Blockchain Startup In Pakistan Dubbed Bazaar Secures $30 million In Funds

Bazaar Technologies, a Pakistani blockchain marketplace, successfully raised about $30M in Pakistani’s biggest Series A round.

An announcement made by Bazaar states that August 24th will be the closing of its raise. It also reveals that Singapore’s Wavemaker Partners and Silicon Valley-based Defy Partners were the leaders of the funding round.

Many other investors also participated in the funding round, including Japan’s Saison Capital, LinkedIn, Endeavor, and numerous present-day investors such as Alter Global and Indus Valley Capital.

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In Pakistan, Bazaar asserts that they are the leading Business-to-business marketplace group for small-scale merchants. They serve up to 750,000 merchants across 400 villages and towns.

The majority of those that make use of Bazaar are small-scale ‘mom-and-pop grocery stores known locally as “Kiryana Stores.” They buy stock from suppliers through this platform.

Bazaar’s round this period has grown its funding to $37.8 million. This figure grew from its $6.5M seed round of January 2021 after eight months of its launching and its pre-seed round of $1.3M in June 2020.

The seed-round was co-led by the Global Founders Capital based in Berlin. The seed round was the firm’s first Pakistani investment. Also, VC Indus Valley Capital is another partner in the June seed round last year.

Furthermore, the data shows that this latest seed round is the largest of its kind ever raised in Pakistan at a startup level. As a result of this raise, Bazaar right now has a total of $7.8 million. This makes it the largest funded startup in all of Pakistan.

Furthermore, Bazaar also brought in top global and regional organizations as well as angel investors. For example, Wavemaker Partners based in Singapore, Early-stage VC S7V, Saudi’s Derayah Venture Capital, and Next Billion Ventures based in the United States participate in the seed round.

Hamza Jawaid and Saad Janda founded Bazaar in 2019. Janga was formerly the product manager of Careem, a local Uber subdivision, whereas Jawaid worked in McKinsey, a management consulting company.

In recent months, the Pakistani government has initiated strategic ways of building a better regulatory apparatus that will be permissive to the country’s crypto sector.

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The Pakistani Securities and Exchange Commission issued a consultation paper in November. The paper surveyed the advantages of cryptocurrency assets as well as tokenization. In addition, the paper also embraced the industry feedback regarding the development of local regulations.

In March, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a Pakistani province, announced how it would manage two hydro-powered cryptocurrency mining farms for a government-supported mining pilot.