The committee that moved into an app
Oraan took a savings habit that rotates billions of dollars in cash through Pakistani households and gave it a treasury desk, a vetting process and, lately, gold.
The committee is older than any bank in Pakistan. A group of neighbours, colleagues or cousins agrees a monthly sum, everyone pays in, and each month one member takes the whole pot. It is savings for those who want discipline and credit for those who draw early. TechCrunch, citing Oraan's research, put participation at about 41 per cent of the population in 2021, with about $5 billion rotating through such circles every year, almost all of it in cash.
Oraan's idea, when Halima Iqbal and Farwah Tapal founded it in Karachi in 2018, was that the habit did not need changing. The plumbing did. The company registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan in August 2018 with a team of five, according to a Karandaaz case study, and its app went live in May 2019.
Finding the customers
The first version, as Dawn described it in January 2020, let a user create a committee, set the total and the dates, and add members until the pool was full. By 2021 the model had flipped. Oraan itself vetted members, formed committees from a treasury management backend according to who needed the money when, and collected and disbursed the funds in five month and ten month plans. Members could save alongside strangers in other cities rather than only within their own circle.
By September 2021 Oraan told Dawn it had more than 10,000 savers in more than 170 cities, 84 per cent of them women. By August 2023 it said more than 100,000 members had saved through the app, ProPakistani reported. A 2026 episode of Epic Angels' Investor Talk podcast put the figure at 600,000 users with a lifetime default rate of 1.89 per cent, company numbers that have not been independently audited.
Finding the money
Early funding came from angels, including Tharros, a syndicate led by Google executives, Graph Ventures and Zayn Capital, Dawn reported. The round that made the company's name arrived in September 2021: $3 million co led by Zayn Capital and Wavemaker Partners, with Resolution Ventures, i2i Ventures, Hustle Fund, Haitou Global and Plug and Play. It took total funding to just over $4 million; Realistic Optimist put the lifetime total at $4.5 million in February 2025.
“The digitisation of indigenous finance solutions and behaviours is the key to unlocking the fintech opportunity in Pakistan.”
The revenue model has shifted too. In 2020 Oraan earned a share of leads passed to partner institutions. Its App Store listing now advertises basic plans from Rs 1,000 a month in management fees.
Finding its footing
Regulation has been the quiet constraint. In 2021 Oraan was selected for the SECP's regulatory sandbox, which allows limited live testing of new financial products. Its website today describes it as an SECP registered company offering Shariah compliant committees. The Investor Talk podcast description says it holds a full non bank finance company licence from the SECP, a claim this magazine could not confirm from the regulator's own records. Nothing in the public record ties Oraan to a State Bank of Pakistan licence.
The latest turn is gold. Oraan Gold, launched in November 2025 according to the company, sells fractional gold in plans of six to ten months, with the price locked at the first instalment and a certified coin delivered at the end. The company says the gold book grew around 75 times in its first seven months. In July 2026 Epic Angels, a women only angel collective, led an undisclosed round with Wavemaker and i2i Ventures returning, and Oraan said it had agreed to license its platform to an unnamed regional bank. The digital bank Iqbal described in 2021 has not arrived, but the committee has.
