Islamabad-based financial services startup, Dbank, has secured $17.6 million in Pakistan’s largest seed round, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
The early-stage investment round was co-led by Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia – a freshly launched $1 billion fund – and Kleiner Perkins. Additionally, Askari Bank Limited, Brazil’s Nubank, and Rayn joined in the financing.
Dbank was founded by Tania Aidrus and Khurram Jamali, two former Google workers who have worked together for over a decade. With the goal of operating across the Pan-Islamic globe, the firm has sought to become a digital retail bank in Pakistan.
Mamoon Hamid, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, stated that Pakistan has enormous potential as an emerging market. Dbank is targeting the country’s 110 million people who do not have access to financial services, making it the third-largest unbanked nation after India and China.
Sequoia Southeast Asia’s Vice President, Johan Surani, said, “Pakistan has a fast-growing middle class with increasingly sophisticated banking needs. This signals a unique opportunity to build a large, customer-centric bank for millions of people”.
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has been aggressively examining options of late to upgrade the country’s payments infrastructure and expand financial inclusion in the country, with Raast – a real-time payments system for quick digital transactions – being the stepping stone for more innovations in the pipeline.
The SBP has also issued a new complete banking digital license, allowing more players to act as banks and accept deposits from clients without the need for physical locations. Note that Dbank has also sought to become Pakistan’s first digital retail bank.
Pakistan, the world’s fifth-most populated country, made headlines last year when it received $350 million in startup financing. While the South Asian country’s startup economy is in its early stages, it is facing the effects of the global recession, with Uber Technologies Inc.’s Careem Inc. stopping food deliveries and Airlift Technologies Pvt. shutting down after raising the country’s largest-ever round last year.
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