CreditBook, a Pakistan-based Fintech startup that helps micro-entrepreneurs digitize and track all of their transactions, has raised $1.5M in seed funding. The startup's funding round featured a mix of international and local investors, including Pakistan’s BitRate VC and UAE-based VentureSouq, with participation from US-based Fintech fund Better Tomorrow Ventures, Ratio Ventures, Quiet Capital, Toy Ventures and i2i Ventures. The startup is also backed by angel investors and leading founders from BukuWarung, Musha Ventures and Rappi.
The startup launched in June 2020, and was founded by Hasib Malik, Iman Jamall and Hisham Adamjee. While Pakistan has experienced rapid digital growth, registering 100 million internet connections in January 2021, a large number of the population still remains offline. CreditBook is solving this problem, helping Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) with their bookkeeping and management of their cash flow. The CreditBook app saw thousands of downloads in their first month of operations, and despite the challenge of the pandemic, have scaled to over 500,000 users over the last six months.
CreditBook Co-founder, Iman, mentioned, “With Pakistan’s increasing attractiveness as a frontier market, it’s very easy to get distracted by numbers. As we scale, it’s important for us to sense-check our growth and to make sure the growth is meaningful. The only way to do that is through spending time with our users. We’re also excited to have a strong group of investors who understand and support our approach.”
Fellow co-founder Hasib Malik added “The journey has just begun, and we are confident we will be successful in creating a company that empowers the backbone of the economy through collaboration with some of the smartest and most empathetic people across the globe.”
Faisal Aftab, Founding Partner at BitRate remarked “Being on the ground, I have been moved by the team's ability to move fast and ship features regularly. This marks the start of a very exciting chapter for the company, given what we have seen from them with limited resources has been incredible, but to see what’s ahead is truly exciting for the entire ecosystem.”
Suneel Gokhale, Co-Founder and General Partner at VentureSouq stated “We are always on the lookout for founders that are deeply tapped into their local markets, and are utilizing a user-centric approach as an advantage. The team at CreditBook have demonstrated their ability as market leaders with their understanding of their customers while bootstrapping the company, which has made their growth all the more impressive.”
The investment will enable CreditBook to scale its users and product offering, and the startup is looking to hire the best talent across Pakistan and the world to cement its place as market leader.
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