Update, October 2026 — Pathao was one of the few platforms of that period to come through the years that followed intact. It raised a $12m Series B in September 2024, has described itself as profitable, and now operates across Bangladesh and 22 cities in Nepal. What followed is below the original article.
Pathao Limited has topped the list of national and international e-commerce companies operating in the country in terms of consumer complaint resolution rates.
The e-commerce company has a customer complaint resolution rate of 99.25%, according to a recent report published by the Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection (DNCRP).
Ride-sharing company Uber.com is on the second position of the ranking with a resolution rate of 97.66%.
According to the Department of Consumer Affairs, from July 1, 2017 to August 31, 2021, consumers filed a total of 19,304 complaints against 21 national and international e-commerce companies, including Uber and Foodpanda.
Of those, 12,257 complaints have been settled by the companies concerned, the overall percentage of complaint settlement is 63.49%.
During the above mentioned period, the number of customer complaints regarding the services of Pathao Limited was 267 out of which the company has settled 265 complaints.
How the ranking was built
The Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection counted complaints filed with it against 21 e-commerce and platform companies between July 2017 and August 2021 and compared them with the number each company settled. Pathao's 99.25 per cent and Uber's 97.66 per cent sat well above the 63.49 per cent average, which was dragged down by the advance-payment e-commerce firms that were collapsing that year.
How to file a complaint yourself
Any consumer can complain to the DNCRP within 30 days of a problem, by e-mail, through the directorate's website, at its district offices, or by calling the hotline 16121. Attach the order, the payment proof and the conversation with the seller. The directorate holds a hearing with both sides; if the seller is fined, the complainant receives 25 per cent of the fine. Since 2022 the commerce ministry's Central Complaint Management System also routes e-commerce complaints to the platform and follows them up.
What happened next
Updated September 2026. Pathao went on to raise fresh funding in 2023 and expand into food delivery and payments; Uber remains the largest ride-hailing app in Dhaka. The complaint-resolution ranking has been published irregularly since, but the DNCRP's caseload against digital businesses roughly doubled after the 2021 e-commerce collapse.
What followed
In September 2024 Pathao raised a $12 million Series B led by VentureSouq, taking total capital raised past $50 million. The stated purpose was expanding its fintech services rather than its ride-hailing business.
The company has described itself as having become profitable and financially stable over the preceding two years. It operates across all 64 districts of Bangladesh and in 22 cities in Nepal, having launched in Kathmandu in September 2018.
Why this one survived
Put this beside the platforms that did not. The period covered by this archive produced a long list of Bangladeshi digital businesses that collapsed, and the distinction between them was not ambition or technology.
Pathao sells a service and takes a cut of each transaction. Revenue arrives after the service is delivered, which is unglamorous and places a ceiling on growth — you cannot expand faster than real demand. The platforms that failed in the same window were funding operations from customer deposits taken in advance of delivery, which removes that ceiling and replaces it with a cliff.
That is the entire difference, and it was visible in the business model long before it was visible in the news. A company whose growth is limited by how many rides people take is constrained. A company whose growth is limited by how many deposits it can attract is not constrained by anything until it is.
What the fintech pivot signals
Raising a round specifically for financial services, rather than for mobility, is the move most successful ride-hailing companies in developing markets eventually make. The logic is that the platform already knows a rider's earnings history and a customer's transaction record — information a bank would need and does not have — which makes lending, insurance and payments adjacent businesses rather than new ones.
It also tends to be where the margin is. Moving people and parcels is operationally heavy and thin; the financial products layered on top are neither. Whether that works out is a separate question, and the regulatory bar for taking deposits or lending is considerably higher than for arranging a motorcycle.
