How Tazah Technologies raised $6.5 million in pre-seed funding

Abrar Bajwa is the CEO & Co-founder of Tazah Technologies, a company helping farmers across Pakistan get a fair price for their produce, solving inefficiencies in Food and Agri supply chain.

What’s the story behind founding your company?

My co-founder and I were working for the ride sharing app Careem, and saw the huge impact the app had on millions of Pakistanis’ mobility needs.

We wanted to solve more problems specific to Pakistan so we started looking deeper into which problems needed solving most. We started to look at the agricultural space and saw major inefficiencies.

The agricultural market in Pakistan is between $60 and $100 billion in total size, which is 20-25% of the GDP, with 40% of the workforce associated with it.

Working in the agricultural sector is close to our hearts because we grew up in agricultural families. We also have the skill set and experience to suit working in the AgroTech space.

During the research phase, we found an overlap in the farm to retail space.

We started a small pilot using our own money and spent a lot of time refining the product.

Now we offer a B2B marketplace that provides access to capital and access to market for millions of farmers. The technology connects farmers directly to businesses where they can sell their produce.

Farmers receive a higher price and more prompt payments for their produce while businesses receive a higher quality of produce and direct to doorstep delivery.

There are so many inefficiencies in the supply chain that cause higher food prices, and lower food quality for the general public. Our technology is changing that.

What are three major mistakes you’ve made on your journey so far?

1. When we first started, we set a very high bar on the quality we would deliver to customers. This led to very high expectations among the customers. Providing that level of quality was not cost effective for us so we had to make some painful adjustments.
2. Another mistake was being too aggressive on serving whatever needs our customers had. We would serve every single order, even if it was very small and didn’t make commercial sense. Soon, we realized that selling very small orders is not only inefficient for our bottom line but also operationally inefficient.
3. The third mistake was from a fundraising perspective. We had a lot of interest in the business but didn’t say no to enough people. We now have a lot of investors and expectations to manage.

The problem with inefficiencies in Pakistan’s agriculture market has always been there but nobody has been able to find a solution to those problems until now. We’ve been able to articulate the problem so that people understand the solution that’s needed.

What are your top successes so far?

When you’re raising funding, your team differentiates you from anyone else and we were very cognizant of this fact when hiring.

1. We brought on people who were better than us so they could raise the bar.
2. We built a very strong team very quickly. Having the right team has helped us with fast growth and with building a sustainable business model.
3. We focused on building a very good product from day one which has helped us create waves in the market, along with a high adoption rate. We were always very focused on building great technology.
4. The early investments we had at the beginning have also been part of our success. We have a lot of top investors in Pakistan as part of our company.

What’s the story behind raising your recent funding round?

So if you’re looking for investment, you need a strong team. You also need to show that your business is serving a large enough problem.

The problem with inefficiencies in Pakistan’s agriculture market has always been there but nobody has been able to find a solution to those problems until now. We’ve been able to articulate the problem so that people understand the solution that’s needed.

Another key aspect to raising $6.5 million in our pre seed round is the amount of growth that we’ve been able to bring in a very short period. Within six months, we have a monthly GMV of $1 million, which is substantial in any market.

Given your funding round, what are your plan and priorities?

Geographical expansion is high on our list of priorities at the moment. Currently we are in three cities. Within six months, we’ve been able to expand into multiple geographies within Pakistan.

We’ve also been expanding our product basket and diversifying the product and its functionalities.

The next step after that is to expand to other markets outside Pakistan.

Thanks for the insights Abrar, we look forward to following your journey.

Looking to raise a round of funding?

If you can build and grow your startup without external funding, then kudos! Keep up the great work!

But for many startups, the reality is that growth isn’t possible without first raising a round of external funding.

• Maybe your startup is super CAPEX intensive?
• Maybe you’ve just validated your MVP and taking the next step will require hiring a team of expensive backend developers?
• Maybe you’ve just hit product-market fit and are ready to invest heavily in growth marketing since you really don’t want to lose your first-mover advantage
• Or maybe you’re growing so ridiculously fast that you need the extra money to scale your hosting bill?

Whatever the reason, sometimes you need that cold hard cash to survive (and thrive).

When there’s equity and big money on the line, just remember to tread with caution.

Talk things through with experts that have years of experience dealing with startup funding issues first hand.