Pakistani Cofounder Becomes Millionaire After Raising More Funding Than All Local Startups Combined

Pakistani entrepreneur Hassan Ahmed, who hails from Peshawar and serves as co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of customer conversation platform Respond.io, has helped secure a $62.5 million Series B funding round for the Malaysia-based startup.

The investment was led by New York growth equity firm Camber Partners, an early backer of companies such as Dropbox and Pipedrive. Existing investors also participated in the round, including Endeavor Catalyst, whose board is chaired by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.

Founded in 2017, Respond.io provides AI-powered software that enables businesses to manage customer conversations across messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Messenger, Telegram, and WeChat. The company serves more than 10,000 businesses in over 180 countries and processes more than 2 billion messages every quarter.

For context, Pakistan-based startups raised approximately $36.6 million in disclosed equity funding across 10 rounds in 2025, according to data from Data Darbar, while a separate report by Invest2Innovate put the total at $74.23 million when including hybrid financing across 11 disclosed deals.

Even at the higher end, the $62.5 million secured by Respond.io, a Malaysia-based company co-founded by a Pakistani, nearly matches or exceeds what the entire local startup ecosystem raised in some recent years.

The figures highlight the gap between capital available to Pakistani founders operating in more mature markets and those building ventures at home, where funding levels remain well below the peaks of $347 million and $331 million recorded in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

Respond.io has grown to $35 million in annual recurring revenue, recording year on year growth of 169 percent while maintaining a profit margin of around 30 percent.

The startup was founded by CEO Gerardo Salandra, Hassan Ahmed, and Chief Operating Officer Iaroslav Kudritskiy in Hong Kong before relocating its headquarters to Kuala Lumpur in 2019.

The fresh capital will be used to expand operations in North America and Europe, invest in hiring, and pursue acquisitions. The company said it is already in discussions with potential acquisition targets in both regions.

While Respond.io is headquartered in Malaysia and is therefore absent from Pakistan’s startup funding databases, the funding round carries significance for Pakistan as Hassan Ahmed is among the country’s few founders to help build a globally scaled technology company backed by prominent international investors.