Spokesman Report
In a city like Karachi where nearly 80% of drivers do not have a legal license to drive, a civic-tech project known as ‘Raastah’ has been revolutionary in bridging the state institutional failure through their licensing outreach programme, without relying on government funding or donors.
Adil Rahoo, the founder of the NGO SFR Foundation and Raastah is a 29-year-old who returned to Pakistan after leading the 20,000 students of Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland as the first international Student President. He’s the grandson of the late Shaheed Fazil Rahoo, one of Sindh’s most prominent political martyrs for his struggle for Pakistan’s democracy.
Adil built the entire system of Raastah from scratch. Each Raastah vehicle is equipped with a laptop, inverter, battery, camera, internet and a trained operations officer. Each vehicle targets dense localities where the licensing service has been traditionally inaccessible to the locals, such as Pakistan Chowk, Railway Colony, Lyari, Delhi Colony, Orangi, and Saddar. By connecting directly to the Sindh Police’s DLS system, Raastah in many cases surpasses the daily volume of the Sindh Police’s mobile licensing fleet in Karachi.
The secret behind the model’s success is the sophisticated technology used in the project. In just 6 nights, Adil taught himself Python and built an AI-powered auto filling software that slashed license processing times from 20 minutes to less than 1 minute. The OCR and Machine Learning tool reads NICs, extracts key data, and populates the government’s DLS form in mere seconds, and is now a key standard in all Raastah vehicle units.
All Raastah units use CCTV monitoring, remote desktop surveillance, daily log generation, cloud computing, and AI validation, all developed in-house. Every license issued is tracked, time-stamped, and verified to ensure no bribery, corruption or fraud occurs within any of the public service units.
While the mobile units focus on issuing official learner driving licenses, the project does not stop there. Each applicant is supported through a structured follow-up system, which includes SMS nudges, reminder calls, and personalised guidance to help them upgrade their learner licenses into full driving licenses through their local licensing centre.
‘Raastah is more than just about issuing a learning license to drive on the road for a year’, Adil Rahoo explained. ‘It is about building a bridge to legitimacy, and formalising the vast majority of individuals in the country’s legal system, often for the very first time, and then supporting them at each stage of the process’. The post-licensing support process is coordinated through Raastah’s cloud-based system, which generates contact tracking used by phone operators to follow up.
The initiative started from a free licensing facility near KPT Bridge, a drive Adil powered from his home. ‘We didn’t charge a rupee at first. We just wanted to see if people would show up’, he recalled. ‘Hundreds showed up, and we soon found ourselves to be severely under capacity’.
Through trial and error, it evolved into a structured operation within several weeks. Currently, three vehicle units operate across Karachi, issuing over 1,350 licenses each month. With preparations for growing to five units in August, the project has already helped legalise over 27 million PKR in income for gig and transport workers, particularly rickshaw and motorcycle drivers. Each license issued represents not just a document, but a full livelihood made legal, often for those previously shut out of the system due to bribery.
Raastah is financially self-sustaining. With each unit generating over PKR 70,000 in monthly net profit and over PKR 200,000 in gross revenue, all proceeds are reinvested back into expansion, technological development, continuous quality improvement and operations.
Raastah operates in regular and close coordination with Sindh Police and other local authorities. The Cantonment Board Clifton (CBC), including its Vice-Chair, Mr Najeeb Wali, supports enabling access to local councillors and community leaders in regions such as Punjab Colony, Gizri, P&T Colony, embedding the vehicle units directly in communities needing the service the most. Similarly, the management of Raastah regularly liaises with Sindh Police to resolve real-time IT, technical, and system issues during field activities.
Adil Rahoo said ‘While I had to build the entire Raastah system and structure from the ground up, I was fortunate enough to have a few people who believed in the vision for Raastah. Individuals like SFR Foundation’s Executive Committee Member, Tariq Baloch, who provided unwavering moral support and took charge of our social media, marketing, and branding voluntarily during our early struggling days.’
Starting from Adil’s drawing room, the project now has an entire managerial team that functions from Raastah’s very own office. Adil prepares to leave for the University of Oxford in September to pursue a Master of Public Policy, where he will join a global cohort of policy innovators. He said that he will continue leading and growing the project. ‘I will be governing the project remotely as the Chair of the board of SFR Foundation throughout my time at Oxford. We’ve proven this works, now it’s all about nationwide scale.’
“We are also planning to explore working with the Mayor of Karachi, Mr Murtaza Wahab, to launch Raastah’s very own driving institute within the jurisdiction of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation. The goal is to collaborate closely with Sindh Police as an official partner and provide affordable driving test clearance certifications, further addressing the state capacity and transparency gap in Karachi’s formal driving sector.’
With plans to expand to other cities in Pakistan, Raastah represents what citizen-driven governance can look like in Pakistan: transparent, practical, corruption-free, and powered by technology.Â
