How Maqsad went from a free study app to a paid entry test coach

Maqsad says Pakistan has one teacher for every 44 students, a ratio that pushes families toward paid tuition. Maqsad, a Karachi startup whose name means purpose in Urdu, was built to give that tuition to anyone with a phone. Its founders, Rooshan Aziz and Taha Ahmed, have been friends since school. Both studied at the London School of Economics and worked in London, Ahmed in strategy consulting and Aziz in investment banking, before they moved home in 2021 to start the company.

The company has since raised $4.9 million, making it Pakistan's best funded edtech startup when it closed its seed round in 2023. Its public face has also changed. Maqsad's website now describes it as an online entry test preparation platform for the MDCAT, ECAT and BCAT exams that decide who gets into medical, engineering and business universities.

Two friends and a personal stake

Both founders had a reason to care. Aziz has dyslexia and relied on after school academic support as a student. Ahmed grew up in a middle class family that spent more than half its income on his education, and scholarships changed the course of his life. They launched during the Covid pandemic, when schools were shut and students were studying from home.

Maqsad ran two pilots in the first half of 2021. In September that year it announced a $2.1 million pre seed round led by Indus Valley Capital, with Alter Global, Fatima Gobi Ventures and several founders from Pakistan and the Middle East taking part. The product was a mobile only platform of video lessons, quizzes and tests in English and Urdu, with all content produced in house. The stated target was 100 million Pakistani students from kindergarten to grade 12.

“We believe everyone has a purpose.”

A free app that found a crowd

The first version served grades 9 to 12 and followed the Sindh, Punjab and federal textbook board syllabuses. It covered mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. It did three things: it explained concepts, tested students, and answered their questions. A feature the company calls DoubtSolve let a student photograph a problem and get a worked answer.

Most of it was free. Aziz told Dawn in March 2023 that a student could get full access to every subject for around Rs500 to Rs600 a month, a fraction of what a coaching centre charges. Ahmed said the app offered an exceptional learning experience at a fraction of the cost.

The usage numbers, which are the company's own, came quickly. In its first six months the app was downloaded more than one million times and answered 4 million student questions, and it ranked first among education apps on Google Play in Pakistan. After the team reworked its assessment feature, Aziz said, the number of questions students attempted grew more than 150 percent a month. The company said it had collected feedback from over 20,000 students and teachers.

The $2.8 million seed round

In March 2023 Maqsad announced a $2.8 million oversubscribed seed round. Speedinvest, a European seed fund whose portfolio includes the Vienna edtech company GoStudent, led it with returning backer Indus Valley Capital. Stellar Capital, Alter Global, Johann Jenson, a senior product executive at GoStudent, and other angel investors also took part. With the 2021 round, the total came to $4.9 million.

The money was meant to widen the range of subjects and improve the technology behind the app. Aziz said the company would build artificial intelligence features, and the founders spoke of younger grades and of embedding Maqsad in schools. A pilot was planned with one of the country's largest school networks. Aziz also said the company expected to break even within two years.

The market it was entering was crowded. Local rival Edkasa and the Middle Eastern platforms Noon and Abwaab, which had expanded into Pakistan, were chasing the same students. At the time of the round Maqsad sold only to consumers, with partnership interest from private and public institutions.

From school syllabus to entry tests

The company's pitch today is narrower. The home page of maqsad.io offers preparation for the MDCAT, the medical college admission test, the ECAT for engineering universities, the BCAT for business schools and O Level exams. It sells daily live classes, weekly mock tests and instant answers to doubts. Maqsad says the platform has passed 4 million downloads, 45,000 enrolled students and more than 2,500 university admissions. These figures are the company's own and have not been independently checked.

The turn toward exams is notable because of what Ahmed said at the launch. At the pre seed announcement in 2021 he described the company's aim in different terms.

“It's about more than just getting students to pass their exams.”

The product is priced like coaching, not like an app. The MDCAT 2027 batch costs Rs30,000, with daily classes in chemistry, physics, biology and English, a Friday counselling session and a Saturday weekly test. It lists more than 15,000 practice questions, over 500 recorded lectures and a personal study plan built from a short diagnostic test.

Maqsad also sells one to one tutoring for grades 6 to 12 in the Cambridge and Edexcel O and A Level programmes, and it names The City School, Concordia Colleges, The Citizens Foundation and the Aga Khan schools as partner schools. It has run in person events, among them a biology marathon, that put its teachers in front of students. The company's results page lists students admitted to medical colleges such as DUHS and KMU and engineering universities such as NUST and UET, including one who reports 177 out of 180 on the 2026 MDCAT.

A bet on paid batches

The pivot shows in how Maqsad now presents itself and prices its courses. Its site still lists Speedinvest, Indus Valley Capital, Alter Global and Fatima Gobi Ventures as backers.

Students sitting the MDCAT and ECAT already pay for academies, and Maqsad is selling an online batch against them, with daily classes and a weekly test in place of a classroom. The first MDCAT 2027 batch has 200 seats.