Fatima Gobi Ventures and Fasset: From an Early Bet to a US$1B Global Fintech

Fasset has reached a US$1B valuation after a US$68M Series C led by SBI Group, one of Japan's major financial institutions.

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• Naiel Ikram, Partner at Fatima Gobi Ventures, sees the next phase of Pakistan's venture landscape increasingly defined by the quality and scale of outcomes.
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• Four years on, that round has produced a first for Pakistan's still-young venture industry: a unicorn in a Pakistan-focused fund managed by FGV.
• Four years afterwards, the business has attracted a Series C led by a major Japanese financial institution.

While processing upwards of US$40B a year through its rails, the scale involved is substantial: Fasset today reaches 125 countries, more than 3 million wallets, and over 1, 000 enterprise clients. Revenue is up roughly sixfold year-on-year, and the business is profitable.

In early 2022, the business looked particularly different. Founded in 2019 by Mohammad Raafi Hossain and Daniel Ahmed, Fasset raised a US$22M Series A that year, co-led by New York's Liberty City Ventures and Fatima Gobi Ventures (FGV), investing from Pakistan. Four years on, that round has produced a first for Pakistan's still-young venture industry: a unicorn in a Pakistan-focused fund managed by FGV. The firm behind the milestone.

Fasset was built to answer something its founders kept running into throughout emerging markets: too often, what a person can do with their capital is decided by where they happen to be born, not by any real limit on the opportunity itself. Moving funds throughout borders in those markets remains slow and expensive, and the correspondent banking chains that carry it were designed for a different era.

In practice, the company's answer is OWN Network, a regulated financial network connecting banks, telecom firms, payment providers, liquidity providers, and settlement partners throughout international markets. It links blockchain networks to more than 100 banking corridors, using stablecoin settlement in the places where the traditional chain is slowest, so customers can access financial products without having to manage the underlying infrastructure.

That network has been assembled license by license rather than introduced all at once. Fasset holds regulatory approvals throughout the UAE, the European Union, Türkiye, Indonesia, and parts of Asia. It allows it to operate as regulated financial infrastructure in each market rather than as a cross-border workaround.

Notably, the Series C funds the next stage of that build. Fasset is expanding the OWN Network and increasing its investment in agentic AI systems supporting cross-border banking corridors, stablecoin settlement and tokenised asset infrastructure, working towards a model where any person can transact with any other, throughout any asset and any rail. SBI Group's involvement adds distribution alongside capital, including an existing partnership with SBI Remit that supports bank-account remittances to approximately 200 countries. Venture capital is regarding what happens next.

At its core, early-stage investing isn't regarding the size of a fund or the speed of deployment. It's regarding conviction in founders, and concerning being genuinely useful to them once that conviction is placed. The firms that ultimately leave a lasting impact are typically born when visionary founders pair with early partners who purchase into their vision long before the market catches on, then dedicate years to helping translate that ambition into reality.

Fasset's journey is an example of what that looks like in practice. When Liberty City Ventures and FGV co-led the company's Series A in 2022, the bet wasn't on an existing market; it was on Mohammad Raafi Hossain and Daniel Ahmed, and on their conviction that core financial infrastructure needs to be built out for emerging markets. More importantly, it was the conviction that they are the right individuals to build regulated digital asset infrastructure for these markets as the regulatory frameworks were beginning to take shape.

Four years afterwards, the business has attracted a Series C led by a major Japanese financial institution. That progression, from early-stage venture backing to global institutional capital, is one of the outcomes a maturing venture ecosystem needs to produce.

Financial infrastructure throughout emerging markets is fundamentally fragmented, solving that challenge has required us to go deeper than simply building another financial product. FGV backed our thesis early since they operate in such markets themselves.

Four years afterwards, that thesis has become the foundation of Own Network. We're grateful to have had FGV as a partner from the beginning. That conviction is becoming increasingly significant as we bring together banks, payment providers, telcos and liquidity partners throughout markets to enable global funds movement and financial services for all. – Daniel Ahmed, Co-founder, Fasset.

"For a young venture market, the real signal isn't the size of the checks being written; it's what those checks eventually build. Our job is to find solid founders early and produce sure they have the capital, networks and backing to compete on a global stage. Fasset is one example of that; we want it to become one of a number of." – Naiel Ikram, Partner, Fatima Gobi Ventures. Building for challenges bigger than one market.

Fasset additionally illustrates an notable principle for the next generation of businesses emerging from Pakistan and comparable markets: global scale doesn't require abandoning an emerging-market perspective, and in plenty of cases that perspective is itself the advantage.

"Fasset's vision of a world in which funds moves throughout borders as easily as information does points in the same direction as the on-chain economic zone that the SBI Group seeks to realize through digital finance. Fasset has already built a solid business foundation and a robust regulatory framework in a number of emerging markets with significant long-term expansion potential. It was therefore in the conviction that Fasset can serve as an significant financial bridge connecting Japan with high-growth markets worldwide that we decided to lead this round. Within the SBI Group's "SBI APAC Digital Economic Zone" concept as well, an international remittance and settlement infrastructure built on stablecoins is additionally a core component. Together with Fasset, we will advance the development of the next generation of on-chain financial systems, extending from the Asia-Pacific region to the Middle East and Africa." – Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director, Chairman, President & CEO, SBI Holdings, Inc.

Emerging markets today face plenty of of the same difficulties: financial fragmentation, tough cross-border settlement, limited access to financial infrastructure, and inefficient payment systems. Businesses that understand these challenges deeply, and others like them, are well positioned to build solutions that can travel throughout markets.

Fasset is doing precisely that. The corridors it first set out to serve run through markets such as Pakistan and Indonesia, and the infrastructure it built for them now carries volume throughout 125 countries and has attracted capital from one of Japan's largest financial groups. The founders' ambition extends beyond geographic expansion to building core infrastructure to address challenges shared throughout multiple economies.

This has a clear implication for Pakistan. A domestic market of more than 240 million individuals creates considerable opportunity, and it can additionally serve as a starting point rather than the outer limit of ambition for Pakistani founders. The larger opportunity lies in identifying businesses capable of using insight developed in emerging markets to address challenges that exist worldwide. From digitisation to outcomes.

Much of Pakistan's recent economic story has been regarding laying groundwork: rising technology adoption, a growing entrepreneurial base, new digital businesses and a domestic venture industry finding its feet. That groundwork is starting to show results.

Fasset's unicorn milestone additionally isn't happening on its own. Abhi, additionally an FGV-backed business, is preparing to list its microfinance bank on the Pakistan Stock Exchange afterwards this month, with news in the market that another venture-backed business is additionally pursuing a similar path to the public markets this year. That comes on the heels of the IPO of Tasdeeq, a venture-backed business, whose listing drew the most oversubscription in PSX history, at 22 times.

Together, these milestones highlight the promising signs of Pakistan's ongoing digital evolution, representing a major win for the technology ecosystem's early supporters. Making the exceptional repeatable.

Meanwhile, the ingredients for more of this already exist. Pakistan has no shortage of ambitious founders who understand the challenges their markets face better than anyone. The question is whether enough of that talent gets identified early enough, and backed with enough conviction, to go the distance.

That depends on a number of things developing together. Founders need room to think beyond domestic validation and toward challenges that travel throughout borders. Investors need to spot that ambition before it's obvious, and then stay useful to the founders they back long after the first check, through networks, judgment and patience rather than capital alone. Locally rooted investors have a particular role here: they understand the terrain Pakistani founders are building in, and are often the first to believe in what a founder is trying to do.

"Venture capital is often thought of primarily as financing, but at the early stage it's really regarding backing residents. The talent in Pakistan to build globally competitive firms has always been there. What's been missing is enough capital willing to believe in that talent before it's proven, and stay close enough afterward to actually support. Our job is to find founders with that kind of vision, understand the markets they're building for, and do whatever it takes – capital, networks, patience – to support them secure there." – Naiel Ikram, Partner, Fatima Gobi Ventures.

"We're optimistic about where venture capital and technology startups in Pakistan are headed as the industry keeps developing, and about the number of ambitious founders building genuinely great businesses out of the country, " Ikram continued.

Fasset's trajectory proves that two visionary founders, driven by solid conviction, can build a billion-dollar enterprise. Backed by a network of partners and advisors, the team expanded its reach throughout more than 125 countries. Ultimately, the significance of this milestone lies in the foundation it lays for the future: cultivating a robust pipeline of ambitious founders who dare to dream and generate lasting impact far beyond Pakistan's borders, with the backing of local capital and an enabling ecosystem. Stay Connected with ProPakistani.

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Taken together, the developments around fatima Gobi Ventures and Fasset: From an Early Bet to a US$1B point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.