How Laam turned a Lahore catalogue of lawn suits into a global fashion marketplace
Arif Iqbal left a decade in Big Tech to sell Pakistani clothes to South Asians abroad. This week his company is running its own fashion week in Lahore, with the outfits on the runway on sale in its app.
On Friday 23 October, Laam Fashion Week opened its second season in Lahore. The four day event, which runs to 26 October, has more than 40 designers and labels on its programme, a Dawn preview counted 43 shows, and every show is livestreamed through the Laam app so that viewers anywhere can buy the outfits as they walk. It is an unusual thing for a technology company to host, but it shows how Laam sees itself: not as a website that sells clothes, but as the pipe between Pakistani sellers and South Asians scattered across the world.
The company is based in Lahore, was founded in January 2021 and sells fashion from about 1,200 Pakistani sellers to customers in more than 100 countries. It announced a $5.5 million seed round in December 2024.
A founder who came home
Arif Iqbal, Laam's chief executive, spent more than a decade in the United States at Meta, Pinterest, Microsoft and eBay. He moved back to Pakistan after the first wave of Covid 19. Two things stood out to him. In the United States, ethnic clothing was hard to find, though South Asian food and cricket were not. And at home, Pakistani fashion businesses were still gauging demand and arranging supply by traditional methods.
He started the company with three others. Ahmed Muneeb, a former Microsoft colleague, built the consumer and seller product. Iqbal's younger brother Amir, who had worked with local apparel sellers and brands, built the supply chain. Sahar Arif, a fashion enthusiast, is the fourth cofounder. The pitch was simple: demand for South Asian fashion rises as more South Asians migrate and buy ethnic wear for weddings and festivals, yet few platforms offer a broad catalogue from South Asian sellers to a global market. Those that did tended to offer a narrow range of designs or to serve a single age group or gender.
What a seller gets
Laam's catalogue runs to more than 100,000 items, covering casual, ethnic and formal wear, footwear and accessories for men, women and children. All the sellers are based in Pakistan. Machine learning extracts product details such as description, quantity, fabric and size from the listing, and the same data powers personalised recommendations. A chatbot and structured search help buyers find things.
The harder work happens behind the listing. Laam offers sellers logistics, warehousing and inventory estimates, and it advises which products suit its Express delivery option. Sellers can run much of their business through the app without speaking to a person. It arranges physical and AI generated photo shoots, prints barcodes, and lets a seller book a vehicle inside the app to carry stock from a workshop or warehouse to Laam's own. For custom formal wear, a buyer's requirements go straight to the seller, and Laam checks the finished piece against them before dispatch.
A separate product, Octane, helps local businesses build an online presence and sell abroad. It serves more than 50 businesses, which also sell through the marketplace. Iqbal told TechCrunch that some sellers have grown from two or three people to teams of 200 to 300.
The numbers and the money
Laam says its sellers have sold close to $100 million of goods to more than 500,000 customers, and that its revenue has doubled every year since launch. It takes a cut of each sale and helps sellers build direct to consumer websites. The company says it supports the livelihoods of more than 10,000 families. Pakistan has the most buyers, more than 300,000, but the largest revenue comes from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the Middle East.
The $5.5 million seed round was all equity and led by Disrupt.com and Zayn VC, with Graph Ventures, Mentors Fund and technology executives from Oracle, Microsoft, Google and Salesforce. It arrived in a thin year. Tracxn data cited at the time put Pakistani startup funding at $12.3 million for 2024 so far, down 65 percent from $35 million in 2023, with the number of rounds falling from 16 to seven.
“We believe LAAM has a unique opportunity to transform how South Asian fashion is perceived and accessed globally.”
The money was meant to go into AI tools for sellers, a stronger local presence in the United States and Middle East, onboarding sellers from across South Asia and a more aggressive go to market strategy. Iqbal said the first step abroad would be an office in the United Arab Emirates, followed by a presence in the United States.
Competition at home and from China
Laam is not alone in the field. Local marketplaces such as SanaullaStore, Bagallery and Clicky sell Pakistani clothing online, and brands including Sapphire and ETHNC run their own sites. Larger platforms are also circling: Temu entered Pakistan in September 2024, and Alibaba owns Daraz. Iqbal's answer is breadth. Laam sells items from many brands in Pakistan and around the world, while a single brand's website sells one label.
From app to runway
The first Laam Fashion Week ran in Lahore from 31 January to 3 February 2026, with more than 35 presentations. Every show was livestreamed to audiences that organisers put at more than 120 countries and 7,800 cities. Laam and Design651 founded the event, with the designer HSY as event director. Collections could be bought or booked immediately in the Laam app, and couture orders came with free shipping. Reviewing it for Dawn Images, the critic Foha Raza praised its commercial footing.
“The week felt commercially aware and clearly rooted in the business of fashion.”
She was less kind about delays between shows and about some collections that she judged recycled or dated. She also described the event as a revival of the spirit of the Pakistan Fashion Design Council's fashion weeks, which lost momentum nearly a decade ago.
The second season, directed by Hassan Sheheryar Yasin, opens with Starry Night, a show of 21 designers each presenting one night sky inspired look. Ten young designers from the Pakistan Institute of Fashion and Design show capsule collections. Twelve high street labels debut on Laam through its LFW Edit, among them Almirah, Aramis Haijaan, Beygum Bano, Hathghar and Project 1959, and 12 more labels from the second round of its Ramp Readiness Programme show in a retail runway. Sixteen designers, including Ali Xeeshan, Deepak Perwani, Erum Khan, HSY and Saira Rizwan, have individual showcases, and Nilofer Shahid presents a collection for Meeras called Tapestries in the Looms of Time. The shows also air on ARY Plus.
Amir Iqbal says the wider goal is helping designers connect with customers and reach broader markets, and that the runway was only the beginning. Beyond Lahore, the stated next steps are the ones Laam set out in 2024: an office in the United Arab Emirates, then a presence in the United States. The fashion week closes on Monday 26 October.
