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Saturday, March 16, 2024

Pakistani Startup OneLoad raises $11m funds

$11m investment into a Pakistani startup, despite economic crisis, brings hope: there's a light at the end of the tunnel!

According to a statement released on Monday, OneLoad, a Pakistani fintech owned and run by EP Systems, a division of Systems Limited, has raised $11 million in funding.

Systems Limited, a publicly traded technology business in Pakistan, disclosed the news in a filing with the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX).

According to the release, a renowned venture capital firm with an office in Abu Dhabi, Sarmayacar and Shorooq Partners, led the financing round.

According to the statement, OneLoad received additional funding recently after receiving funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation last year. It also stated that OneLoad intended to use the most recent funding for business expansion, including the introduction of numerous new products and the expansion of services for Pakistan’s unbanked population.

Read more: Pakistani startup 24Seven raises $6m

OneLoad, one of the first fintech products to gain IFC funding in Pakistan, was one of the investments made public by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in early 2020.

According to the business, “strategic coordination with regulated financial partners and banks has led to daily disbursements worth Rs. 10+ million, creating prospects of accelerated expansion for countless micro-retailers across the country.”

The 40,000 agents who work for OneLoad completed nearly $100 million worth of transactions last year. The company hopes to expand daily transactions from the present level of up to 400,000 to one million per day, according to founder and CEO Muhammad Yar Hiraj, who was quoted by Bloomberg.

OneLoad provides internet plans, video and entertainment services, and mobile top-ups under the heading of digital products and payments. In collaboration with banks, OneLoad offers financial access services such as government-to-person (G2P) payments, utility bill payments, deposits and withdrawals for digital wallets, wallet account opening and biometric verification, and money transfers.

Hiraj was reported in the PSX notice as saying, “We are thrilled to welcome new partners to the company, namely Sarmayacar and Shorooq Partners.

Working with them forces us to keep innovating and evolving with the local and international markets and provides the company with invaluable tech and venture capital knowledge. Our goal is to fully digitise the financial requirements of Pakistan’s unbanked and financially excluded populations, he said.

The largest seed round in Pakistani history, $17.6 million was raised by the fintech Dbank last week, which is backed by US-based Sequoia Capital.

Read more: Pakistan & Turkey startups raised largest funds

The cash comes after a record amount of investment was attracted to Pakistan’s startup sector in 2021. While the momentum continued into the current year, companies, including VavaCars and Airlift, have declared their closure.