Dastgyr brings in Saif Ali to lead marketing

He is the first marketer hired by the B2B eCommerce marketplace.

Pakistan-based Dastgyr has hired Saif Ali to lead the marketing and public relations function for the B2B eCommerce marketplace. He will establish and lead the brand and marketing function to create an association between Dastgyr and its positioning around being a B2B eCommerce startup catering to the retail sector of Pakistan.

A digital native and a generalist, Ali brings with him nine years of experience across media, marketing, and communications across Pakistan. A former journalist with Express Tribune, Ali has since worked for The Brand Crew, Spectrum Y&R, Echo Digital, Empact Activation Services, and more recently for TikTok reseller Jack of Digital.

"Saif is one of those people I have reached out to multiple times in my career to seek advice on how to run marketing & PR so naturally, I wanted him to join Dastgyr and help us on that front,” said Muhammad Owais Qureshi, the co-founder of Dastgyr, who poached Ali from Jack of Digital. “I've seen him excel in multiple ad agency roles, and seeing his capacity to build and iterate always made him stand out. His varied experience and customer-centric thinking make him a skilled marketer, but it's his animalistic drive and relentlessness that make him a culture fit for the rocket ship we're building at Dastgyr.”

Owais said that Ali would be defining the Dastgyr brand strategy and executing brand marketing, demand generation, and public relations initiatives, adding that he is excited to have Ali onboard so Dastgyr can finally unlock its potential from the marketing lens.

Ali is credited with campaign work with Domino's, Unilever, Shell, Engro, Ferrero, ICI Pakistan, Shan Foods, foodpanda, Starzplay, and several other large B2C and B2B brands nationwide, with a generalist set of experiences across creative, digital, activation, PR, and media agencies.

He is among the few members of the Pakistan marketing fraternity with command over shopper, experiential, trade, digital, influencer, and brand marketing including corporate, consumer, and employer branding.

“It was Empact Activation Services that helped groom me for this position since it was my first introduction to retail and trade-level engagement,” said Ali, the general manager of marketing & PR at Dastgyr, in a statement to Profit. “Eventually, I was independently managing in-store executions in international & local modern trade outlets across Pakistan for multiple business categories in Unilever, while also juggling influencer marketing projects for them.”

The target market for Dastgyr is valued by the company as being worth $150 billion across Pakistan, with the company reportedly fulfilling hundreds of thousands of orders worth millions of dollars, and amassing a monthly user base of tens of thousands of retailers across Karachi and Lahore.