Karachi-based e-commerce marketplace, Bazaar, has raised $70 million in Series B funding, bringing the emerging startup’s all-time under-writing to above $100 million.
San Francisco-based investment firm, Dragoneer Investment Group, and New York-based Tiger Global led the latest financing round that was one of the largest Series B in Pakistan.
Other investors, which played an active role in the latest round, include Indus Valley Capital, Defy Partners, Acrew Capital, Wavemaker Partners, B&Y Venture Partners, and Zayn Capital.
Founded by Saad Jangda and Hamza Jawaid in the mid-2020, Bazaar’s aim is to build an operating system for traditional retail in Pakistan to help retailers to connect directly with wholesalers and manufacturers. Its mobile-only B2B e-commerce marketplace has enabled thousands of retailers in Karachi and Lahore to easily procure inventory for their stores.
Bazaar also launched a digital ledger app called Easy Khata in 2021 to help retailers in Pakistan manage their book-keeping and stated that both the apps have served more than 750,000 merchants so far.
Bazaar has a loyal customer base with a massive 90 percent retention rate as a result of the focus on simplicity and delight in its products.
In Pakistan, Bazaar is seeking to establish an “operating system for traditional retail” in the country’s $170 billion commercial space, where five million small, medium-sized, and large businesses already operate across various pursuits.
Thanks to Bazaar’s growing network of a dozen fulfillment facilities, the startup’s B2B e-commerce marketplace is assisting merchants in 21 towns and cities across Pakistan in acquiring things to sell.
These merchants also utilize the Easy Khata app from the startup, which assists them with book-keeping. Additionally, Bazaar Credit, the startup’s banking arm, is providing short-term working capital lending to these merchants, many of whom operate neighborhood stores.
For the most part, Bazaar has a loyal customer base with a massive 90 percent retention rate as a result of the focus on simplicity and delight in its products.
Founded by Saad Jangda and Hamza Jawaid in the mid-2020, Bazaar’s aim is to build an operating system for traditional retail in Pakistan to allow retailers to connect directly with wholesalers and manufacturers.
In an interview with TechCrunch, co-founder of Bazaar, Saad Jangda, said that piecing together many of its services makes sense for a startup like Bazaar in Pakistan because it enables the startup to offer a more comprehensive set of values to a merchant. He said, “We had just started piloting our credit product and at the time we had partnered with a third-party,” he said.
“Now, our credit product is developed completely in-house and is digitally-enabled that connects to our last-mile network. Everything from order generation to credit disbursement to cash collection is done completely by Bazaar.”
“We acquire customers through Easy Khata, funnel them through commerce, and once we have enough data on the merchants, we start building a credit product atop of it,” he explained, adding that the business had already made thousands of loans in recent months.
