This Arlington startup is looping Afghan and Turkish vendors into the digital economy 

A former refugee’s ecommerce and fundraising platform has helped more than half a million people facing situations similar to his own. 

Aseel, founded by former World Bank technologist Nasrat Kahlid, delivers funds and care packages to people in Afghanistan and Turkey, and residents from the two countries can sell handmade goods like rugs and pottery through the platform. 

“These are nice human beings, and they are probably the same, like us,” Khalid told Technical.ly, “and we should create systems for them.”

Since its launch, Arlington-headquartered Aseel has helped 642,500 people through $5 million in direct aid, he said. The startup has continued to grow since its founding — Khalid this summer expanded Aseel to also help nonprofits and NGOs track their own donations and aid. 

This is a personal undertaking for Khalid, who grew up as a refugee in Pakistan after leaving Afghanistan with his parents during the prolonged war in the country. 

As an adult, he worked in advocacy and innovation throughout his career — including on mobile payment systems for Afghanistan, and other internet infrastructure that has since been restricted — and moved to the US in 2017. He came up with the idea of Aseel’s global marketplace that same year, he said.  

An Etsy alternative and more, gearing up for a seed round 

When the US withdrew military from Afghanistan in 2021 and humanitarian groups started to dwindle, Khalid witnessed food shortages and severe hunger ravage the country Khalid is from in the wake of the Taliban takeover.

That’s why he added the fundraising and aid delivery section for individuals and families to the Aseel platform to pair with the ecommerce feature.

But despite its high numbers of people helped, Khalid has struggled to land investment for Aseel.

He raised a $850,000 pre-seed in 2024, which was mostly from personal connections. Khalid met with 300 venture capitalists, he said, and received little interest in his startup. He plans to try to raise $5 to $10 million starting in January to keep building the platform. 

“Nobody in the tech world thinks … that you can do good and make money,” Khalid said. “They’re just not wired like that.”

Because several countries don’t have access to mainstream ecommerce platforms (including Afghanistan, though payments can be processed in Turkey), Aseel’s “Buy Good” feature allows for vendors to sell to Western countries and earn a profit, Khalid said. 

Sellers in Turkey and Afghanistan post all kinds of products including jewelry, glassware and paintings. Customers are primarily from the US, Canada and Australia, he said. 

Aseel takes a margin of the sale to pay for fulfillment and other costs, and the percentage depends on the country and its complexity in shipping packages. Khalid plans to expand from working in Afghanistan and Turkey to the entire 44 identified as least developed by the United Nations within the next five years, per Khalid.

Centralized vs. decentralized aid

Aseel’s “Do Good” services, which Khalid likened to a more transparent GoFundMe, operate differently than traditional humanitarian programs, he explained. 

Large foreign aid organizations often operate in a “centralized” aid model, he said. That refers to decisionmaking typically coming from one lead agency, and the setup has been criticized for being too slow and unsustainable for countries.  

With Aseel, Khalid is working to foster more decentralized aid, where decision-making and resources are shifted to local affected organizations rather than single outside entities. 

“Throughout my early life, I thought that these big institutions are really there to fix these problems,” Khalid said. “But once I really got into it, I really realized that these big institutions are actually false actors.”

People use “Do Good” on Aseel’s site to purchase aid packages to be sent out, including winter clothes and emergency malnutrition packs. The delivery is tracked by assigning recipients ID cards, he said, and a video proving delivery is sent out. It’s similar to an UberEats driver snapping a picture of a delivered takeout order, Khalid explained. 

Related news

Defense software startup Pryzm lands $12.2M seed led by Andreessen Horowitz

Arlington launched an innovation fund two years ago. What’s it doing now?

This studio wants to turn Northern Virginia into video game powerhouse  

People can also donate money going toward specific causes, like helping families navigate the aftermath of the recent deadly earthquake centered in the northern part of the country. 

To keep operations running, Khalid has a staff of 46 full-time employees. Five are based in the US, and the rest are in Istanbul and in Kabul, Afghanistan. 

Aseel in August launched AidOS, a tool for organizations to raise and deploy their own funds that breaks down data like how many women have been supported and which provinces support is going to. 

In the past few months, Aseel has onboarded 25 nonprofits and NGOs to pilot the product, including the Humaniti Foundation and International Finance Corporation (which is a member of the World Bank). 

“It’s building on what we built for ourselves for the last six years, and giving all of these features to nonprofits to become more transparent,” Khalid said. “That’s the main go-to-market for us.”