Making money virtually

It’s extremely hard to scale a business by selling anything online in Pakistan, something that tech startups grapple with every single day. Even more so for digital products through mobile apps where, despite the hundreds of millions of smartphone users, the number of users for platforms is usually scant. But there are two categories that defy this trend. First, you have these financial apps that either instantly lend to people or offer them ponzi-like returns. Think of the digital loan sharks and the various crypto and options trading platforms. But at least that’s understandable: in a country where everyone is short on budget, anything that has the promise of generating income is inevitably poised to do well. But the second category — video chat apps — gives no hope for such monetary returns and instead plays on a different theme. Instead, it primarily plays off of an entirely different, though no less successful, theme: giving men the chance to talk to women online. And to female content creators the ability to monetise that attention. Of course, this is a generalisation, and there’d be other types of users, too.