When Forbes published its ninth 30 Under 30 Asia list in May 2024, ProPakistani counted six Pakistanis on it and Geo News seven. One of them was Sarkhail Shahid Bawany, then 27, listed in the finance and venture capital category as head of product at ABHI, the Karachi fintech that lets salaried workers withdraw part of the pay they have already earned before payday.
The Forbes profile describes the business plainly. ABHI works on a business to business to consumer model, selling the service to employers, among them Unilever Pakistan, which then offer it to staff as a benefit. Forbes also noted that Bawany was chief executive of the company's payment services subsidiary, which it called Abhipay.
That makes him a useful figure for understanding what a product leader does in a fintech. He did not found ABHI. He joined it as a product manager, according to Fintech News Singapore, and rose to head of product in a company that has since grown into payroll, financing, cross border services and, in 2025, a bank.
The salary advance, explained
ABHI is an earned wage access company. Instead of waiting for the end of the month, a worker can draw some of what they have already earned through an app, or by SMS, according to ABHI's own site. The employer signs up, and the worker sees the service as a benefit. The name, ProPakistani reported, means right now in Urdu.
The company was founded in 2021 by Omair Ansari, its chief executive, and Ali Ladhubhai. On 7 June 2021 ProPakistani and Profit reported that it had raised a $2 million seed round led by VEF, an emerging market fintech investor, with Sarmayacar as local lead. Village Global, i2i Ventures and Zayn Capital took part, and ProPakistani said it was Village Global's first fintech investment in Pakistan. The same announcement said the team had been accepted into Y Combinator's summer 2021 batch.
“We believe financial wellness and access to credit are basic human rights.”
The problem it set out to solve was familiar. Many Pakistani employees run out of money before month end because of bills, household costs and emergencies. Ladhubhai told ProPakistani that fewer than 2 million people in Pakistan had access to formal credit. At the seed stage ABHI had signed a memorandum of understanding with about 20 companies, and it planned to build their workforce models into the product. The earliest version, by the company's account, also included a knowledge centre to teach responsible personal finance.
From a bank's innovation team
Bawany's route into ABHI ran through a conventional bank. According to Fintech News Singapore, which profiled the fintech names on the 2024 list, he first worked as a product manager in the innovation and digital banking team at United Bank Limited, one of Pakistan's largest lenders. He joined ABHI as a product manager and rose to head of product.
At ABHI, the same report says, he set up a new cross functional team structure, shaped the product strategy and built relationships with fintech partners. ABHI's website listed him as head of product on its team page in May 2024, alongside the cofounders and the heads of technology, marketing and sales. The move from a large bank to a venture backed startup is a common path for product people in Pakistan, and it tends to bring a particular skill: knowing how regulated institutions behave and what they will accept.
Education and early career
A profile on the Pakistani site Profiled.pk says he studied accounting and finance at Heriot Watt University and interned at EY and Engro before joining UBL. Forbes recorded his age as 27 when it named him in 2024.
A payments arm with a shifting name
The subsidiary that Forbes calls Abhipay is harder to pin down. ABHI's website lists Abhi Pay among its products but gives no description, and a PACRA rating document for ABHI (Private) Limited refers instead to an associated company, Abhi Payriff Private Limited, which it says specialises in payment solutions for businesses and merchants. Profiled.pk says he became chief executive of that unit in 2022.
Dawn reported on 18 May 2024 that Forbes describes him as chief executive of the subsidiary. Whatever the legal name, the magazine can say only that two sources link him to a payments business inside the ABHI group, and that neither the company nor the rating agency uses the label Forbes does.
A company that outgrew its first product
The scale of the company shifted quickly. When Fintech News Singapore wrote in 2024, ABHI claimed partnerships with over 450 companies and operations in Pakistan, the Middle East and Bangladesh, across earned wage access, payroll and financing for small businesses. By May 2026 the company's statement, reported by Arab News, spoke of more than 7,000 partner companies.
The biggest step was a bank. PACRA recorded that ABHI and TPL Corp completed their purchase of FINCA Microfinance Bank on 24 January 2025, after the Competition Commission of Pakistan approved it on 13 January. ABHI took a 61.61 percent majority and TPL Corp 33.17 percent, a combined 94.8 percent bought from existing shareholders that included the International Finance Corporation, Triodos Fair Share Fund and Acumen Pakistan. One report put the shareholders' joint capital injection at 2.6 billion rupees. The bank has since been renamed ABHI Microfinance Bank.
On 11 May 2026 ABHI signed a deal in Riyadh with QBS, a Saudi firm, to offer earned wage access to its staff as Abhi Saudi, powered by Alraedah Digital Solutions, Arab News reported. The company says it also operates in the United Arab Emirates, with payroll access and remittance services for expatriate workers, and counts Hub71, Endeavor, the World Economic Forum and Mastercard's Start Path programme among its backers and supporters.
Those are the company's own figures, reported by the press. They matter to Bawany's story because a head of product at such a company is responsible for more than one app: the roadmap spans several financial products, each with its own regulator, partner banks and customers.
Honoured, humbled, and quiet
“I am immensely honored and humbled to be included in Forbes' 30 Under 30 list.”
Bawany told ProPakistani at the time that it was a source of pride to represent his country on such a platform. Since then he has kept a low public profile. Searches turned up no new appointment, award or interview in 2025 or 2026, only company posts he has shared.
What a product head is judged on
For a product head, that quiet is perhaps the point: the product does the talking. The test for ABHI now is whether a company that began with a salary advance can run a bank, a payments arm and a payroll business without losing the simplicity that made the first product easy to sell to employers.
The role Bawany holds is the one that decides what gets built next. As long as the company keeps adding products and countries, it will be his decisions, made largely out of public view, that determine whether the platform stays coherent.
