Kenya and maintaining their focus there, Pawame sees all of sub-Saharan Africa as their addressable market, and plans to expand into to “1-2 new markets” in 2019. “To date we have reached over 4,000 households in Kenya, profoundly changing the lives of over 20,000 people,” says
SYARAH
IMAGE CREDIT SYARAH
www.syarah.com
Riyadh-based startup Syarah, an online marketplace for buying and selling cars in Saudi Arabia, has closed a Series A round of US$2 million in investment led by Middle East VC firms BECO Capital, Raed Ventures, and Vision Ventures. This is the second investment round for Syarah, founded in 2015 by Saudi Arabian entrepreneurs Salah Sharef and Fayez Alanazi, with the company closing a seed round of $600,000 from BECO Capital and Raed Ventures in 2016. Aiming to utilize the new funding to accelerate the platform’s expansion and growth, Syarah co-founder and CEO Salah Sharef says that the startup was launched with the intention of “empowering consumers with online tools to help them to search and find the car that they seek, empowering them to make informed decisions in the car buying process, and making the car buying process as smooth and transparent as possible.” In addition to merely listing cars, Syarah offers value-added services to help ease the process of buying cars- including providing Mojaz (car history reports), and also facilitating vehicle financing for interested buyers.
Parets. “Demand is not a problem; until recently our main growth bottleneck had been securing the capital to invest in new inventory,” he adds- which is clearly not an issue for the enterprise anymore considering their recent successive financial boosts. One look at the composition
Commenting on why the entrepreneurs decided to launch Syarah in an offline and fragmented Saudi Arabian automotive market, Sharef says the Kingdom perhaps has the biggest car market in the Middle East in terms of volume of cars sold every year. “So, for an online car marketplace, it made sense to go after the biggest market in the region, especially considering that there was no dominant online cars vertical in the country yet,” says the entrepreneur. “I already had more than seven years of experience doing [working on] an online classifieds marketplace in MENA, mainly through my first startup, OpenSooq,” he says, talking about his personal journey with Syarah. “So, it made sense to build upon previous experience in online marketplaces, and move on towards doing a cars vertical marketplace, where there is still a big need in the region, given that this area still has not been tackled yet.” And looking at Syarah’s traction currently, one might say that the startup’s strategy seems to be working well, and is gaining acceptance among the country’s consumers. The platform claims more than 1.7 million visits per month currently, and says it generates more than 200,000 leads per month for car sellers. “Also,
of users Pawame serves may give you an idea about the social impact of the entity. According to the company’s note on the Trine campaign, a typical Pawame customer “spends more than $10 each month on kerosene, phone charging, and other energy related expenses- they can’t
Fayez Alanazi, co-founder, Syarah
“PREPARE YOUR PITCH DECK AND DATA ROOM AHEAD OF TIME, AND START APPROACHING INVESTORS AT LEAST SIX MONTHS OR MORE BEFORE THE TIME WHEN YOU WILL NEED THE FUNDS.” more than 10,000 applications for car financing are submitted through our platform every month, and our revenues have doubled since last year,” says CEO Sharef. This, according to Sharef, also played a role in deciding the valuation of the startup in its current round of funding. “Valuation for the current round was relative to the last valuation from the previous round, and the percentage of growth that we were able to achieve in our KPIs since the previous round,” he explains. “From seed to the current round we were able to triple our numbers across most of our KPIs. Therefore, our validation would increase in proportion,” he adds. With fundraising figuring as one of the biggest
afford to get connected to the grid but are able to meet the monthly payments for a solar home system.” The company adds that supporting Pawame’s operations will also help bring “clean energy to 6,000 people and avoid over 1,700 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.”
Salah Sharef, co-founder, Syarah
challenges to starting and scaling a venture in this part of the world, Sharef also offers some tips to aspiring hustlers in Saudi Arabia and the wider region, drawing from Syarah team’s own experience. “Focus on having a proper product-market fit and having a solid business model for your startup as investors want to invest in successful startups,” he says. “So, the more successful you are in building your product and startup, the more appealing it is to investors.” He also asks founders to focus on achieving continuous month-on-month growth in their startup’s main KPIs- an activity that will ensure funding flows to their venture. “Give enough time for the fundraising process and start early. Fundraising takes time, and you should plan for it,” he cautions. “Prepare your pitch deck and data room ahead of time, and start approaching investors at least six months or more before the time when you will need the funds,” advises the entrepreneur. Well said!
June 2018 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 77
