Lahore-based startup Zarya is a digital wholesale platform for social sellers & retailers, which aims to redefine the narrative for smaller business vendors. While building a comprehensive servicing package on-demand via a seamless platform, Zarya’s objective is to eliminate the friction smaller-scale sellers face in sourcing products, arranging the delivery, and collecting payment. This allows sellers to maximize their earnings by giving them more time to focus on sales.
The concept of social selling was initially pioneered by India-based startup Meesho and has been adapted by multiple startups from emerging markets ever since, including Brimore and Taager from Egypt.
According to the Zarya’s co-founder Faisal Zahid:
Supplying online sellers’ products at wholesale rate makes more sense because it’s not easy for online sellers to go and pick products up from the wholesale market and then sell them online. It can become expensive which can mess up their unit economics.
What is Zarya?
Zarya is a business-to-business social commerce platform based in Lahore. It recognizes itself as a digital wholesaler within the broader eCommerce domain through which sellers, primarily online, and offline, can directly source products from the Zarya application and sell them to people in their network.
A major chunk of the platform’s customer base are housewives, who are looking to earn additional income from the comfort of their homes.
Founded back in early 2021, Zarya allows small sellers to utilize its platform for sourcing a variety of products for sale. It supervises and manages the entire process, from goods sourcing to delivery and payment, and transfers each seller’s profit after a deal has been completed.
Background of the Founders
The founders of the app are two brothers, Faisal and Saad Zahid. Both of whom have had extensive industry experience.
Faisal Zahid
Faisal is an alumnus of Imperial College London. He completed his bachelor’s as an Information Systems Engineering major and joined Elixir technologies in 2011, as Manager – of technology products. After this, he joined Dubai – based firm, Soltius Middle East as Product Manager – Mobile Applications & Business Intelligence.
Then 2015 onwards, he got affiliated with some big names like Careem, Dubai – based, Derq, Nana, and Co-founded Zarya with his business partner and brother in 2021.
Saad Zahid
Zahid graduated from Imperial College London with a Masters’s in Mechanical Engineering, back in 2009. After completing his maters, he started his career as an Executive Director at Dost Steels Ltd.
Then in 2021, along with his brother, he co-founded and launched the Zarya App.
Funding Raised
Pre-seed Funding: Raised $1.7 million
In 2021, the startup raised $1.7 million in pre-seed funding round from international and local venture capitalists.
The round was led by Saudi Arabia-based Raed Ventures with participation from:
- Fatima Gobi Ventures
- US-based Class 5 Global
- Global Founders Capital
Discussing the round of investments in a statement, co-founder Zarya remarked:
Pakistan has over 100 million YouTube and 45 million Facebook users. Pakistan’s social media users are spending more than 3 hours per day on social media Apps. If you’re spending so much time online, it’s quite natural to start buying and selling while on social media Apps. We aim to give our sellers every opportunity to thrive in this environment.
Future Plans
Presently, the application comprises at least 3,000 items, out of which most items are women’s and children’s clothing. However, in the future, the platform plans to further expand to include items of different categories, e.g., makeup, socks, shoes, abayas, and home textiles.
According to Faisal, their ambitions for Zarya are not restricted to Pakistan only, they will be launching the platform in international markets as well like the Middle East.
