Patari, an app that streams Pakistani music

Patari is a dedicated online medium that showcases old favorites and new discoveries from Pakistan's vibrant music scene, writes Khalid Bajwa, co-founder, Patari in Tech in Asia

Patari was never supposed to happen. We had planned to create a variation of Hulu — a streaming service offering TV shows, clips, movies, and other media — for Pakistan. For two years, we tried to make this happen in vain as most TV channels refused to cooperate with us. In this time, we met with a senior media executive who urged us to focus on music instead. However, we were so consumed by our original plan that we refused to give up on it.
 

As the grind started getting tougher to bear and there seemed to be no end in sight to the wrangling with TV executives, I secretly started thinking about a music platform. I had grown up in an environment where music was always very important. Growing up, the music scene in Karachi was extremely vibrant and I formed an inextricable bond with Pakistani music. Over the years, that bond had faded, but the more I thought about it, I realised that a music-sharing platform could bring back the music I had grown up with.
 

After one particularly frustrating phone call with a TV channel executive who was insisting on absurd price tags, I slammed down the phone and decided I’d had enough: the TV plan was dead. I called up my co-founders, who were as frustrated as I was. We applied to Plan9, Pakistan’s largest technology incubator, and after being accepted, our Patari journey started in earnest.
 

Patari is a dedicated online medium that showcases old favorites and new discoveries from Pakistan’s vibrant music scene. It enables users to search through an extensive library — our state-of-the-art search engine is built specifically to deal with how people spell Urdu in English script — via a beautiful interface.

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here. Khalid Bajwa is the CEO and co-founder of Patari.