Bazaar, a Karachi-based B2B e-commerce, and finance firm said today that it has raised $70 million in a Series B round headed by Dragoneer Investment Group and Tiger Global. Existing investors such as Indus Valley Capital, Defy.vc, Acrew Capital, Wavemaker Partners, B&Y Venture Partners, and Zayn Capital joined the round, which comes just six months after Bazaar’s $30 million Series A. It brings Bazaar’s total funding to over $100 million, making it one of the country’s best-funded firms.
Bazaar, which was founded less than two years ago, is developing a traditional retail operating system in Pakistan. Its current products include a B2B e-commerce marketplace that allows retailers (mostly grocery stores) to acquire merchandise for their stores, a merchant software product called Easy Khata, and a recently released short-term working capital finance product called Bazaar Credit. Through more than a dozen fulfillment sites, Bazaar’s marketplace serves shops in 21 Pakistani towns and cities. The company claimed in a statement that it is adding 3-4 new cities and towns to its last-mile network every month and is on track to have the country’s largest tech-enabled last-mile footprint by the end of the year.
Easy Khata, Bazaar’s merchant software program that helps merchants digitize their data, has 2.4 million businesses signed up from 500 cities and villages across the country. It’s also a way for the corporation to gain clients as it expands into new towns across the country. Bazaar Credit, the company’s newest offering, has already issued thousands of digital loans to its merchants, all of which are fully repaid. Customer data from both its marketplace and merchant software products are incorporated into its proprietary credit model.
“We are thrilled to support Bazaar’s vision of building an end-to-end commerce and fintech platform for millions of unbanked and offline merchants in Pakistan,” stated Christian Jensen, Partner at Dragoneer Investment Group, in response to the investment. The unusual skill and culture Hamza and Saad have built at Bazaar is a testament to the company’s rapid worldwide expansion and new product development.”
“We believe Pakistan is at an inflection point in its tech ecosystem development,” said John Curtius, a partner at Tiger Global Management. Bazaar is capitalizing on the huge merchant market and is leading the way in the country. We’re thrilled to be a part of their outstanding team and phenomenal success in such a short time.”
“We are humbled and excited to continue on the path to creating a generation-defining story for Pakistan,” Bazaar’s founders Hamza Jawaid and Saad Jangda stated. We believe that, with the support of two of the world’s greatest venture capital firms, this will continue to change the country’s narrative and inspire countless more and greater stories in the near future. This is the consequence of our colleagues’, suppliers’, and, most significantly, our customers’ faith and partnership — the small business owners who are the backbone of our economy.”
Bazaar intends to use the fresh funding to grow into new locations across Pakistan, establish new marketplace categories, increase its loan solutions, and speed up the development of new products.
