Saad Jangda's career before Bazaar reads like a tour of the products that shaped the 2010s. After a BA in economics at the University of Michigan he joined Snapchat in New York in 2016 as a product manager, according to his Alter Global profile. He then moved to Dubai and Careem, first on Careem for Business and then as one of the founding product managers of Careem NOW, the food delivery service that helped turn the ride hailing company into a super app.
In June 2020 he returned to his home city of Karachi and cofounded Bazaar Technologies with Hamza Jawaid, a friend since middle school. Today he leads product at a company that began as a procurement marketplace for neighbourhood grocery stores and now sits between retail, credit and payments. His own distinctive contribution was a free app for keeping accounts.
That app, Easy Khata, was never the business. It was the way in. By the company's account it gave Bazaar something that most Pakistani retailers had never had from a supplier: a reason to open the app every day, and a view into how each shop was run.
From Snapchat to Careem NOW
Jangda spent more than two and a half years at Careem, MENAbytes reported when Bazaar announced its pre seed round on 1 June 2020. Careem NOW was a food delivery service built inside a ride hailing company, and its founding team had to bring a second business to an existing customer base. It is a useful apprenticeship for what came next, which was building a second and third product for a shopkeeper who already used the first.
His partner Jawaid had been a management consultant at McKinsey. MENAbytes said the two went to middle school together and were roommates in Dubai. Announcing the move home, Jangda spoke about talent.
“So much of Pakistan's best talent has helped build great products and companies globally.”
A pre seed round on Zoom
Bazaar was less than two months old when it announced $1.3 million, described as Pakistan's largest pre seed round. Indus Valley Capital, the fund started by the former LinkedIn growth executive Aatif Awan, led it, and Alter Global, a Silicon Valley fund for emerging markets, made its first Pakistan investment. MENAbytes said the deal was closed entirely on Zoom in under two weeks, and that the founders had a term sheet ten days after their first pitch.
The first product was a mobile app that connected small grocery retailers, the kiryana stores of Karachi, to wholesalers and manufacturers. They could order staples, tea, drinks and other fast moving goods with free next day delivery. The model was asset light, using on demand drivers and monthly transporters rather than owned vehicles, and a closed pilot had begun a few weeks earlier, during the Covid 19 lockdown. Operations were limited to Karachi, with Lahore named as the next city.
A ledger before a marketplace
Easy Khata, a free digital bookkeeping app in Urdu, launched in early 2021. According to KrAsia, it had more than 100,000 active merchants from 400 cities and towns within a little over a month, long before Bazaar's delivery vans reached most of them.
“Traditional retail in Pakistan still has not seen technology play a major role in the value chain.”
The khata is the paper ledger in which shopkeepers record what customers owe. A free app that replaced it asked for nothing but a phone and gave the shopkeeper something concrete in return. It also gave Bazaar a list of merchants and a view of their trading.
What the funnel was for
When Bazaar raised its $30 million Series A in August 2021, TechCrunch reported that the company had served more than 750,000 merchants since launch, with 90 percent retention. The round was reported as the largest Series A in Pakistan, led by Defy Partners of Silicon Valley, for which it was the first Pakistan investment, and Wavemaker Partners of Singapore. Acrew Capital, Saison Capital, Zayn Capital and B&Y Venture Partners joined, as did existing backers including Indus Valley Capital, Global Founders Capital and Alter Global. By then the marketplace was live in Karachi and Lahore, Easy Khata was live nationwide, and a buy now, pay later product was in testing, with the company claiming full repayment so far.
TechCrunch described Bazaar as a blend of India's Udaan and Khatabook, and said the founders wanted it to become a retail operating system for Pakistan. Jangda was candid about why the company was not chasing consumers directly.
“The B2C market is still developing, so there is not so much demand from the consumer side yet.”
The logic was that the shopkeeper was the customer who already existed. A merchant who tracked credit given to customers would also want to buy stock, and later to borrow against sales. Each step used what the previous one had learned.
Credit, cash and the last mile
By the time Tiger Global and Dragoneer co led a $70 million Series B in March 2022, taking Bazaar's total funding past $100 million, Jangda told TechCrunch that Easy Khata had more than 2.4 million registered businesses across 500 cities. TechCrunch reported that merchants had recorded more than $10 billion in annualised transactions on the app. These were the company's own figures, and the magazine has not verified them.
The marketplace itself was in 21 towns and cities with a dozen fulfilment facilities, and the company said it was adding three or four cities a month. Bazaar Credit offered short term working capital loans to merchants who were often unbanked and turned away by banks for lack of a credit score. Bazaar had piloted credit with a third party and then brought it in house. In Jangda's description, the company acquired customers through Easy Khata and then built credit on the merchant data, with the app serving as a core system of records. Running credit and collection in house is a heavier business than a ledger or a marketplace, and it ties the company to the health of the shopkeepers it lends to.
The quieter founder
Endeavor named Jangda and Jawaid the first Endeavor Entrepreneurs from Pakistan in 2023, listing Jangda as cofounder for product. He has been the quieter of the two in the years since. The July 2025 acquisition of the payments company Keenu was announced through Jawaid, who told Bloomberg, as Nukta summarised, that Bazaar expected to become profitable in the coming quarters and had a very strong balance sheet. Keenu is regulated by the State Bank of Pakistan and, according to Nukta, reaches merchants in more than 150 cities.
The route has not been smooth. Nukta noted that Bazaar entered direct to consumer retail in 2024, a reversal of the position Jangda took in 2021. Profit has also reported that the company shut newly launched business lines and cut staff, including its field force in Lahore, while saying its core retail arm would continue. The reports give inconsistent headcounts and this magazine could not read or date the article, so it treats the cuts as reported rather than confirmed.
What a ledger can still do
The next stretch of Bazaar's story depends on the quality of its data. A free khata app creates a large record of small transactions, and a payments licence gives the company a way to move money on the back of it. Keenu's website now lists Easy Khata among its merchant software, which suggests Jangda's ledger has found a second home inside a licensed payments business. That is an observation from the website, not a statement from either company. Bazaar says it has raised more than $100 million from investors including Tiger Global, Dragoneer, Defy Partners and Wavemaker Partners.
The test is whether that legibility turns into reliable credit and sustainable margins in a market where shop owners deal in cash and trust. Jangda has so far shown that he can design a product that shopkeepers will adopt for free. The harder part, which the company has yet to prove in public, is turning those millions of registered businesses into a durable profit.
