Approach
Partner – Build – Grow
01.
Enigma & Our Vision
Enigma is a Venture Capital Fund with a focus on technology companies in Pakistan. It is a sector agnostic fund specialising in investment and acceleration of tech start-ups founded in Pakistan.
Pakistan’s market potential is humungous for tech start-ups given its sizable population & vastly untapped sectors. Though generous VC money, both foreign & local, has been deployed in the tech sector recently, that has hardly generated any notable success stories so far. While this lacklustre performance of both the industry & investments can be attributed to several factors, lack of strategic guidance to the founders and the resulting ineffective & unchecked capital deployment is perhaps the major contributor.
Our core strength of decades long first-hand experience of building & running multiple successful start-ups & companies including the largest E-commerce company in Pakistan, gives us the unique advantage to provide start-ups with the right strategic support, guidance & vision to help them accelerate into becoming phenomenal success stories.
We understand the challenges and opportunities in the space very clearly from both the start-ups as well as VC perspective and have the requisite skill set, experience, and tools to break this Pakistani start-up enigma. Enigma is not just another VC Fund; it is here to uplift the start-up ecosystem of the country with Enigma at the helm of it.
02.
Market
Pakistan is the 5th most populated country in the world with around 65% of the population under the age of 30 as per UN published figures. That is a staggering number of people who have grown up in the digital age and understand digital technologies reasonably well. Owing to this large young populace, the country boasts 194 million mobile phone connections & a sizable audience of 124 million people with access to internet through 4G and broadband. From purchasing power perspective, not all 124 million internet users are ready to be tapped, but even a smaller segment who are ready out of this large pie still provides a huge market potential due to their sheer numbers.
Over the last few years, reasonable progress has been happening in Pakistan in the tech industry. For instance, in the logistics and payments sectors many startups are trying to solve use cases which are unique to the country. Although these two sectors in Pakistan provide tremendous potential to build great technology companies, we aren’t seeing a lot of successes happening here. It is not the market potential which is hindering success. Market is ready & ripe for picking. It just needs the right founders with the right mindset to build great companies to tap its humongous potential. We know this because we have done this first-hand!
03.
Process
Start-up ecosystem in Pakistan is at a Nascent Stage. Amid thousands of start-ups operating in Pakistan today, only limited ones are worth investing in. Even those need a lot of strategic guidance and nurturing on how to scale effectively and rapidly. In Developed Markets, the traditional approach of investments works well as the quantity and quality of start-ups is very high. This is not the case for Pakistan and the traditional Vc-nomics approach usually doesn’t bode well here.
Based upon our first-hand experience in building start-ups in Pakistan, we have developed our own proprietary methods & models to identify start-ups worthy of investments, carry out due diligence, provide post investment strategic support & guidance, and help them to accelerate for incredible growth.
We have successfully deployed a model of “leadership as a service” for building strong rapport and bond among the top leadership in various ventures. We plan to replicate the same tested & tried approach in the start-ups where we invest, so we work as strong partners with the core team & founders, build rapport and impart strategic advice enabling them to super-charge their vision and accelerate on the path of success.