Oraan raises $3 million in a seed round for Pakistan's First women-focused startup.

ByFaisal Chughtai | Published date:
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(Image credit: www.oraan.com)

Oraan, a financial company in Pakistan, has secured $3 million in the country's first seed round driven by female entrepreneurs. The round was co-led by Zayn Capital and Wavemaker Partners, with investors including Resolution Ventures, i2i Ventures, Hustle Fund, Haitou Global, and Plug and Play. Claire Diaz-Ortiz, a well-known angel investor and adviser to the business, also took part in the round.

Oraan has received slightly over $4 million in total investment from Tharros, Zayn Capital, and Graph Ventures. Its goal is to simplify banking and increase financial inclusion, particularly for women and other disadvantaged groups. It reinvents and digitizes Rotating Savings and Credit Associations, a classic form of collective saving.

Rotating Saving and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) are often made up of intimate community members such as family and friends, with each member contributing a fixed sum of money each month. Every month, a vote or a draw decides which member gets the money from the pool. Oraan says that about 41% of Pakistan's population participates in committees and that a $5 billion rotation occurs on an annual basis.

"The latest round of funding will be used to accelerate Oraan's expansion into other products with its extremely sticky user base," the company said.

Halima Iqbal, an investment banker who returned to Pakistan from Canada and saw that many women did not have simple access to financial services, established the business.

"Oraan was founded when we realized that the large majority of the Pakistani population struggles to access financial services simply because they are not designed for them," Iqbal stated in a news release.

"While there is a demand among women for credit, insurance, and savings services, they are unable to approach financial institutions due to mistrust, complexity of products, and challenges around mobility," she said.

According to the business, it has over 10,000 users, 84 percent of whom are women, and their committee product is growing at a rate of 28 percent month over month.

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