Inventhub, cloud-based collaboration platform for hardware developers, raises a pre-seed round led by Fatima Gobi Ventures, foreign and local VCs

Inventhub, a Pakistani secure web-based collaboration platform for electronics product development, has closed a pre-seed funding round led by existing investor Fatima Gobi Ventures. 

The pre-seed also saw participation from new investors including Ahmed Habib of Venture.d,  Shehryar Hydri of Deosai Ventures, Yasser Bashir of Arbisoft, and Abbas Yousafzai of ConradLabs.  Existing investors who returned for this round to back the company include Shoaib Zahid, Kashif  Shakoor, and Anees Khawaja of Walled City Co, Tim Draper of Draper University Ventures, Taimur  Rashid of Redis Labs, and Tayyab Malik from UBS Hong Kong.  

Pakistan has seen exponential interest in the past two years, with Bloomberg reporting that  Pakistani startups raised over US$300 million in 2021 alone. However, much of the previous funding frenzy has been concentrated in the mass market, high-volume sectors such as e-commerce,  logistics, and fintech.  

Inventhub’s newest round is the sign that Pakistan’s startup ecosystem has progressed at an accelerated pace, that startups in the advanced too deep tech spaces are gaining funding momentum.  

Founded by hardware product designer Usama Abid and software engineer Usman Maqsood in  2019, Inventhub aims to democratize the process of electronics product design, resulting in better product quality and faster time to market.

Usama Abid, Co-founder, and CEO of Inventhub, said,

“The electronics industry is made up of fragmented and siloed processes, making it difficult for individuals and smaller startups to develop new products. The explosion of digital products has also led to a new level of personalization and customization. Managing the necessary steps – from components procurement and design, to manufacturing, assembly, and distribution – is time-consuming and complex.  

“Inventhub is here to change the game for developers: providing a remote-based collaboration of electronics design resources, improving productivity as well as streamlining data organization and shareability. Now, multiple designers, developers and project owners can work cohesively across different project components including bills of material and partner resources,” he added. 

Inventhub users begin by importing their electronics design files from various sources to the cloud. Stakeholders are then added to the platform for collaboration, allowing for a seamless exchange of data via various tools such as visualization, annotation, versioning, real-time updates,  releases, bill of materials, and partner spaces. The platform enables designers, engineers,  manufacturers, procurement, suppliers, and distributors to coordinate their work.  

Additionally, with Inventhub’s advanced development tools, the platform serves as a catch-all design database for hardware design resources built and backed by a community. Inventhub aims to serve as the largest design database and hardware resource search engine of community-backed material. 

Usman Maqsood, Co-founder and CTO of Inventhub, said,

“With an acceleration in remote work,  processes have evolved to allow for a new wave of change on how we collaborate. This funding  for Inventhub will be used to fill the gap from proof of concept to production within the electronic  design industry.”  

Inventhub’s version control with access management in the platform has made it integratable with existing ecad tooling. Inventhub has seen massive active user growth with over 45 minutes of usage time per session every week and commercial validation from a growing paid customer base. The current focus is to ramp up marketing efforts to build community and work with B2B  customers to improve the platform.  

Ali Mukhtar, General Partner for FGV, said,

“Typically, a startup ecosystem takes five to 10 years  to draw investments in more sophisticated tech solutions. Just two years in, this funding round  by Inventhub is a sign that Pakistan is far ahead of that curve, thanks to the country’s massive  tech talent. FGV’s backing of Inventhub is, we hope, the first of many investments in Pakistan’s  advanced tech space.”

For more information, please visit www.inventhub.io or contact Usama at press@inventhub.io.