Maqsad Secures $2.8 Million Funding After Surpassing 1 Million Users

Maqsad, Pakistan’s leading edtech, has announced a $2.8 million seed round led by Speedinvest and returning investor Indus Valley Capital.

The oversubscribed round also had participation from Stellar Capital, Alter Global, Johann Jenson (SVP Product at GoStudent), and other strategic angels, according to an official statement released by the startup.

Incoming investor Speedinvest is one of Europe’s largest seed funds and already has an edtech unicorn in its portfolio, Vienna-based GoStudent. Philip Specht, a partner at Speedinvest, said in a statement,

We invested in Maqsad because we see the potential for it to touch the lives of millions of students and disrupt the education ecosystem. We are incredibly impressed by Rooshan and Taha as team builders and believe Maqsad is on track to be one of the most successful businesses in Pakistan”.

Founded in 2021 by Rooshan Aziz and Taha Ahmed, Maqsad aims to make education accessible for 100 million Pakistani students via an end-to-end learning mobile platform that provides teaching, testing, and query resolution for grades 9 to 12. In the last six months, the Maqsad app has been downloaded over a million times, answered 4 million student queries, and has consistently ranked as the #1 education app in Pakistan on the Google Play Store.

Education presents a substantial opportunity in Pakistan, with a forecasted annual spend of $37 billion by 2032. A quarter of this goes towards after-school academic support that is often expensive and difficult to access. “Maqsad offers an exceptional learning experience for students at a fraction of the cost,” said Taha. “Our focus on student problems is at the core of our mission, and we’ve collected feedback from over 20,000 students and teachers across Pakistan to ensure learning outcomes are being achieved”.

Indus Valley Capital’s founder Aatif Awan explained why they doubled down:

We first invested in Maqsad 18 months ago before they had a product or a team. We were compelled by the vision Rooshan and Taha had for education in Pakistan. Investing again in Maqsad is a no-brainer as we have seen them bring together one of the best startup teams in Pakistan to build a category-leading product that has helped over a million students”.

Pakistan also has one of the highest student-teacher ratios in the world, with only 1 teacher for every 44 students. Maqsad’s query-solving technology (“DoubtSolve”) and interactive testing resolve a key problem for students without ready access to quality instructors.

Rooshan added,

We recently enhanced our assessment feature, which allows students to self-evaluate confidently, and witnessed consistent 150%+ month-on-month growth in questions attempted.

The capital from this funding round, which brings Maqsad’s all-time capital raised to $4.9 million and positions the company as Pakistan’s best-funded edtech, will be used primarily to expand the subject offering and supercharge the tech behind the platform. “We’re laser-focused on delivering a personalized learning experience at scale and have a number of exciting AI-based initiatives in the pipeline,” said the founders.

While currently a purely B2C platform, Maqsad’s long-term vision is to embed itself across the education ecosystem. The company has already received interest from private and public sector institutions for potential partnerships.