How QistBazaar turned an offline instalment business into a licensed lender

In the first days of September 2026, a Karachi company that sells fans, refrigerators and mobile phones in monthly instalments announced that it had raised Rs500 million, about $1.8 million, through an unrated, privately placed sukuk that it called the first of its kind in Pakistan. The bond was the headline. The business behind it is older and plainer: a lender that learned who pays on time by selling household goods before it ever applied for a licence.

A database before an app

QistBazaar was founded in 2021 by Arif Lakhani, now its chief executive, and Karim Gilani. Qist is the Urdu word for an instalment, and the name says what the company does. Before it launched the platform, Lakhani told Dawn's Aurora magazine in January 2025, the company ran an offline business selling household items, and only later became a buy now pay later platform. That left it with its own records of buyers. In 2023 the company said the legacy database covered about 250,000 people who had previously bought on instalments.

The data mattered because the customers have no credit history a bank would read. The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan licenses the company as a non bank finance company, and Lakhani said it also draws on bank and microfinance loan data. In 2023 it described its market as the roughly 80 percent of Pakistanis who are unbanked or underserved, with facilitation centres in Karachi and Hyderabad and a digital presence in Lahore.

Pricing and risk without payslips

The product is a purchase, not a cash loan. A customer pays an upfront amount that includes a mark up, then settles the balance in monthly instalments, typically over 6 to 18 months. The structure follows the Islamic principle of musawamah, under which the total price is disclosed at the start. Lakhani said revenue comes mainly from the profit on product sales, plus the mark up.

Risk is handled by hand and by map. The company asks for no proof of income. Income is assessed informally, and the instalment is capped at one tenth of it. A new customer with no data needs two guarantors, and women need one. Karachi is split into 230 areas, and the company avoids lending in the 50 where defaults run highest.

The company said in 2023 that delinquency was below 3 percent after 19 months of operation. It has not published an updated rate. That figure, and the claim made at its Series A that it had been EBITDA positive from the first day, are the company's own.

A household customer

QistBazaar aims at households in the lower middle band, earning Rs35,000 to Rs75,000 a month. It had sold about 60,000 products on instalments in under three years by early 2025. Nearly half of its sales go to micro businesses such as naan shops, fruit vendors and rickshaw drivers, Lakhani said, and online sales account for 80 percent of revenue. The catalogue held about 1,400 products, from mattresses and motorbike tyres to batteries and appliances, including brands such as Haier, PEL, Dawlance and some Samsung models. It does not stock Apple or premium models.

Marketing is local: rickshaw advertisements, branded mugs at tea shops and brochures at bus stops, alongside outdoor advertising, TikTok and YouTube.

“Home essentials like ceiling fans and water dispensers are necessities, not luxuries, yet many cannot afford them.”

Bank money, then a bond

The first outside money came from Bank Alfalah, which led a seed round that Lakhani put at $500,000 in May 2023. On 24 September 2024 QistBazaar announced a $3.2 million Series A led by Indus Valley Capital, with Gobi Partners, which manages about $1.6 billion, and Bank Alfalah taking part. By then it had disbursed more than 55,000 product loans worth about $12 million in three years, mainly for phones and home appliances. Aatif Awan, founder and managing partner of Indus Valley Capital, said the company could reshape consumer financing in Pakistan "similar to what Bajaj Finance did for India." The company said Bank Alfalah's backing would help it raise debt from other lenders.

The sukuk is the next step in that plan, and it arrived two years after the Series A. Alfalah Shariah Private Financing Fund I, managed by Alfalah Asset Management, subscribed to it, and Dada Partners was exclusive financial adviser and placed the full issue. Al Hamd Shariah Advisory Services certified the structure, Pak Brunei Investment Company acted as investment agent and Akhund Forbes as legal counsel. The issue is secured, according to the company's release, and it is the first tranche of a planned series, meant to give the company a recurring source of institutional funding and to reduce its reliance on bank financing. The money will go into originating more instalment financing, widening the merchant network, adding product categories and reaching new places. The release names Bank Alfalah, Indus Valley Capital and Gobi Partners as the company's backers.

The market it borrows from has moved its way. Islamic banking assets grew 30.7 percent year on year to Rs14.47 trillion at the end of 2025, or 22.9 percent of all banking assets, and Islamic banks' net financing grew 40 percent during the year. A 2024 constitutional amendment set the end of 2027 as the deadline to eliminate riba from the financial system.

The company now reports more than 100 branches across 18 cities and about 800 employees. In January 2025 it counted 21 physical outlets and 11 digital branches, two of which serve women and students, so the two figures may not measure the same thing.

Plans beyond Karachi

Lakhani said QistBazaar's main competitors are unregulated lenders, whose interest rates Aurora put near 10 percent, and that the company follows regulator rules, including no contact with borrowers after 8 pm. He ruled out expansion abroad for now and said the company aims to win five percent of the Pakistani market.

The company has also said it plans to list on the Pakistan Stock Exchange, with no timetable. Further sukuk tranches are planned, though no size or date has been announced.