BusCaro, the Karachi shared commute startup, says it has turned EBITDA positive
BusCaro, founded by a former Swvl Pakistan executive, sells organised bus and car commutes to employers, schools and housing societies in Pakistan's big cities. It says it has had positive EBITDA since April 2026, a claim no outsider has audited.
$1.4 million. That is the lifetime cash burn BusCaro reports for a company that now claims more than 30 million bookings and positive EBITDA since April 2026. BusCaro is a shared commute startup, founded in Karachi, that sells organised bus and car rides to employers, schools and housing societies in Pakistan's big cities, and it owns none of the vehicles. Zag Daily, which reported the profitability news on 1 September 2026, noted that it had not seen the financial results, so every figure here is the company's own.
Pakistan has been hard on shared transport. Swvl, Airlift and Uber have all left or collapsed, as Dawn recounted in 2025. BusCaro's founder started the company in the gap they left.
From Swvl executive to BusCaro founder
Maha Shahzad's route to the business runs through most of Pakistan's venture era. The News, in an August 2026 interview, says her career took off in 2013 with the launch of Foodpanda, that she worked in New York's fashion industry, returned to Pakistan to join Careem and then led Swvl's Pakistan operations from Islamabad to Karachi to the whole country. She did not finish her college degree in the United States.
Swvl was a big prize in Pakistan. Profit reported in November 2022 that Pakistan was the Egyptian company's second biggest market by revenue, at $9.71 million in the first half of 2022, and that Swvl had paused its intracity bus service in June and decided on 18 November to wrap up all Pakistani operations. Dawn says Shahzad put BusCaro's first bus on the road a day after Swvl shut down. The News dates the start of work to summer 2022, and startupnaama puts it in July 2022, with three people and one bus, run from her Karachi apartment. Accounts of the timing differ.
Raising money was harder than launching. According to Dawn, Shahzad heard more than 400 rejections before she secured about $160,000 in the first year. "I received many rejections while building BusCaro," she told The News.
How an asset light shared commute business makes money
BusCaro's central choice is to own no vehicles, which keeps the company light. In Dawn's September 2025 report about 60 percent of business came from institutions and 40 percent from a business to business to consumer channel that works through housing societies and co working spaces. It counted 80 clients, served with vehicles ranging from an 80 seat bus without air conditioning to an air conditioned Corolla. Startupnaama lists Foodpanda, PepsiCo, Ibex and the Indus Hospital among them.
The average blended fare was Rs130 a ride, Dawn reported, and BusCaro says it has never subsidised a seat to buy growth. Swvl, by contrast, lost $161.6 million in the first half of 2022 alone, according to the Profit report. Dawn described a parent facing app that lets parents and schools track rides in real time and offers manual check in and check out for minors. BusCaro told Dawn that 70 percent of its passengers are women and children and that it has had zero reported harassment cases across nearly 19 million bookings. Nobody has independently verified those claims, and startupnaama gives a different passenger mix in another section. Zag Daily adds that BusCaro has launched an on demand service, letting existing clients book ad hoc rides alongside regular commuting.
BusCaro's EBITDA claim and its thin balance sheet
Zag Daily reports that annual revenue rose from $4.5 million to $6.5 million in the company's fourth year, that annual recurring revenue is $7.1 million, and that 99.5 percent of bookings were handled reliably. EBITDA, the company says, was negative 9 percent in the 2024 to 2025 financial year and has been positive since April 2026. Startupnaama gives about 40,000 bookings a day and cites 99.6 percent reliability, and The News reports more than 900 buses and more than 20,000 daily riders. EBITDA is not net profit, and none of the reports we read says whether BusCaro generates cash.
Some of the figures do not line up. In September 2025 Dawn reported EBITDA of negative 2.8 percent and a forecast of $8.6 million in annual revenue by December, against the negative 9 percent and $6.5 million that Zag Daily now reports. The periods and definitions may differ, and neither outlet explains how. We have kept each figure with its source.
The funding is small and was carefully assembled. Dawn reported a $2 million round in September 2025, led by Daman Investments, with Cartography Capital, Wahed Ventures, the Aga Khan Development Network's Accelerate Prosperity programme and a mix of angel investors, taking total funding to $3.5 million. Startupnaama says the round was $1.2 million of equity and an $800,000 debt facility, mostly for working capital.
“Working capital is the main bottleneck”
Dawn gave the numbers behind that complaint. BusCaro was then burning about $15,000 a month, faced a 36 percent interest rate on debt, and found the Rs5 million cap on SME lending too small for its needs, relying instead on credit lines from fuel companies such as Total and Parco. Shahzad said she had a sales pipeline five to six times what she could serve. Her advice to other founders, in the same piece, was to "solve the boring problems on the ground" and stay unit positive.
What comes next for BusCaro and Pakistan's commute startups
Zag Daily says BusCaro has expanded into cities around its four main markets of Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi, is focused on launching new Pakistani markets and is "laying the groundwork" for expansion abroad, without naming countries or dates. It is also courting corporate clients who are revisiting commute budgets at the start of the fiscal year, and it sees rising fuel prices and a growing electric vehicle network pushing commuters towards shared transport, a view that is the company's rather than a measured trend.
The risks are plain. Dawn put 60 percent of business in institutional contracts. The company has not disclosed what its vehicle operators earn, and the profit claim is unaudited. If the 36 percent debt cost Dawn reported still applies, there is little room for a bad quarter. Still, BusCaro offers a counterexample to the Swvl style of growth, which spent investor money to fill seats. Its rides repeat every morning.
Reported from Dawn, Zag Daily, The News, Profit by Pakistan Today and startupnaama, with figures attributed to the company.
