Pakistan-based bus-hailing service BusCaro has reached a new milestone as it reports profitability for the first time.
Speaking with Zag Daily, Founder and CEO Maha Shahzad said that the mobility company has recorded a positive EBITDA since April 2026 – up from -9% between Pakistan’s fiscal year of July 2024 and June 2025. Zag Daily has not seen the financial results.
BusCaro reached the milestone in less than four years of operations and with a reported lifetime burn of $1.4 million. Founded in 2022, the company partners with organisations, schools and institutions to provide daily commuting in a nation that continues to battle with a transport safety crisis, particularly for women and children.
More than 30 million bookings have been made under BusCaro to date – 10 million more than was reported less than a year ago.
“The biggest driver has been the team behind it and their belief in what they’re building. They’ve kept going even when it looked very unlikely we’d make it over the line,” Shahzad told Zag Daily.
“This relentless focus on the customer and operational excellence is why our customers stay. Several of our customers have been with us since day one and across all bookings we have maintained 99.5% reliability. Simply put, our customers have no reason to leave.”
According to Shahzad, BusCaro’s annual revenue increased from $4.5 million to $6.5 million in its fourth year of operations, while annual recurring revenue reached $7.1 million.
The figures, Shahzad highlighted, come against a backdrop of a tougher global macroeconomic climate defined by tightening global funding, political conflict and inflation that has made profitability “increasingly difficult for startups to achieve”.
Over the last year, BusCaro expanded beyond its four core markets of Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi into surrounding cities. The mobility company also launched an on-demand service for its existing clients which lets them request rides on an ad-hoc basis in addition to BusCaro’s routine commuting service.
Looking ahead, Shahzad said the company is now focused on launching new markets within Pakistan as well as “laying the groundwork” for international expansion.
Shahzad said that the start of the fiscal year provides “a key opportunity to win corporate accounts reassessing employee commute budgets” as BusCaro plans to capitalise on rising fuel prices and expanding EV infrastructure that pushes more commuters toward shared transport.
Zag sat down with Shahzad for its Women Making Moves series last year. For women in Pakistan, using public transport can present significant threats to their safety while only 10% of the population owns a private car. Against that backdrop, the bus-hailing startup that launched from Shahzad’s bedroom seeks to address a deep and longstanding gap in the country’s transport system.
