Riyadh-based Fintech startup Lamaa secured a $5.5M seed round led by Raed Ventures and Saudi Aramco’s entrepreneurship arm Wa’ed.
The investment comes in line with Saudi Arabia’s commitment to SMEs' financial inclusion part of the kingdom’s vision 2030 push.
December 1, 2021 – Lamaa, a Riyadh-based Fintech startup which provides invoice financing solutions for SMEs, has announced one of the largest seed rounds in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The $5.5 million seed round of Lamaa is being led by Raed Ventures and Saudi Aramco’s entrepreneurship arm Wa’ed. Lamaa provides financing solutions such as Supply Chain Finance & B2B Buy Now Pay Later for SMEs with the aim to create more efficient working capital management for suppliers and maximizing return on treasury for corporate, in line with 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 gathered significant traction with over 100 corporate clients in the pipeline and a projection of over $1 billion dollars worth of invoices to be soon launched in Lamaa’s marketplace,” Sumeet Khutale, founder and CEO of Lamaa said. “In addition to supply chain finance, we will soon start offering B2B Buy Now Pay Later which would be the first of its kind offering in the region. We also plan to expand in Egypt, UAE and Qatar in the next few months.”
Established in early 2021 by Sumeet Khutale, who has recently relocated from London to Riyadh and who has extensive experience in Investment Banking Technology and Cloud banking with Global consulting companies such as Barclays Capital and JP Morgan, Lamaa 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.
"What excites us about Lamaa is that it’s a great platform to empower SMEs in Saudi Arabia, and it's managed by a well-experienced team led by Sumeet," founding partner at Raed Ventures Omar Almajdouie stated. "For Lamaa, creating tremendous value from already-available cash will generate a win-win scenario in almost every transaction."
Lamaa’s market potential in MENA is huge; the region’s GDP is $3 Trillion, 30% of which at least is attributed to SMEs. In parallel, 22% of Saudi’s current GDP ($700 billion) comes from SMEs.
