About Qallam
We built the platform we wish we'd had.
Qallam started in 2022 at LUMS. A group of friends began making YouTube videos to help younger students navigate university admissions, the same process they'd just been through. What started as casual guidance turned into a full community of thousands.
Tuition centres charged 30,000-80,000 rupees. Past-paper PDFs were unstructured chaos. So we built a third option: video lessons, exam-style MCQs, and mastery tracking, for the price of a textbook.
4,000+
Students enrolled
100K+
YouTube views
100+
Free video lessons
2,000+
Exam-style MCQs
The founder
Shayan Faisal
Founder · LUMS '25
A LUMS student and content creator who saw that quality admissions guidance in Pakistan was either expensive or inaccessible. With friends from Lahore, he built Qallam as a tech-powered alternative to traditional counseling firms, so any student could get the same guidance, not just wealthy families.
Principles
How we build.
Free should mean free.
Every course video is free, forever. We only charge when you commit to a paid mock or a question bank, never to learn.
Built by people who took the test.
No salaried curriculum designers. Every question is written by someone who scored in the top percentile, in the last two years.
Pakistan-first.
Built for the LCAT, NET, IBA, GIKI, CIE, not bolted on from a foreign SAT product. Every example, every reference, every dataset is local.
Our story
From a dorm to 4,000 students.
2022
Founded at LUMS
A group of friends at LUMS started making admissions guidance videos on YouTube, helping juniors navigate the process they'd just been through.
2023
YouTube & community
100+ videos published. Thousands of subscribers. Built a student community through weekly newsletters and guidance sessions.
2024
Platform launches
Launched the Qallam web platform with the LUMS Counselor AI, trained on real acceptance data and student profiles.
2025
LCAT & NET prep
Expanded into full test prep: LCAT and NUST NET with 2,000+ exam-style MCQs, mastery tracking, and full-length mock tests.
2026
4,000+ students
Largest LCAT prep community in Pakistan. CIE O-Levels prep added. Continuing to build the tools students need.
See what 4,000+ students are preparing with.
2,000+ MCQs, 75+ free video lectures, and mastery tracking. Built by LUMS students who scored in the top percentile.