a new wave of change on how we collaborate. This funding for Inventhub will be used to fill the gap from proof of concept to production within the electronic design industry.
At the occasion, General Partner at Fatima Gobi Ventures, Ali Mukhtar, remarked,
Typically, a startup ecosystem takes five to 10 years to draw investments in more sophisticated tech solutions. Just two years in, this funding round by Inventhub is a sign that Pakistan is far ahead of that curve, thanks to the country’s massive tech talent. FGV’s backing of Inventhub is, we hope, the first of many investments in Pakistan’s advanced tech space.
Inventhub’s version control with access management allows the platform to be integrated with any existing ECAD tool. Since it was first introduced in 2018, the startup has seen massive active user growth with over 45 minutes of usage time per session every week. The main focus of the startup is to ramp up marketing efforts to build community and work with B2B consumers to improve the platform.
