Saraaf wants to be the exchange for Central Asia's stone, cotton and ore
A Karachi onyx exporter is trying to become a sourcing platform for the whole region. Television gave it a record valuation. Delivering the money, and the app, has proved harder.
Saraaf's website opens with a picture of two men standing among cut onyx blocks beside a wheel loader. That is the business the company started with. According to LUMS, which profiled cofounder Syed Muhammad Ismail in November 2024, Saraaf began as an onyx and marble exporter shipping Pakistani and Afghan stone to China before its founders saw a wider gap in regional commodities and expanded into cotton, coal, LPG and zinc and lead ores from Central and South Asia.
The company describes itself as a commodity and mineral sourcing company connecting international buyers with suppliers across what it calls the CASA region. Its site claims more than ten years of experience, operations in five regions and access to more than a hundred mines, and says it has been one of the leading exporters of marble and onyx from Pakistan for the past five years. Those are company figures the magazine could not check against trade data. Shark Tank coverage went further, calling Saraaf a global trading company with over 25 years of experience.
Who buys
Saraaf has never published customer or user numbers. What it does publish is a partners strip on its website showing logos of Lucky Cement, Power Cement, Sapphire, Naveena Group, Indus Group, FCML, MTM and HX Stone. The company says its Helmand and Mazar i Sharif cotton serves some of the biggest textile houses in Pakistan. None of those companies has publicly confirmed the relationship.
The pitch that broke the record
Money arrived, at least on screen, in November 2024. Ismail pitched Saraaf on the first season of Shark Tank Pakistan, and Aaj TV and Brandsynario reported on 20 and 21 November that shark Usman Bashir had committed PKR 80 crore for a 20 percent stake plus PKR 70 crore against a 3 percent royalty, PKR 1.5 billion in all. Aurora, which covered the show's first season in March 2025, described the PKR 70 crore as a line of credit and called the structure rare in Shark Tank franchises anywhere.
“I have seen the potential for commodity sourcing in Pakistan to revolutionise our global exports.”
Then the story turned. On 27 May 2025 Nukta reported that sources at the production company and at Saraaf had confirmed the pledge never became actual funding after filming concluded. A Saraaf representative told Nukta the company had experienced the widely reported delays and promised a significant announcement in the coming days. None has surfaced in the public record. A Nukta video published in November 2025 asserted that the money had in fact been delivered, without citing documents. The magazine treats the deal's status as unresolved.
From trader to platform
The next chapter was written by Forbes. Its 30 Under 30 Asia 2026 profile, published on 27 May 2026, describes Saraaf as launching a mobile app for businesses sourcing materials from Central and South Asia, with real time pricing, shipment tracking, digitised contracts and live chat between buyers and sellers. Forbes put the Shark Tank commitment at $5.3 million and said the company was preparing to go public in 2026. LUMS, in its June 2026 note, repeated that a public listing was in preparation.
That is a large promise for a company whose LinkedIn page lists ten employees. As of October 2026 the magazine found no prospectus, no stock exchange announcement and no app store listing, so both the app and the flotation should be read as plans rather than events. What Saraaf has demonstrably built is a trading operation with real stone and real quarries, and a founder who has twice persuaded an audience that a Karachi commodity house can become a regional exchange.
