RIYADH: Aiming to take a serious step towards the fintech space, Chari, a B2B e-commerce and fintech startup, has announced the closing of a bridge round.
“Chari will use the money of this bridge round to test the BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) services with its existing customers. Upon successful results, Chari will acquire a local credit company to enable shop owners to lend money to their end-users and further grow their business”, Ismael Belkhayat, the CEO of Chari said.
The amount of funding was not disclosed.
The round was led by the Saudi-based venture capital fund Khwarizmi Ventures, AirAngels, and Afri Mobility, the venture capital arm of AKWA Group.
Chari is digitizing the largely fragmented consumer goods sector in French-Speaking Africa.
By using Chari’s app, traditional convenience stores in Morocco and Tunisia can order products and receive them in less than 24 hours.
In October 2021, Chari announced a $5 million seed round along with the acquisition of Karny.ma, a Moroccan ledger book that had more than fifty thousand active users.
The recent acquisition of the credit book app Karny.ma gave Chari valuable data on the loans given by grocery stores to their customers.
This allows Chari to credit-assess the unbanked shop owners and determines the most fitting payment terms given to each.
This bridge round allows Khwarizmi Ventures, Air Angels and AKWA Group to join the existing cap table of Chari that includes Y combinator, Rocket Internet, Global Founders Capital, Plug n Play, Orange Ventures, Harvard University Management Company, Village Capital and P1 Ventures.
