Fatima Gobi Ventures led a pre-seed fundraising round for Inventhub, a secure web-based collaboration platform for electronics product creation in Pakistan.
Ahmed Habib of Venture.d, Shehryar Hydri of Deosai Ventures, Yasser Bashir of Arbisoft, and Abbas Yousafzai of ConradLabs were among the new investors that attended the pre-seed. Shoaib Zahid, Kashif Shakoor, and Anees Khawaja of Walled City Co, Tim Draper of Draper University Ventures, Taimur Rashid of Redis Labs, and Tayyab Malik of UBS Hong Kong are among the existing investors who have returned to support the company in this round.
In the last two years, Pakistan has experienced a surge in interest, with Bloomberg reporting that Pakistani entrepreneurs raised over $300 million in 2021 alone. However, much of the prior fundraising frenzy was focused on high-volume, mass-market areas like e-commerce, logistics, and fintech.
The latest round of funding from Inventhub shows that Pakistan’s startup ecosystem is progressing at a rapid pace, with firms in the advanced to deep tech categories receiving funding momentum.
Inventhub was founded in 2019 by hardware product designer Usama Abid and software developer Usman Maqsood with the goal of democratizing the electronics product design process, resulting in higher product quality and shorter time to market.
Inventhub’s co-founder and CEO, Usama Abid, stated,
“The electronics industry is made up of fragmented and siloed processes, making it difficult for individuals and smaller startups to develop new products. The explosion of digital products has also led to a new level of personalization and customization. Managing the necessary steps – from components procurement and design, to manufacturing, assembly, and distribution – is time-consuming and complex.
“Inventhub is here to change the game for developers: providing a remote-based collaboration of electronics design resources, improving productivity as well as streamlining data organization and shareability. Now, multiple designers, developers and project owners can work cohesively across different project components including bills of material and partner resources,” he added.
Inventhub users begin by importing their electronics design files from various sources to the cloud. Stakeholders are then added to the platform for collaboration, allowing for a seamless exchange of data via various tools such as visualization, annotation, versioning, real-time updates, releases, bill of materials, and partner spaces. The platform enables designers, engineers, manufacturers, procurement, suppliers, and distributors to coordinate their work.
The site also functions as a catch-all design database for hardware design resources produced and backed by a community, thanks to Inventhub’s powerful development capabilities. Inventhub aspires to be the world’s largest community-supported design database and hardware resource search engine.
Ali Mukhtar, General Partner for FGV, said,
“Typically, a startup ecosystem takes five to 10 years to draw investments in more sophisticated tech solutions. Just two years in, this funding round by Inventhub is a sign that Pakistan is far ahead of that curve, thanks to the country’s massive tech talent. FGV’s backing of Inventhub is, we hope, the first of many investments in Pakistan’s advanced tech space.”
Usman Maqsood, Co-founder and CTO of Inventhub, said,
“With an acceleration in remote work, processes have evolved to allow for a new wave of change on how we collaborate. This funding for Inventhub will be used to fill the gap from proof of concept to production within the electronic design industry.”
Inventhub’s platform includes version control and access management, making it compatible with existing ecad software. With over 45 minutes of usage time per session each week and commercial validation from a rising paying customer base, Inventhub has seen enormous active user growth. The current aim is to increase marketing efforts in order to grow the community and work with B2B customers to develop the platform.
For more information, please visit www.inventhub.io or contact Usama at press@inventhub.io.
