Emergent business patronage.

Byline: ALI HAIDER

Profile

Ahsan Ali Khan is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Zaraye, a B2B raw materials marketplace helping manufacturers with their procurement. Ahsan, along with his co-founder, founded Zaraye in late 2021. Prior to founding Zaraye, Ahsan spent his career with notable tech startups in Pakistan.

He has experience across e-commerce marketplaces, health tech, ride-hailing, and mass transit while working with organizations like Dawaai, Careem, Daraz and Swvl.

In his last stint, before joining Zaraye, Ahsan helped Swvl launch Karachi as their 6th market and then moved on to lead the inter-city travel category across Pakistan.

Ahsan has an education background in business administration and an under-graduate from IBA Karachi.

PAGE: Please tell us a little about yourself and what inspired you to become an entrepreneur?

Ahsan Ali Khan: I graduated from IBA in 2016 and started my career with notable tech startups here. I worked with multiple e-commerce marketplaces in health tech, ride-hailing, and mass transit while working with organizations like Dawaai, Careem, Daraz, and Swvl. My last stint was at Swvl where I launched their 6th market and moved on to lead the inter-city travel category across Pakistan.

There are two major things that pushed me to become an entrepreneur:

Despite having so much potential and 1000s of amazing family businesses for decades, why is Pakistan unable to create category defining global businesses. Zaraye is an effort to help our local businesses be that.

For a place riddled with so many problems, the number of people solving structural problems with a long-term lens are clearly far less than what we need.

The vision is to solve these problems and be an organization that can inspire people within and outside to be impactful problem solvers.

PAGE: How did the idea of Zaraye come about?

Ahsan Ali Khan: Zaraye was created with the intention of establishing an organization that is truly committed to solving problems and positively impacting people's lives. My co-founder Taha Teli and I identified a significant gap in the market for the comprehensive and thoughtful distribution of raw materials across various categories. We observed that business owners have bigger concerns and need to focus more on manufacturing and sales, rather than worrying about sourcing their raw materials, which can be a traditional and unruly marketplace. For instance, an exporter of textiles would benefit from...