ISLAMABAD: Pakistani cashflow management services provider for small businesses, Udhaar Book, has raised $6 million in early funding to digitize retail stores.

The startup works with mom-and-pop stores that mostly operate using a manual register and handwritten entries.

Many small business owners such as grocery shops unable to expand since they need to keep an eye on the drawer holding the cash, Fahad Kamr, Udhaar’s co-founder said in an interview to Bloomberg.

Udhaar Book started last year and has 1.4 million registered users and a little over half-a-million monthly active users, which according to Kamr is the highest active user base in the digital bookkeeping segment for small stores. 

The company’s app allows small businesses services such as inventory, invoicing and payroll management, among others.

“We’ve barely scratched the surface so obviously expanding the reach of the product is super important at this time,” said Kamr, who moved back from Canada for the venture and was previously a founding member of data portal Market IQ. “That’s where a lot of the funding will also go.”

“The Karachi-based startup, whose parent is Toko Lab Inc., raised the money in seed funding from investors including Fatima Gobi Ventures, Plaid co-founder William Hockey’s Muir Capital, Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen’s JAM Fund LLC, Integra Partners and Commerce Ventures LLC,” Bloomberg reported.

Earlier this month, Abdul Razak Dawood, adviser for commerce and investment to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, said the country’s startups had set a record by raising $305 million during January and September 2021.

A group of young startups have made splashy funding announcements in recent weeks.

Quick-commerce startup Airlift unveiled a record $85 million Series B round last month, followed by business-to-business (B2B) venture Bazaar’s record $30 million Series A round. Last month, Tag, a one-year-old Pakistani startup that offers banking and financial services, raised over $12 million in what is now the largest seed financing round in Pakistan, and Oraan raised $3 million in the largest seed funding closed by a women-led startup in the country.

Pakistan is home to as many as 30 million micro-, small- and medium-enterprises that operate manually and deal in cash.