After profiling a new startup every week in Dawn's Tech Talk column for over two years, I felt there was a major flaw as to how the Pakistani ecosystem is talked about.

As far as coverage is concerned, a few well-funded startups make rounds in two or three publications 1/n

before going under the radar again and there too, much of it is mere talk, mostly about vision and those clichéd statements about disruption. If an entity shuts down, there is hardly a way to know what happened to them unless of course you know the founder or an employee. 2/n

More often than not, you won't know if there's a certain startup offering a particular service. No wonder then no one really knows about who is doing what, forget how well for now.

Keeping in mind these, I have built a directory (still evolving) for Pakistan's tech sector 3/n

with the idea of bringing more transparency in the ecosystem. A platform where you can search for startups, filter them by sector or city, check their funding history etc. At the same time, you will get to see some interesting deep dives into the trends at play. 4/n

For this purpose, @ughx3000 and I prepared a 2020 investment roundup for Pakistani startups, which digs into not only how much money was poured into the country but also disaggregate it by city, stage, gender or even foreign education. Factors that insiders have known for 5/n

a long time, yet not discussed enough.

The pictures above have some interesting charts for anyone to understand the local ecosystem. In case you want the PDF, get it from https://bit.ly/2XG8cd8 .

PS: Really hoping y'all would appreciate the name, if not the product. N/n