Pakistani retail startup bags $17m from Y Combinator, others

Tajir, a business-to-business marketplace startup based in Pakistan, announced that it has raised US$17 million in a new funding round led by US firm Kleiner Perkins and YC Continuity, Y Combinator’s investment arm for growth-stage startups.

AAVCF, Fatima Gobi Ventures, Flexport, Golden Gate Ventures, Liberty City Ventures, VentureSouq, and several angel investors such as Lambda School co-founder Austen Allred and Figma co-founder Dylan Field participated in the round. This also is Kleiner Perkins’ first investment in a Pakistani startup.

Photo credit: Tajir

Founded in 2019, Tajir is a marketplace that can help owners of mom and pop stores or kiranas source and buy inventory from manufacturers and wholesalers. Tajir users can also get the products delivered to their shops by the next day.

Last year, Tajir’s product was used by more than 15,000 kiranas in Pakistan.

The company was founded by siblings Ismail and Babar Khan. Because their father worked in retail distribution for fast-moving consumer goods, they learned the inefficiencies of Pakistan’s wholesale trade at young age. The brothers say that this problem still exists today, and that’s why they built Tajir.

It became the first Pakistani startup to join YC, and then it raised a US$1.8 million seed round from VentureSouq, Golden Gate Ventures, Fatima Gobi Ventures, and other investors last year. Since then, Tajir says that its platform has over 1,000 available products and its revenue has increased tenfold.