Tania Aidrus has hit pause on DCore’s commercialisation, but she has a new plan

After years of working to bring the future of finance to Pakistan — from championing the state-led Digital Pakistan initiative to co-founding a new-age core banking software platform — Tania Aidrus has now decided to halt the commercialisation of DCore, zeroing in on Waseela. 

The two initiatives were launched after Dbank failed to secure a digital bank license.

In the business world, commercialisation is the process of bringing a product or service to market. It means selling your product to customers, scaling it, and making it a revenue-generating business. Commercialisation in this context refers to the process of selling DCore as a business-to-business (B2B) solution to external clients — such as banks, fintechs, or financial service providers — who could use it to run their digital banking operations.

By pausing commercialisation, Aidrus is essentially putting that whole customer acquisition and revenue-generating engine on hold. 

“This is a major step forward in our journey,” said Tania Aidrus, co-founder and CEO of DGlobal. “Waseela is where we’re seeing the deepest product-market fit, and it directly aligns with our founding mission: to radically improve access, opportunity, and innovation in Pakistan’s emerging economy.”

As part of this strategic shift, a round of layoffs has been confirmed by Tania Aidrus. While the company has not disclosed the number of employees affected, it is understandable that the roles would be in departments such as sales and partnerships. In its press statement, the company stated that it was working to support affected team members through this transition. 

Aidrus’s path to DCore began with her mission to digitise Pakistan. After 10 years at Google, where she served as country manager for South Asia emerging markets and director of product and payments for next billion users, she returned to Pakistan in 2019. In early 2020, she was appointed as the Special Assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan on Digital Pakistan. 

But her stint in government was short-lived. By July 2020, she had resigned and co-founded the Rayn Group and then teamed up with former Google colleague Khurram Jamali to launch Dbank — a digital-first bank built to promote financial inclusion.

When Dbank failed to secure a digital banking license from the State Bank of Pakistan, the team shifted gears. Instead of building a consumer-facing bank, they spun off the banking technology they had built into a platform of its own: DCore.

DCore was designed to power the future of digital banking — not just in Pakistan, but globally. Its modular and scalable architecture made it ideal for both fintechs and traditional banks looking to digitise their operations.

Despite not getting the SBP license, the team stayed ambitious. They had started the Requests for Proposals (RFPs) process with international organisations, held meetings with global financial service providers, and signaled their intent to make DCore a global competitor in the banking infrastructure space.

While Tania Aidrus has not officially stated all the reasons behind halting DCore’s commercialisation, insiders say the move reflects a strategic recalibration — not a failure. 

It could be that the market conditions are not ripe. Selling enterprise banking software is a long game — one that involves lengthy sales cycles, regulatory hurdles, and complex integration demands. It’s a tough business, especially in emerging markets, where institutions may not be ready to overhaul their core systems or commit to cloud-based platforms due to compliance concerns. Global competition in an already saturated market could also be one of the reasons for a VC-backed contender to pause commercialisation.

It’s also possible the team wants to rethink DCore’s go-to-market strategy, or explore different ways of using their technology that don’t rely on the traditional commercialisation path. The recent decision to pause DCore’s global commercialisation efforts could also be linked to factors, particularly the shifting investor sentiments and the evolving market dynamics. 

Quite some time has passed since DCore raised $17.6 million in seed funding, and long since Dbank was overlooked for a digital banking license, prompting the company to pivot towards the DCore direction.

The challenge with DCore’s funding dynamics being increasingly dependent on global expansion stems from the nature of venture capital (VC) investments, particularly in the tech and fintech sectors. When Dbank raised $17.6 million in seed funding, it likely presented its business model with a vision for scaling not just locally in Pakistan but internationally, aiming to capture a larger, global market. This kind of vision appeals to VCs because it promises high returns and growth potential — something big investors like Sequoia Capital — one of the backers of DBank — are generally looking for.

Venture capitalists, especially those backing early-stage startups, often bet on the scalability of the business model. A global expansion strategy makes sense in this context, as it increases the total addressable market (TAM), diversifies revenue streams, and reduces reliance on a single market, in this case, Pakistan. 

In DCore’s case, this international focus was likely part of the pitch to investors, giving them confidence that the company was not limited to the relatively smaller and more volatile Pakistani market but could potentially grow into a global player in the fintech space.

However, this global expansion model becomes problematic when the investors start to have reservations about investing in Pakistan. Earlier, Profit has reported that some of the Dbank investors such as Peak XV were no longer interested in the Pakistani market due to its perceived risks — be it regulatory challenges, macroeconomic instability, or market size. Local VCs and startups have also also earlier told Profit that international VCs are reluctant to invest in Pakistan only. 

For the investors, backing a company whose expansion hinges on a global vision would require strong assurances that DCore could execute on this plan. Without those assurances, particularly with the shift in funding dynamics and global sentiment toward Pakistan, it’s possible that DCore’s strategy of commercialisation on a global scale became less viable in the short term.

Thus, one of the reasons for the pause in DCore’s commercialisation efforts could be tied to the increasing dependence on global expansion in its funding model. If the investor base became skeptical about this vision, or if the regulatory environment or market conditions made international expansion seem less certain, it could have led DCore to reassess its strategy. 

The shift from global commercialisation to focusing on Waseela — an initiative with a more locally focused, rural-based model — could be seen as a way to stabilise the business in the short term while maintaining a broader long-term goal. Essentially, the dependence on global expansion could have triggered this pivot as a way to reassure investors that the company was still on track to fulfill its broader vision while navigating the immediate challenges.

It needs to be mentioned that building a core banking system is an expensive task. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars. Completely shutting it down would have been a costly endeavor.  

In its statement, the company stated that DGlobal remained well-capitalised and committed to building bold solutions for long-term impact. 

Whatever the reason may be, one thing is certain: Aidrus isn’t backing down — she’s simply opting for a different approach. Tania has proven herself to be incredibly adaptable, embodying all the traits of a true entrepreneur.

The company is now focusing on Waseela and will use DCore to power digital financial services for rural Pakistan. Through its customer-facing brand Kisaan, Waseela offers financial services, agri-inputs, and supply chain tools designed specifically for rural communities.