Faisalabad-based fintech DigiKhata has closed a $2 million international seed round. Led by China’s MSA Capital and joined by the leading MENAP Based Shorooq Partners, SOSV, +92 Ventures, and angel investors.
Founded by Adnan Aslam in 2020, DigiKhata helps Pakistani MSMEs to save time and reduce trade credit losses by helping them remember and recover it faster through automated alerts. In addition to credit, users can also track cash transactions, eliminating the need to keep physical registers/diaries “locally termed as Khata”.
“The MSMEs sector contributes significantly to the Pakistani economy in terms of GDP, Exports and Employment generation. If empowered with the right tools and resources, their value addition to the economy can grow manifolds. With this round of funding, we are looking to scale our team and continue building world-class utility solutions to help these MSMEs generate real economic value and grow” said Adnan – CEO, DigiKhata.
In 2020 alone, DigiKhata has recorded over $1billion worth of transactions on its platform. The platform has already registered over 1 million registered businesses.
DigiKhata recently won a PKR 10 million grant from Karandaaz Pakistan against its notable work towards financial inclusion. It is also taking part in the Telenor Velocity accelerator program this year. “These strategic partnerships will assist DigiKhata with opportunities to scale in the areas like payments, retail network, lending, etc.” commented Adnan.
DigiKhata also recently launched DigiDokaan, a mini-Shopify in Pakistani language, to help MSMEs launch digital stores within 30 seconds. Its intuitive interface has already attracted 50,000+ businesses to successfully create their online stores and start selling online.
“Ease of use is at the heart of whatever we build at DigiKhata. Growing e-commerce adoption trends and of course, accentuated by the pandemic in 2020, compelled us to equip small businesses with their online presence”, added Adnan.
MSA believes “MSMEs represent the largest transactional sector in Pakistan and DigiKhata are building a critical set of tools to significantly enhance their efficiency and scalability. The team’s executional excellence has allowed them to amass the largest user base of any such platform domestically and their vision will enable the introduction of a steady pipeline of new products and monetization strategies.”
Shane Shin Founding Partner of Shorooq Partners believes DigiKhata is ready to disrupt the MSME ecosystem across the MENAPT region, “we are seeing a global trend to bring MSME’s online and empower them digitally and DigiKhata is at the forefront of this movement. As Founder’s Partners, we are excited to work with Digikhata and look forward to leveraging our strong regional network to support Adnan and the team’s expansion across the GCC and broader MENA region.”
