Pakistani startups have raised more than $300 million this year alone, more than in the preceding six years combined. CreditBook, a Pakistani digital platform, has raised $11 million in a pre-Series A funding round, taking advantage of the capital-guzzling startup ecosystem.
Tiger Global, which has invested in over 28 startups, was one of the investors in the round.
Tiger Global and Firstminute Capital made their first investment in the Pakistan tech market with CreditBook. They join international investors such as Kleiner Perkins, Addition, 20VC, and Buckley Ventures in investing in Pakistan’s expanding startup sector.
The Karachi-based fintech startup had received $1.5 million in seed funding from Pakistan’s BitRate VC and Dubai’s VentureSouq in May of this year in what was recognized as one of the largest seed rounds received by local startups in Pakistan.
CreditBook, which was launched in late 2019, caters to Pakistan’s Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector, which is both booming and overlooked. The startup, which produces secure software for organizations to manage their credit, sales, and spending cycles also raised $1.5 million in a fundraising round back in May. According to CreditBook, the financing shortfall for small firms is almost $45 billion.
The startup’s mobile app is currently used in more than 400 towns and cities across the country.
CreditBook is aiming to overcome these barriers by providing a bookkeeping tool that allows merchants to digitize their handwritten ledgers, allowing them to compete more effectively with overseas behemoths.
Although the company is new, its platform is now being used by merchants in over 400 cities, and the number of transacting users has expanded by tenfold since last year. It is also focused on developing and testing financial solutions in addition to supplying digital bookkeeping.
