Gobi Partner-backed Tajir, a Pakistani B2B marketplace for mom and pop stores, has raised $17 million in a Series A round led by American venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, according to an announcement. The funding marks the first investment by Kleiner Perkins in Pakistan.
Other investors in the round include YC Continuity, AAVCF, Fatima Gobi Ventures, Flexport, Golden Gate Ventures, Liberty City Ventures, VentureSouq, and angel investors including Ryan Petersen, the CEO of Figma Dylan Field, and Flexport CEO .
Founded in 2018 by brothers Babar and Ismail Khan, Tajir claims to offer full transparency on the prices of various products, addressing a challenge that store owners confront offline each day. It also sells and delivers inventories to stores.
The Lahore-based company allows stores to purchase over 1,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) via its platform, and it has been adding approximately 100 SKUs a month to continuously expand selection.
Last year, Tajir had raised a $1.8 million seed round led by Pioneer Fund, Golden Gate Ventures, Fatima Gobi Ventures, Karavan, and VentureSouq with participation from a clutch of angel investors, according to TechCrunch.
In 2019, venture capital firm Gobi Partners launched a $20 million fund — Techxila Fund I — with Fatima Ventures to establish Fatima Gobi Ventures to invest in early-stage tech opportunities in Pakistan. However, the Pakistan-focused fund’s final close was delayed to early 2021. According to a statement by Fatima Gobi Ventures, Techxila Fund I has secured over 70% of its target corpus to hit its first close.
Techxila Fund I actively deployed in Pakistani startups in 2020. To date, it has invested in five startups: the Y Combinator B2B marketplace startup Tajir; Y Combinator fintech and online payment gateway Safepay; Draper University-backed deep tech SaaS startup InventHub; First Round Capital-backed logistics firm Airlift; and Pakistani online ticket platform Sastaticket.
Pakistan is one of South Asia’s youngest and most under-capitalised venture markets, having raised just $18.8 million in venture funding in 2019 with most of it at the pre-seed and seed stages, according to the i2i Pakistan Startup Ecosystem Report 2019.
Kleiner Perkins is an American venture capital firm headquartered on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park in Silicon Valley. The firm invests in founders with bold ideas that span industries and continents, partnering with them from inception to IPO and beyond to maximise the potential of their ideas.