Khareed – an enterprise e-procurement software that facilitates B2B procurement in
Pakistan – was accepted into Silicon Valley-based accelerator Founder’s Embassy summer
2019 program, making it the first and only Pakistani startup to be selected in the program’s
history.
Founder’s Embassy is a highly selective San Francisco-based accelerator seeking
international startups that have already gained strong traction in their home markets. The
accelerator evaluated more than 400 startups from more than 50 countries to select eight
companies to join its program this year.
The program is a 2-week immersive Silicon Valley experience where founders receive an
intensive regimen of workshops and trainings, connect with VCs, and are mentored by
established Bay Area entrepreneurs and experts from Linked In, Tech Crunch, and Asana,
among others. At the end of the program, Khareed presented its enterprise solution to an
audience of over a hundred venture capitalists and received high praise for its intuitively
designed and automated enterprise solution for emerging markets.
“I think Khareed was selected because of our strong focus on innovation,” says CTO Hamad
Malik. “We use artificial intelligence to automate the procurement process and we use
design-thinking to make our interface as simple as possible.”
Founded in 2016, Khareed provides enterprise-grade solutions that are tailored for the
unique challenges in emerging markets. “For too long companies in Pakistan have been
paying for expensive software designed for use in Western markets,” says Farhan Shamir,
Head of Business Development at Khareed. “We have developed Khareed to address the
specific challenges here in Pakistan and neighboring countries.”
The company has come a long way over the past 3 years– Khareed is deployed at some of
the largest companies in Pakistan, including Bestway Cement, MCB Bank, Monnoo
Industries, and many others across nearly all industry sectors. CEO Haroon Sethi has even
greater aspirations and the immersive experience in Silicon Valley has strengthened his
resolve: “Our goal is to become the region’s number one software for e-procurement.
Founder’s Embassy helped me think big and gave me the tools to make this happen,” he
explains.
At Founder’s Embassy, Khareed was joined by startups from Switzerland, Australia, Canada,
India, Bulgaria and Latvia. “I was fortunate to be part of a group of smart, creative people,”
says Haroon. “One of the most valuable things I took away was the strong relationships I
built with other international founders and how much I learned from them. The value of
these long-term friendships is incalculable.”
