Aitizaz Hassan ISLAMABAD, May 23 (INP-WealthPK): Saudi financing services firm Marinah Murabaha is interested to adopt the MyTM – a Pakistani fintech startup – that is also enabling digital payments, providing e-commerce, and banking services across Pakistan. Apart from MyTM, the Saudi company is also exploring the possibility of collaboration and investment with Pakistani startups working in the verticals of agritech and edtech. A delegation of Marinah Murabaha company was welcomed by CEO of the Ignite National Technology Fund Asim Shahryar Hussain along with CEO of the MyTM in Islamabad. The Ignite CEO briefed the delegation about different initiatives of Ignite for boosting startups and freelancing ecosystems of Pakistan. He said that five national incubation centers have incubated almost a thousand startups over the last four years, creating 114,000 jobs and raising investments of $67 million so far. The delegation headed by Abdul Rahman Mohammad A. Alghimlas, Chairman of Marinah Murabaha financing company, along with Jalal, Chief Finance Officer, Taha Abdullah A Alebrahim, CTO, and Ahmed Al Matawa, Head of Operations, visited Ignite along with Zain Farooq, CEO of the MyTM, and Jawad Mahmood, Director of the MyTM. Abdul Rahman took keen interest in the success stories of various startups in Pakistan. He appreciated the support extended by Ignite to innovative ideas of young companies across Pakistan. The delegation also visited the National Incubation Center (NIC) Islamabad where the delegates interacted with different startups. Fowrry, an agribusiness startup at the NIC, engaged with the visiting delegation to explore the possibilities of collaboration. Asim Shahryar said that Ignite had sponsored participation of 12 startups of the NIC at LEAP, a tech exhibition in Riyadh, along with Digital Cooperation Organization in February 2022 and many startups have either partnered with organizations in the Middle East to expand their footprint or raised funding since the event. He mentioned that 2021 was a remarkable year for Pakistani startups where investments grew by almost five times over 2020 and that 2022 is looking even better. The Ignite CEO expressed that the company’s forecast for investment in Pakistani startups is more than $600 million by end of 2022. He informed the delegation that Ignite will establish 12 incubation centers in eight cities and four verticals including agritech, aerospace, gaming and animation, and healthtech by next year. The MyTM had participated in the global technology conference LEAP hosted by Saudi Arabia in Riyadh where it attracted investor interest and secured $6.9 million in its seed round. In 2021, MyTM had won the Supernova pitching competition at GITEX Future Stars exhibition held in Dubai in October 2021, in the ‘Creative Economy’ category. The MyTM is the first Islamic fintech company, founded in 2018 to provide mass transit e-ticketing, branchless banking, microfinance services (loan lead generation through agent network), and financial services. The MyTM has recently launched the payment pull (e-POS), Visa/Mastercard (debit/credit card) acceptance and payment gateway. The MyTM aims to build a network of 100,000 MyTM Dukaan by 2026. The MyTM signed an official branchless banking agreement with the NRSP, the first Islamic Microfinance Bank, on 7th July, 2021.