Fintech startup Lamaa secured a $5.5M seed round led by Raed Ventures and Saudi Aramco’s entrepreneurship arm, Wa’ed.
Seed funding
Lamaa, a Riyadh-based fintech startup which provides invoice financing solutions for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), has announced it has secured one of the largest seed funding rounds in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The $5.5 million in seed round funding has been co-led by Raed Ventures and Saudi Aramco’s entrepreneurship arm Wa’ed.
Lamaa provides financing solutions such as Supply Chain Finance and B2B Buy Now Pay Later plans for SMEs in order to create more efficient working capital management for suppliers and maximizing return on treasury for corporate, in line with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 to enable and digitalize SMEs and raise their contribution to 35 percent of GDP by 2030.
“Since our initial launch in March 2021, Lamaa has grown dramatically, with over 100 corporate clients in the pipeline and a projection of over $1 billion dollars’ worth of invoices to be soon launched in its marketplace,” Sumeet Khutale, founder and CEO of Lamaa said of the fintech startup, “In addition to supply chain finance, we will soon start offering B2B Buy Now Pay Later plans, which would be the first offering of its kind in the region. We also plan to expand our company into Egypt, UAE and Qatar in the next few months.”
Focus on SMEs
Fintech startup Lamaa was established in early 2021 and seeks to address available funding gaps for SMEs whose size present a challenge in obtaining credit risk ratings, having a direct impact on their cashflow. The MENA region’s GDP is $3 trillion, 30% of which at least is attributed to SMEs and 22% of Saudi Arabia’s current GDP ($700 billion) comes from SMEs.
The fintech industry is growing rapidly within the region, as evidenced by large regional conferences and the scale of fintech investment.
