PriceOye.pk, a Pakistani eCommerce platform, announced on Tuesday it has raised $7.9 million in a seed funding round led by US-based JAM Fund.
Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, made his first investment in the Pakistani market, as did Beenext, an early investor in Indonesian e-commerce platform Tokopedia, DG Daiwa, Mantis VC, HOF Capital, Jet.com’s investor Palm Drive Capital, Atlas Ventures, Immad Akhund of Mercury Bank, and Asif Keshodia of Souq, in addition to previous investors Fatima Gobi Ventures, SOSV
PriceOye, founded by Adnan and Adeel Shaffi, claims to have achieved 500 percent revenue growth year on year and hopes to maintain this pace by introducing new products and categories to the platform and increasing its partner network.
“PriceOye is a regulated marketplace for electronics that offers recommendations based on the consumer’s needs, helping them in making informed purchasing decisions.” The product recommendation engine is used for product research by users and has been one of the main drivers in bringing over two million monthly users to PriceOye.pk’s platform, according to a press release.
The prevalence of counterfeit products and pricing differences, which result in a fractured buying experience for the majority of Pakistani buyers, is one of the largest challenges with shopping for consumer electronics in Pakistan.” “Through its recommendations system, PriceOye’s managed marketplace not only provides access to real products at excellent rates, but it also helps users make better shopping selections,” Adnan Shaffi, co-founder and CEO of PriceOye, was quoted as saying in the release.
“PriceOye was thus created to offer transparency and convenience to the purchasing experience, and it currently has the greatest net promoter score, which gauges consumer experience and loyalty.” “As we prepare for the next phase of expansion, we are pleased to collaborate with new investors who have placed their trust in us,” he added.
According to the press release, there is currently no national network of specialized electronics stores in Pakistan, such as BestBuy in the United States or Croma in India. “Approximately 50% of consumer electronics are sold online in the United States, whereas the purchasing experience for buyers in the Pakistani market, which is largely offline, is utterly fragmented.”
It further stated that Pakistan’s consumer electronics sector is expected to spend $8.5 billion in 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of 7.1 percent between 2016 and 2020.
