HBL & Sturgeon Capital participate in Finja’s Series A2 Funding Round

Finja, Pakistan’s largest dual-licensed SME digital lending platform, announced a new capital infusion as part of its $10 Million Series A2 funding round, with involvement from renowned investors including Sturgeon Capital and HBL.

This multifaceted investment round consists of equity, debt, and off-balance sheet funding. Following its initial involvement in Finja’s Series A1 round, HBL has now made a second investment in the company.

With this additional capital, Finja will be able to finance projects worth more than $50 million over the next 12 months, helping Pakistan’s SME sector realize its full potential. To promote its broader vision of empowering Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and their supply chains with digital credit, Finja will now be able to scale up its current digital co-lending initiative.

Leading international venture capital firms like VEF, BeeNext, Quona Capital, ICU, Sturgeon Capital, Gray MacKenzie, and HBL support FINJA, which was launched in 2016. Additionally, Finja is the only fintech business in the nation to hold multiple licenses from both regulators: an NBFC (Non-Banking Finance Company) license from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan and a commercial operating license as an EMI (Electronic-Money Issuer) under the State Bank of Pakistan regulations.

This financing represents an important step toward maximizing the potential of Finja’s credit engine, which continues to demonstrate its scalability and accuracy and solidifies Finja as the long-term solution for SMEs across Pakistan.

The future of the financial services sector lies in collaboration between fintech and banks, according to Qasif Shahid, co-founder of Finja. moving away from vertical silos and toward embedded finance and open banking platforms. As a result, Finja is in a better position to provide digital products to small and micro businesses.

He continued, “Through our relationship with HBL, we will now be turbo-charging digital lending to SMEs with this fresh injection and our laser focus on improving our business.”

With a total lending volume of PKR 7 billion, Finja has become one of the top digital lending platforms in the nation as a result of providing almost 150,000 loans to 35,000 Karyana outlets across 30+ cities.

Additionally, Finja closely collaborates with FMCG wholesalers and assists them in obtaining upstream supplies on credit. In addition, Finja offers specialized working capital financing lines to SMEs that have been evaluated by Finja’s in-house AI/ML algorithms.

Finja is the first financial services company to package capital in modest amounts of PKR 50,000 and for periods of 7, 14, and 30 days to Karyana stores for obtaining credit to acquire supplies and boost their sales, according to Kamran Zuberi, CEO of Finja Lending Services.

A second statement from Kamran said, “We score these retailers from data that we obtain from our agreements with various FMCG principles, hundreds of wholesalers, and new-age market aggregators that run mobile apps for small shops to acquire supplies from.

Image Credit: Finja