Bazaar, a Karachi-based B2B marketplace startup, raised $70 million in Series B funding from Dragoneer Investment Group, Tiger Global Management, Indus Valley Capital, Defy.vc, Acrew Capital, Wavemaker Partners, B&Y Venture Partners, and Zayn Capital.
Elevator Pitch: One-stop shop for procurement, credit, and bookkeeping for small businesses (kiryana stores).
Tell me more: Pakistan has around 5 million small and medium-sized businesses and enterprises across the country, and the retail market is valued at $170 billion.
SMBs and SMEs have to face many issues, one of them being procurement. The supply chain is complex, and sometimes retailers have to shut their shops to get essential goods from local wholesalers. This has an impact on the business.
Moreover, these businesses are primarily unbanked and work offline. They also cannot get credit from financial institutions because they don’t have a credit score. Consequently, they have to turn to loan sharks for their monetary needs.
Bazaar is offering a solution for all these problems.
It has a smartphone app with a simple digital interface through which retailers can choose from several thousand stock items with next-day delivery.
Bazaar has also launched Bazaar Credit, a short-term working capital financing product that provides liquidity to merchants.
The startup also has a digital ledger app called Easy Khata for helping retailers in managing their bookkeeping.
You should know: Bazaar was founded in 2020 by Hamza Jawaid and Saad Jangda. It has previously raised $37.8 million in funding, bringing the number to $107.8 million, making it one of the most well-funded startups in the country.
Bazaar is currently serving 21 cities in Pakistan. It claims to have registered over 2.4 million businesses on Easy Khata, recording over $10 billion in annualized bookkeeping transaction value.
Zoom Out: Bazaar aims to use this funding to expand into more cities, launch new marketplace categories, and accelerate product development.
