Pakistan’s FinTech OneLoad, which targets micro-retailers, has raised $11M to fund a growth phase as it focuses on tapping the unbanked population of the country.
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Lahore-based FinTech OneLoad has raised $11M in a Series A round led by Sarmayacar and Shorooq Partners, with participation from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Strategic Investment Fund, its first investment in Pakistan, and existing investor Systems Limited. OneLoad, via various digital banking and payment services, enables micro-retailers to connect with suppliers, accept digital payments, and avail working capital options for their business needs. The company adds new revenue streams for those micro- retailers who in turn help improve the standard of living and access to financial services for their end customers.
While E-commerce ranked first in Pakistan by capital investment over H1 2022, remarkable advancements have been made by the FinTech sector. Pakistan-based FinTech startups raised over $80M in funding across almost 10 deals in the first 6 months of the year. Pakistan has one of the largest unbanked populations of the world and tech startups in the country are working to revolutionize the traditional ways of banking and making payments. Recently, sizable investments by alternative payment and spend management platforms including NayaPay, SadaPay, and Dbank have been recorded to introduce digital wallets and electronic banking. The highest funding round by a FinTech in Pakistan this year was recorded by Dbank raising $17.6M SEED, surpassing Abhi's Series A round of $17M. As most recently recorded in our FREE State of Startup Funding - H1 2022 Emerging Venture Markets Report, the FinTech sector was the most prominent industry in H1 2022 across Emerging Venture Markets raising over $1.5Bn in over 200+ deals.
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Oneload’s parent entity E-Processing Systems (Private) has received in-principle approval from the State Bank of Pakistan to operate as an Electronic Money Institution (EMI). Muhammad Yar Hiraj, Founder and CEO of OneLoad, shared his thoughts, “We are excited to bring new partners to the company like Sarmayacar and Shorooq Partners, working with them brings valuable tech and venture capital expertise to the company and pushes us to continue to innovate and evolve with the market around us. Our vision is to fully digitize the financial needs of the unbanked and the financially excluded masses in Pakistan. We appreciate the support of our investors to build on our success and scale up our portfolio of financial products for the unbanked.”
Rabeel Warraich, Managing Partner at Sarmayacar., also shared his thoughts, “We are excited to back Oneload in its push to drive financial inclusion in Pakistan by being a conduit between retailers, suppliers and end customers. There is tremendous scope to expand and scale Oneload’s product offering so the masses can benefit from the fintech revolution underway in the country.”
The company will use this capital to expand its suite of products and services, targeted at the large unbanked population in Pakistan. “We cannot have financial inclusion without solid infrastructure that integrates in people’s daily lives, if the products we build don’t seamlessly integrate with people’s every day, we will not achieve that,” concluded Tamer Azer, Partner at Shorooq Partners. “This is what we learned in Egypt and this is what we see as a tremendous opportunity in Pakistan as well.”
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