Saudi business lending marketplace Lendo gears up for IPO with $28m Series B
Saudi-based business lending marketplace Lendo has raised $28 million (SAR 105 million) in a Series B funding round as it looks to introduce more financing products and lay the groundwork for market expansion and a potential IPO.
Lendo raises $28m Series B funding
Leading the round was Sanabil Investments, a subsidiary of the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which was joined by other participating investors including Shorooq Partners and AB Ventures.
The raise builds on the company’s earlier Series A funding round of March 2021, when it raised $7.2 million (SAR 27 million) led by Derayah Ventures with participation from Seedra Ventures and other investors. Since being founded in December 2019, Lendo has raised a total of $35.2 million (SAR 132 million) in funding.
“With this funding round, we are going to expand into new markets, support new and current customers, and launch new Shariah-compliant products,” comments the company’s co-founder and CEO Osama Alraee.
Alraee also used the opportunity to disclose the company’s plans to pursue a stock market floatation “within the next few years”.
Mohamed Jawabri, the company’s other co-founder and COO, says that the “growing demand for alternative, agile, and accessible lending solutions” has opened the door to “a significant opportunity” for the company.
Jawabri says that by powering the growth of the region’s SME community, Lendo aims to “contribute to the realisation of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 economic goals”, which in this context, concern the expansion of SME-specific lending from 2018’s 4% to 20% by 2030.
Lendo claims to have processed more than 2,500 financing transactions on its debt crowdfunding platform so far, mainly in the form of $300 million (SAR 1 billion) in SME financing and $37 million (SAR 140 million) in investor returns.
The company’s peer-to-peer (P2P) Shariah-compliant platform works to pre-finance outstanding invoices for Saudi businesses by connecting borrowers and investors with an appetite for alternative investments.
