Sastaticket took a family travel business online, then added buses, visas and insurance to survive

Buying an airline ticket in Pakistan once meant a trip to a travel agent, a cash payment and a margin nobody explained. Sastaticket.pk, a Karachi company whose name means cheap ticket, went live in September 2016 with a website that showed the fare, the tax and the invoice.

It was founded by two brothers, Shazil and Bilal Mehkri, and Shazil is chief executive. Its story is mostly that of a flight seller finding out that flights alone cannot carry a travel business through a bad year.

A family business goes online

Shazil Mehkri did not arrive as an outsider. He worked in his family's travel business, and from 2008 to 2016 he was co chief executive of Quality Aviation, a partner of Carlson Wagonlit Travel that MENAbytes describes as the country's second largest travel management company. Quality Aviation became the parent of the new site and its main investor, and the founders put in their own money.

That background shaped the product. Quality Aviation negotiated hotel deals and rates, and the site listed Serene Air, Shaheen Airways, Airblue and PIA. A ProPakistani review in February 2018 compared its prices with PIA's and found no markup, and customers received an invoice with a full tax breakdown. Many Pakistanis did not have cards or did not trust paying online, so customers could pay cash at points in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Faisalabad and Multan. Support ran daily from eight in the morning to midnight.

Trust was the first problem. Shazil said in 2018 that customer trust was an initial challenge over the first couple of months. By the end of the first year the company said gross bookings had grown 19 percent a month on a compounded basis, it was averaging about 300,000 searches a month, it had more than 40 employees and it listed more than 525 domestic hotels. It was not yet profitable, and the focus that year was growth alone.

Gobi Partners and a bigger claim

In November 2018 Sastaticket announced a $1.5 million Series A led by Gobi Partners, the regional venture firm's first investment in Pakistan. The company said it now handled more than one million flight searches a month, that gross merchandise value had grown 125 percent year on year and that orders had grown 155 percent.

The site still had no mobile app. MENAbytes put its traffic at about 188,000 visitors a month, according to SimilarWeb, with roughly 1 percent of visitors turning into customers, a figure the chief executive had given Business Recorder. Shazil expected the market to grow 9 percent a year and online booking to reach as much as half of it within a decade.

Gobi's founding partner, Thomas Tsao, was more ambitious. "We believe the conditions that led to the growth of giant OTAs in China are also present in Pakistan," he said, using the industry shorthand for online travel agencies. He added that Sastaticket had a real opportunity to become one of the first unicorns out of the country. The money was meant to grow the business, recruit skilled staff and explore segments such as Islamic tourism.

What the pandemic forced

A travel startup is built for a world in which people fly. In 2020 they mostly did not. Mohib Hassan, who joined as chief operating officer in January 2022, told Business Recorder in July 2022 that when flights stopped the company cut costs sharply but kept its call centres running. It then added fintech lines, buses, hotels and visas.

The numbers the company has given for that period are its own. In early 2022 it said 2021 revenue was up 626 percent and gross merchandise value up 289 percent year on year, and that its flight customer base had grown 119 percent. Hotel bookings were up 300 percent within six months, bus bookings had grown 40 times in five months, and the site now sold more than 100,000 accommodations across Pakistan and flights on 30 airlines to destinations in 87 countries. It said it planned to open in eight new cities.

By mid 2022 Hassan said growth had passed pre pandemic levels, helped by the new lines while air travel was still recovering. He said the fintech business had grown about 300 percent, buses more than 200 percent and visa sales had reached an all time high.

How it makes money

Sastaticket earns commission on each sale, whether a flight, a hotel or another service. "We earn from the commission," Hassan said. Insurance became a surprising line. "We are perhaps the largest online insurance company in the country because we sell so many policies," he said.

People are the largest cost, followed by technology infrastructure. Spending went on free cancellation, closed loop wallets, fare calendars, WhatsApp integrations and a better refund process. Hassan said the company was on course to reach profitability and was open to further funding that could speed growth.

Airlines and what comes next

Airline relationships are the company's other main lever for growth. When Airblue flew its first flight to Skardu on 7 July 2022, Shazil congratulated the airline and said the route would support domestic tourism. In December 2022 Fly Jinnah, the budget airline owned jointly by the Lakson Group and Air Arabia and, like Sastaticket, based in Karachi, made its tickets available on Sastaticket at discounted rates. Shazil said the company was proud to help facilitate the growth in tourism and air travel since the pandemic.

The data aggregator Tracxn lists Karachi as the company's headquarters and puts its headcount at 191 as of September 2026, against the 40 of 2018. It records no acquisitions. Shazil is still chief executive and Bilal is listed as cofounder. The last results the company itself gave cover 2021 and the first half of 2022, and it has not published a profit figure for any year.