Pakistani entrepreneur wins top prize in Paris for her FinTech startup

Naureen Hayat — the co-founder of Tez Financial Services, a FinTech startup from Planet N Group offering digital financial products and services to low-end consumers, has won the first prize from Visa Everywhere Initiative: Women’s Global Edition in a recent competition held in Paris.

The startup won $100,000 and was also selected as the top winner in the FinTech Business Challenge category of the competition. Unlike other financial institutions, Tez Financial Services aims to cater to the needs of the underprivileged by understanding their situation based on the data collected from their phones. Last year in May, Tez raised $1.1 million from two foreign investors.

Tez Financial Services aims to transform the lives through an all-in-one mobile application with its end vision to make it a full stack digital bank. The mobile app currently offers a handful of features which includes Tez Advance for nano-loans, Tez BIMA, Tez Committee and Tez Sarmaya for catering medium to long term investment needs.

It must be noted that Tez Financial Services is a Planet N Group company founded by Nadeem Hussain who is also its Chief Executive Officer, along with Naureen Hayat and Humza Hussain, with a vision ‘to provide a range of financial products straight into the hands of Pakistan’s through their mobile phones that enrich their lives’.

Meanwhile, Naureen Hayat, a social entrepreneur has been playing her role to bring change in the fintech sector of Pakistan for quite a while now. She is not only an alumni of Harvard Business School Executive Education program but also co-founded CheckIn Solutions, a company that offers digital services to Microfinance providers.

Pakistani women are enterprising, creative and resilient. The government must create opportunities for them to come forward whether as entrepreneurs, innovators or in leadership roles.