Forbes Asia has named two Pakistani startups to its “100 To Watch” list

Forbes Asia has named Pakistani startups DealCart and NayaPay to its Asia 100 To Watch List. This list highlights small businesses and startups that are on the rise in the Asia-Pacific area.

On this year’s list are companies from 16 countries and territories that work in 10 different fields, such as finance, manufacturing, energy, and enterprise technology and robotics. This year, India has the most companies there with twenty. Singapore is next with fifteen, then mainland China with ten, Japan with nine, and Indonesia with eight.

DealCart is an online shopping store for Pakistan’s growing middle class. It was founded in 2022 and is based in Karachi.

People can buy fresh fruits and vegetables, snacks, laundry detergents, and other small items. DealCart also lets small grocery shops sell things to reach more customers. Forbes said that in July, $3.5 million was raised in a seed round of funding led by Shorooq Partners in Abu Dhabi and Sturgeon Capital in London.

NayaPay is a fintech company that was started in 2016 and runs a payments processing platform in Pakistan. Its goal is to help individuals and businesses do business digitally.

The NayaPay app lets you use an e-wallet, a virtual bank card, and make online payments. NayaPay also has point-of-sale devices that can be put in stores for companies. Forbes Asia says that Zoyn Capital, MSA Novo, and Graph Ventures led a seed funding round in 2022 that gave the fintech company $13 million.

Forbes Asia asked for online nominations and also asked accelerators, incubators, colleges, venture capitalists, and other groups to name companies for the 100 to Watch list. The companies had to be privately owned, based in the Asia-Pacific area, make money, and have no more than $50 million in annual sales and $100 million in total funding through August 7 in order to be considered.

The Forbes Asia team looked at each submission and considered things like how it would affect and contribute to their industry and area, how well it would fit the market, how innovative it was, how long it had been growing revenues consistently, and how easy it would be to get funding.