Built an AI Marketplace for Pakistan's Invisible Workforce — Skilled Women

Hi Tarak,

Thank you for the magazine opportunity. I would love to share my story.

I'm Sidra, a final-year Software Engineering student in Pakistan, and I built SheCan AI as my Final Year Project. But the idea started long before that, with something I kept seeing around me.

Pakistan's digital economy is growing fast. But there is a group of people it has quietly left behind: skilled women.

I watched women in my circle, friends, family, people I knew, who could stitch, tutor, design, write, cook, and so much more. Real skills. Marketable skills. But the system was not built for them. Mainstream freelancing platforms felt unsafe, complicated, and foreign. Going outside the home was not always an option. And when women did manage to find work, often through middlemen or informal arrangements, they were paid a fraction of what their work was worth. No contract. No protection. No recognition. The client knew a company did the work. Nobody knew a woman did it.

That last part stayed with me the most. Large companies and clients regularly get skilled work done through these informal channels at very low rates, and the woman who actually did the work gets neither fair pay nor credit. Her name is nowhere. Her skill is invisible.

I kept asking myself: what if she could work directly? What if she could set her own price, negotiate her own deals, and get paid fairly, safely, and on her own terms?

SheCan AI is my answer to that question.

It is a safe, AI-powered marketplace built specifically for women in Pakistan. Women can list their services, connect directly with clients, and manage their work completely independently. The platform includes an AI assistant that helps women write professional profiles and proposals, a smart recommendation system that matches skills to the right opportunities, and content moderation to keep the space safe. I am also building in an escrow payment system, so that women get paid securely and on time, with no middlemen taking a cut or disappearing after the work is done.

I built the entire application solo, Flutter frontend, Supabase backend, Gemini AI integration, while completing my degree. It has been the hardest and most meaningful thing I have ever done.

But here is where I need help.

SheCan AI is currently my Final Year Project. I want it to become a real startup. I want to keep building, add more features, grow the community, and eventually reach every skilled woman in Pakistan who deserves better than invisibility.

To do that, I am looking for support. Whether that is funding, mentorship, a connection to women-focused organizations, accelerators, or impact investors who believe in closing the gender gap in the digital economy. If you know anyone, or if Build With Her has a community that supports founders like me, I would be incredibly grateful to be connected.

Pakistan has millions of skilled women who are economically invisible. SheCan AI exists to change that, one woman, one skill, one fair payment at a time.

Sidra