Faisal Aftab has built a reputation in Pakistan’s venture ecosystem as an investor who thinks in systems rather than slogans. Through Zayn VC, he has made more than 24 investments, guided by what he describes as a fintech layer thesis. It is an approach shaped less by startup fashion and more by macroeconomics, monetary history, and the belief that the next phase of growth in frontier markets will be determined by documentation, data, and digital settlement infrastructure.
He does not speak like a promoter of startups. He speaks like a strategist concerned with the underlying plumbing of an economy.
His days begin with structure. Apple cider vinegar first, followed by black coffee, usually an Americano. He prefers Jura machines, not out of brand loyalty, but because they remove friction. One button, fresh beans, no wasted motion. The preference is telling. Aftab is drawn to systems that reduce inefficiency and compound quietly over time.
He describes himself as neither introvert nor extrovert, a disposition he traces back to being a middle child. The middle learns to observe before acting, to navigate rather than dominate. That instinct, he suggests, carries into adulthood, influencing how risk is assessed and influence is exercised.
On global finance, Aftab is clear eyed. He does not believe BRICS will replace the US dollar as the global reserve currency, at least not in any singular or immediate sense. The more likely outcome, in his view, is a multi currency framework resembling the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights. SDRs already function as a basket that reflects shifts in trade and monetary weight, and many countries borrow from the IMF in SDRs rather than dollars. For Aftab, this is not theory. It is evidence of how the system already operates beneath political rhetoric.
Reserve currency status, he argues, is not symbolic. It is power. It allows inflation to be exported, borrowing costs to be suppressed, and dominance to be maintained through settlement mechanics. Currency sits upstream of geopolitics, trade disputes, alliances, and conflict. BRICS, he believes, is first and foremost a political construct. Its internal contradictions matter. India’s strategic alignment with the United States, for example, makes it an unstable pillar in any bloc framed as an alternative to American monetary dominance. Tactical efforts at de dollarization may emerge through commodity settlements or bilateral swaps, but meaningful displacement of the dollar remains difficult because the dollar is not merely used. It is embedded.
Aftab’s worldview was shaped decisively by the 2008 global financial crisis. Living and working in New York at the time, he watched institutions widely perceived as invincible lose the majority of their value in a matter of months. The lesson was not about volatility. It was about fragility. He went on to pursue an MBA and came to an uncomfortable realization. Even elite finance education largely avoids teaching the monetary system itself. Students learn valuation mechanics but not the deeper architecture of money versus currency, nor the implications of the United States leaving the gold standard in 1971. Once those foundations are understood, he argues, modern history becomes legible. Bretton Woods, the rise of the petro dollar, the shift from commodity backed money to debt backed money, and the way power follows settlement.
That lens informs his investing. Venture capital, in his view, is downstream of macroeconomics. It is not separate from it.
Early in his career, Deloitte accelerated his ability to see patterns. Consulting, he says, compresses learning by forcing exposure to many organizations in a short period of time. Rather than mastering one function inside a single firm, a consultant learns how entire systems operate. He began in the Midwest, working on defense adjacent projects that required security clearance, before moving into New York’s financial ecosystem. The value was perspective. Consultants see companies from above.
His fintech layer thesis is fundamentally about sequencing. Documentation precedes scale. Data precedes consumer credit. He believes the global system has relied on monetary expansion since 2008 to remain functional. When inflation appears inside the reserve currency economy, trade offs become severe. Tighten policy and crush demand, or ease policy and risk runaway inflation. Historically, expansion has required bringing new borrowers into the system, whether through Europe’s post 1990s credit boom or emerging markets more broadly. He sees the next phase including countries like Pakistan, Egypt, and Nigeria.
But undocumented economies cannot absorb credit safely. Without reliable data, consumer lending becomes unstable. Defaults rise, losses compound, and models break. This is why Aftab has been cautious about consumer lending plays in Pakistan, particularly buy now pay later models. Instead, he prioritizes platforms that build transaction rails first. Payments infrastructure, SME tooling, supply chain visibility, and business to business to consumer models where risk is anchored institutionally rather than personally.
The shift, he believes, is inevitable. Money will become programmable. Settlement will become real time. Central banks are already building the rails. The mechanisms differ by country, but the direction is consistent. Digital wallets, instant settlement, and direct policy transmission reduce lag and increase control. In such a world, documentation is not a regulatory preference. It is a macroeconomic requirement.
On Pakistan’s tax base, Aftab is blunt. Large parts of the economy are already being integrated digitally, particularly through online commerce. The harder frontier is the informal brick and mortar economy, which remains politically protected and vast. He believes official GDP figures significantly understate true economic activity. Documentation will expand, but not without political cost. In his view, it may require structural shocks similar to those seen in other countries that forcibly brought informal economies onto formal rails.
Parenthood has altered his risk calculus. Activities that once felt routine now feel unnecessary. More broadly, it has sharpened his thinking about the future. A fully digital economy may reduce certain forms of corruption and crime as cash opacity disappears, but it also expands state surveillance capacity. That tension, he notes, is not hypothetical. History shows that crises often expand state authority in ways that persist long after the crisis ends.
The most disruptive force he sees approaching is artificial intelligence. Not because it is fashionable, but because it targets white collar work that has historically been insulated from automation. He expects disruption sooner than many assume. His response is pragmatic. He uses AI as an efficiency tool and believes creativity, judgment, and adaptability will matter more than procedural competence. Assembly line thinking, he argues, will be replicated by systems.
Even venture capital, he believes, will partially automate. Screening will become data driven. Founders will link systems rather than send static decks. Algorithms will reject most companies quickly and elevate only those that fit defined criteria. But at the earliest stages, he still sees human judgment as essential. His own approach is shaped by entrepreneurship and failure. He looks for resilience, learning velocity, and an understanding of frontier market realities. Many Western playbooks fail in Pakistan unless founders grasp receivables risk, enforcement gaps, and informal norms.
Despite the systems thinking, Aftab is not detached. He speaks warmly about Pakistani food and regional cuisines, and he credits his wife as a stabilizing force. Having built a long career in global finance herself, she understands the psychological demands of building companies and investing through uncertainty. Their partnership is structured as a team rather than a hierarchy, allowing him to operate with focus rather than friction.
When asked about the future of Pakistan’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, he consistently points away from visibility and toward substance. Many of the country’s most capable founders, he believes, are not active on social media. They are building quietly. Platforms in travel, logistics, payments, supply chain finance, and digital infrastructure are emerging without fanfare but with long term significance. His conviction is that ecosystems are not built by noise, but by systems that compound.
In an era dominated by narratives and hype, Faisal Aftab’s outlook is restrained, structural, and patient. He is less concerned with who is loud today than with who understands the system early enough to build what will matter tomorrow.
