2009–present
Pakistan
Tapmad · Daraz · Simpaisa
Direct Carrier Billing across all four telcos; 0→5M OTT subscribers at Tapmad.
The wallet, not the card, is the consumer rail.
◆ The operating map
Seventeen years. Ten markets. Three industries.
I didn't study frontier markets — I shipped in them. This is the map: every market, what I built there, and what it taught me about payments, product and the distance between a regulation and a working checkout.
◆ Ten operating markets · arcs originate from the Dubai hub
◆ The arc
Three eras, one throughline
Delivery discipline first, consumer scale next, then regulated payment infrastructure — each era compounding into the one after it.
- 2009–2016Foundations
Engineering to product. Learning to run delivery before running a roadmap.
- Moved from field engineering into project and product leadership.
- Ran PMO leadership at DS Engineering across a $15M portfolio and 400+ projects, and earlier at PESCO.
- Named PMI Youngest Project Manager of the Year in 2015.
- 2017–2020Scale school
Two operators, two continents of consumer scale — OTT subscriptions and Alibaba-scale marketplaces.
- Tapmad (OTT): launched Direct Carrier Billing across all four telcos and grew from 0 to 5M paid subscribers.
- Tapmad: cut payment cost from 50% of revenue to about 1% and lifted ARPU by 70%, on the way to $10M+ ARR.
- Tapmad: expanded DCB and wallet billing into the UAE and KSA with regional telco and wallet partners.
- Daraz (Alibaba Group): ran payment operations across five markets — +15% checkout conversion, −20% false declines, 99.5% settlement.
- Daraz: widened payment coverage by roughly 40% by localising regional methods on checkout.
- 2020–nowThe gateway years
Simpaisa — Chief Product Officer, and acting CTO through 2024. Building the cross-border gateway.
- Built a $1B+ GTV gateway processing 270M+ payments a year.
- Reached 150+ merchants at a 99.95% settlement SLA.
- Shipped four market launches in 2024, and grew the product org from 2 to 8 PMs across a 50+ team.
- Led PCI-DSS Level 1 and ISO 27001 from scratch.
◆ Every stop on the map
Ten markets, ten lessons
What shipped in each market — and the operating lesson it left behind.
2020–present
Bangladesh
Daraz · Simpaisa
Multi-country payment operations at Alibaba scale; cross-border corridor expansion.
Reconciliation is the real product in cross-border.
2020–present
Nepal
Daraz · Simpaisa
Payment operations across Daraz checkout; Simpaisa corridor expansion.
Small markets still demand their own local rails.
2020–present
Iraq
Simpaisa
Cross-border corridor launch under a tightening regulatory regime.
Compliance discipline is the entry ticket, not the afterthought.
2020–present
Egypt
Simpaisa
Cross-border corridor launch into a mandated-domestic-scheme market.
The domestic scheme beats international routing.
2017–2020
Saudi Arabia
Tapmad
DCB and wallet-billing infrastructure expansion with regional telco partners.
Mada-first routing is non-negotiable.
2017–present
United Arab Emirates
Wing Logic · Simpaisa
Built a PMO for a $12M+ portfolio; today the base for the Simpaisa platform.
Regulator engagement is high-touch and slow — plan for it.
In verification
Nigeria
Corridor work
Engagement detail is being verified before publication — this card carries the specifics in an upcoming update.
◇ Detail pending
Frontier-market corridor expansion.
2020
Sri Lanka
Daraz
Payment operations across five Daraz markets during a COVID-driven volume surge.
COD-to-digital conversion is a trust problem before it is a tech one.
2020
Myanmar
Daraz
Payment operations and localisation across Daraz checkout.
Payment coverage is a localisation problem, not a feature list.
The map is the story. The work is the proof.
See the case studies behind these markets, or start a conversation about what comes next.