UAE-Based NextGenI Closes an Acquihire deal with Pakistani Startup Roshni Rides

(MENAFN- Hira Saeed) Roshni Rides, a Pakistan-based leading tech startup that provides a carpooling solution specifically to children and women has recently acqui-hired talent from NextGenI, a UAE-based leading consulting firm that specializes in building technology product teams for clients in Western Europe, GCC, and Pakistan.

Announced at DotZero Karachi, Pakistan, NextGenI’s Founder Farzal Dojki kick-started the ceremony by reminiscing his invigorating journey of working with startups and building their technology team over the past five years. While talking to the press, he shared “We operate on an acquihire model - we build a dual-shore tech team in 4 to 12 weeks, assign a potential CTO and run the team for 12 to 36 months until Series A or Series B; this triggers acquihire & transfers the day to day running of the team to the principal. We’ve now executed 4 such acquihires since 2015, and currently, operate teams for 8 Seed-stage startups”.

The trend of acqui-hiring talent for startups is relatively new especially in Pakistan where one company ‘Aqui-hires’ the talent from another company to build an in-house team, mainly to scale the product faster than they would otherwise by painstakingly hiring each individual team member.

Now ready to grow and scale their product, Roshni Rides’ Co-founder, Moneeb continued the talk by sharing how it was a huge responsibility on the shoulders of four fresh graduates (the team) when they were given 1 Million USD from the Hult prize to build an impactful business.

CEO and Founder of Roshni Rides, Gia Farooqi also shared her views to transform the commuter space in Pakistan. "Roshni Rides holds a vision to transform the commuter space in Pakistan. Working alongside partners like NGI is what has enabled us to make leaps of progress over the last year. As we head to the next stage in our business, we will continue to align partners with the same merit and commitment to a better Pakistan," Farooqi shared with the press.

The team being acqui-hired also shared their experience working on the Roshni Rides platform. “It was not just an ordinary software development work but a great learning experience. As a team, we all are very proud to be a part of a startup that is solving an important problem for women in our country,” shared Bari, a software engineer from the acqui-hired team.

For Pakistan, this is a really positive development for tech founders and investors looking at Pakistan as a hub for high-quality software development talent. Just over the course of the last three years, Pakistan became home to Unicorns like Affinity, Careem, and KeepTruckin and soon after that, this acqui-hire deal of Roshni Rides with NextGenI is a refreshing step for new startups to follow.

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