Walee started as an influencer marketplace. Now it owns a PSL team and a lender

On Monday 9 February 2026, at the Expo Centre in Lahore, Walee Technologies won an auction for a cricket team with a record bid of Rs2.45 billion, and its chief executive, Ahsan Tahir, announced a move. "Are you ready for a surprise? We will be going for Rawalpindi!" he said, according to Dawn. The team was the Multan Sultans, a Pakistan Super League (PSL) franchise that had been without an owner since November 2025.

Tahir is cofounder and chief executive of Walee Technologies, an Islamabad company best known as an influencer marketing platform, which now calls itself a MarTech and fintech group. Within one week in February 2026 it won the league's international media rights and bought a record priced franchise. Its group also runs Hakeem, a Shariah compliant lending app. That is an unusual path for a startup, and the price makes it worth examining.

A record Rs2.45bn bid for the Multan PSL franchise

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) set a base price of Rs1.82 billion, and the PSL's website reported five technically qualified bidders: Walee, Aim Next, Particle Igniter, CD Ventures and DSM. Dawn reported the host saying the winning bid also covers the annual fee for keeping the franchise over the next ten years. The Multan team had been without an owner since November 2025, when the PCB did not extend a renewal offer to its previous owner, Ali Khan Tareen.

PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi said the Multan Sultans name was "very close to my heart," but conceded the point to the new owner. "I cannot ask the person paying Rs2.45bn to keep the name Multan Sultans," he said, as Dawn reported. The team introduced itself as Pindiz in February. ProPakistani reported in March, citing unnamed sources, that the board had directed the franchise to include Rawalpindi in its official title. It said neither the franchise nor the board had issued a formal statement, and that the team's social media accounts now use Rawalpindiz.

From influencer marketplace to media group

Walee's own site says it began as a group of data scientists and starts its timeline in 2015, while MENAbytes, which reported its seed round, says it was founded in 2019. The product that made it known connects influencers with brands: brands and agencies find creators, run campaigns and pay them. In 2021 Z2C, a Pakistani communications company, invested $2.7 million in a seed round for a minority stake. At that point, according to MENAbytes, Walee had more than 50,000 influencers and more than 5,000 registered brands. By February 2022 Arab News, relaying a Bloomberg report, put the influencer count above 100,000 and named Samsung and Reckitt among the clients.

That month Walee bought Mirrorr.com, a UAE company with an AI tool that detects brands and logos in social posts. Dawn reported that Walee had reportedly been valued at $50 million and that Mirrorr would receive $8 million worth of its acquirer's Middle Eastern offices. Tahir told Dawn the deal made the Middle East and North Africa "a natural frontier for us." Walee says it opened a Riyadh office in 2022.

Hakeem, a lender built on airtime

The part of Walee least like an influencer platform is Hakeem, a nano financing app run by Walee Financial Services, a non bank finance company. Walee describes it as Pakistan's first Shariah compliant nano financing platform, and its Hakeem page claims more than a million users and over 250,000 active each month. Those figures come from the company, and no page reviewed gives revenue or profit for any Walee business.

Walee's announcement says Hakeem is built on what it calls an "unorganised Tawarruq model" and trades mobile airtime to make its financing Shariah compliant. On 11 November 2025 Walee said the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan had certified Walee Financial Services as a fully Shariah compliant non bank lender. Its chief executive, Noshad Minhas, said the company was aligning itself with "Pakistan's 2028 vision for the elimination of riba." Walee also says it has presented a Shariah compliant, asset based financing product for women, called Khudmukhtar Khatoon, at an event hosted by Karandaaz Pakistan.

Walee's PSL media rights and franchise

The team is only one half of Walee's cricket position. On 3 February 2026 the PCB announced that Walee had won one year of international PSL media rights, covering every territory except India, in a deal it said was worth 149% more than the previous cycle for the same regions, KhelWire reported. Walee's own site describes it as the official media rights holder for the league from 2026 to 2029, a longer span than the one year in the PCB announcement, and it does not say why. It says it assembled a broadcast panel with Ten Sports, PTV Sports, Myco and Geo Super. Its homepage also says the tenth season drew more than 3.4 billion live streaming views on its network, a figure that has not been independently verified.

Holding some of the league's rights while owning one of its eight teams is an unusual and concentrated position. The company that sells the league abroad also fields a side in it, and the two businesses will not always want the same thing. On the field the first season gave Walee little to celebrate. The PSL's own points table lists Rawalpindiz last of eight with one win and nine losses from ten matches, and its match report called their win over Islamabad United on 23 April their maiden victory, ending an eight match losing streak. Peshawar Zalmi took the title, with the final reported on 3 May.

The harder question is the arithmetic. Rs2.45 billion is a large sum for a company whose only equity round in the coverage reviewed is a $2.7 million seed from 2021, and none of that coverage explains how the franchise is funded or what Walee expects it to earn. Walee's own announcement of the purchase gives no price or funding source. A team and a rights business can reinforce each other, but they also tie a young company's fortunes to one league's ratings and one board's goodwill.

Walee has chosen scale and visibility over focus, and so far the evidence of returns comes from the company rather than from audited accounts. The next set of numbers it publishes, or does not, will say more about this pivot than any auction.

Reported from Walee's website and statements and coverage in Dawn, MENAbytes, Arab News, ProPakistani, KhelWire and the PSL's website.