KARACHI: Welcoming the people involved in the largest acquisition of a local software company by an American firm to the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), PSX CEO Farrukh H. Khan said on Thursday the transaction bodes well for the burgeoning IT industry of Pakistan.

Stock trading began with Lord Aamer Sarfraz of Kensington striking the gong to mark the acquisition of Cloudways — which provides small and medium-sized businesses with cloud hosting and software as a service (SaaS) facilities — by New York Stock Exchange–listed firm DigitalOcean Holdings Inc for $350 million.

Besides Lord Sarfraz, who’s a senior adviser to several NYSE-listed tech firms including DigitalOcean Holdings Inc, special guests at the PSX included DigitalOcean CEO Yancey Spruill and Aaqib Gadit, founder of Cloudways.

“This acquisition by DigitalOcean of Cloudways is a testament to the fact that Pakistani tech companies present a compelling business opportunity for strategic and portfolio investors. The talent pool in the IT ecosystem is impressive, which is why there’s significant potential in this industry,” Mr Khan said.

When the two companies announced the deal back in August, Cloudways expected to generate more than $52m in revenue in FY22, which reflected a three-year compound annual growth rate in excess of 50 per cent.

DigitalOcean and Cloudways have been close partners since 2014. Cloud­ways relied on DigitalOcean infrastructure to power approximately 50pc of its customers. Together, they’ll serve over 124,000 customers paying over $50 per month, representing approximately 84pc of the pro forma company’s total revenue, the company told investors at the time.

Mr Khan drew the guests’ attention to the fact that the startup funding in 2022 clocked in at $347m in Pakistan despite serious challenges on both local and international fronts. “The IT industry is capable of growing the export of services at a compounded rate,” he said.

Speaking on the occasion, Lord Sarfraz expressed his hope that the PSX would play its role in the redistribution of wealth across the country as the economy was set for a rebound. “Pakistan has had a challenging year (but) the Cloudways story is nonetheless one to celebrate. It demonstrates Pakistani entrepreneurs continue to deliver world-class innovation,” he said.

Cloudways provides simple on-boarding and day-to-day management that is purpose-built for certain SMEs looking to outsource their on-ramp to the internet. The company helps such businesses offload the complexities of cloud infrastructure while letting them spend more time running and scaling their businesses.

Cloudways was co-founded by Mr Gadit — an electronics major from Karachi’s NED University of Engineering and Technology — in 2012 as a “fully bootstrapped next-generation multi-cloud managed application hosting platform”.

Published in Dawn, january 6th, 2023