A Pakistani financial platform called Abhi Pvt has successfully raised funds at a $40-million valuation in just a few months following its launch. The business facilitates salaried employees to access funds before payday.
Chief Executive Officer Omair Ansari said that the UAE-based Global Ventures led Abhi Pvt’s bridge round investing in Pakistan for the first time.
The amount of funds raised in this round remains undisclosed.
According to Ansari, other participants in the round include US-based Next Billion Ventures, VEF AB, Rally Cap Sarmayacar, and VentureSouq as well as TPL e-Ventures and i2i Ventures.
Omair Ansari and Ali Ladhubhai founded the Karachi-based company earlier this year with the aim of becoming the first financial wellness platform by bringing about a change in users’ spending behaviors via its web and mobile app.
Ansari said the platform will commence operations in Bangladesh next year. Currently, there is no such platform in Sri Lanka and in Middle Eastern countries providing expansion opportunities for the company.
Abhi’s platform allows employees of its partners to take out salary advances based on their accrued wages at any time. Since the fintech will be funding these advances, the withdrawals have no effect on the partner employer’s balance sheets and repayments will be subtracted from the employee’s salary.
According to a Bloomberg report, the app takes less than 30 seconds and two clicks for a registered user to access the funds, with a flat 2% transaction fee. The funds are automatically deducted from the next paycheck. Furthermore, Abhi is offering working capital to businesses as per the report.
Other than the app, about 10% of users accessed funds by sending an SMS and 15% through WhatsApp. It intends to add more products including savings instruments.
The CEO said Abhi is set to become cash-flow positive next month.
Earlier in June, Abhi announced that it has raised $2 million for its salary advance platform in a seed round led by Vostok Emerging Finance.
Village Global, i2i Ventures, Sarmayacar, Zayn Capital, Portman Wills, the co-founder and CTO of Wagestream, had also participated in the equity-only round.
Pakistan’s startup landscape has been attracting immense attention in the last few months. As per data compiled by Karachi-based Alpha Beta Core (ABCore), an early-stage tech-based investment firm.
During the first nine months of 2021 alone, the country’s startups raised a record amount with investments at over $305 million.
