A Karachi-based cashflow management services provider, Udhaar Book has successfully raised $6 million in seed funding to digitize small stores that mostly manage to employ a manual register and handwritten entries. The startup, Udhaar Book’s parent is Toko Lab Inc., raised the money in seed funding from investors including Fatima Gobi Ventures, Plaid co-founder William Hockey’s Muir Capital, Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen’s JAM Fund LLC, Integra Partners, and Commerce Ventures LLC.
Pakistani Startups Have Raised an Impressive $300 Million Funding
Furthermore, Venture capital and private equity financers are increasing the number of investments in Southeast Asian countries and India. Pakistani startups have too witnessed the seed funding rush this year with inflows at a record about $300 million, this raised seed funding is more than the previous six years combined, as per the data provided by Crunchbase and Invest2Innovate.
Read more: Trellis Raises Funding to Provide home loans to Middle-Income Households
Moreover, Pakistan is mostly a cash-based economy but new innovative startups are looking to change that by raising seed funding for their ventures. The country is home to as many as 30 million micro-, small- and medium businesses that work manually and conduct business in cash. Several small-scale business owners such as grocery shops are not able to expand since they require to keep an eye on drawer containing all the cash, Fahad Kamr, Udhaar’s co-founder stated in an interview about how the startup is going to digitize small stores.
Udhaar Book Has Nearly 1.4 Million Registered Users
In addition to this, Udhaar Book was established last year and currently has 1.4 million registered users and a little over half-a-million monthly active users, which as per Kamr is the highest active user base in the digital bookkeeping division for small stores, in the motive to digitize small stores. The startup’s app further provides services such as inventory, invoicing, and payroll management to small businesses.
“We’ve barely scratched the surface so obviously expanding the reach of the product is super important at this time,” said Kamr, who moved back from Canada for the startup, Udhaar Book and was previously a founding member of data portal Market IQ. “That’s where a lot of the raised seed funding will also go.”
Source: Pro Pakistani
