SnappRetail, a Karachi-based fintech startup, said on Wednesday it raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Zayn Capital’s Bitrate Fund.

Other investors included Antler and Century Oak Capital, according to the company.

SnappRetail was co-founded in 2021 by Unilever alumni Adeel Rasheed, Moazzam Ali Khan, Ahsan Aziz and Moiz Ali. This is the founding team’s second startup having previously set up a retail recruitment consultancy, Resource Linked, which placed employees at over 100,000 retailers, the company said in a statement.

SnappRetail offers retailers point of sale (POS) tools and a digital operating platform — a micro-enterprise system for shop operations — that helps traditional retailers grow their margins and revenue.

“Through the deployment of SnappRetail POS hardware and a sales-driven data optimisation operating system, they will get access to micro-credit for working capital, ability to accept digital and card payments, unlock cost efficiencies and grow their sales,” the statement said.

“It’s hard to believe that retail, which is such a significant contributor to Pakistan’s GDP, is still run on pen and paper,” the fintech’s CEO and co-founder Rasheed said, adding that “little to no data exists for these businesses to make meaningful decisions and, critically, to seek finance to help them succeed. They are missing out on revenue and we are moving retailers from manual to digital ways of working in all their daily tasks for the shop.”

Rasheed claims SnappRetail will help retailers increase revenue by 25 to 50 per cent.

Co-founder Moazzam Ali Khan said the whole retail and startup ecosystem was working towards improving the livelihoods of the traditional retailer. “We are trying to create an ecosystem where all aggregators and other applications can come in and take advantage of our base platform.”

Zayn BitRate Fund Co-founder Faisal Aftab said SnappRetail had the right approach to solving the essential problem of the retailer.

“We were particularly impressed by the experience and maturity this founding team brings to the table, hitting the right balance between hypergrowth and managing the burn,” he added.

“This balance is the need of the hour as SnappRetail gears up for national and eventually international success.”

General partner and founder at Antler, Jussi, also echoed similar views.

“We have been thoroughly impressed by the vision SnappRetail brings to the tech industry of Pakistan and are looking forward to seeing them build upon their great progress.”