Epic Angels, the world’s largest all-female investment collective, has announced its participation in the Pre-Series A funding round of Neem, a Pakistan-based fintech, in a move aimed at accelerating the development of the country’s full-stack payments infrastructure. The investment reflects growing global investor interest in Pakistan’s under-digitised financial ecosystem and the opportunity to build scalable, enterprise-grade payment platforms.
According to a company statement, Epic Angels joined the Pre-Series A round alongside DNI Group, Hi2 Global, and AKD. The round is also supported by Neem’s existing seed investors, including SparkLabs Ventures, Outrun Ventures, Arif Habib, and MyAsiaVC, as well as a group of strategic angel investors from global fintech and payments leaders such as Stripe, PayNet, Aspire, and others. The diverse investor base highlights confidence in Neem’s business model and its potential to address structural gaps in Pakistan’s payments landscape.
Speaking to Business Recorder, Neem co-founder Vladimira Briestenska said Epic Angels’ decision to invest was driven by the timing and scale of the opportunity in Pakistan’s financial sector. She noted that Neem is building foundational financial infrastructure in a large, under-served market that is now reaching an inflection point for digital adoption. According to her, Epic Angels recognised both the market potential and the strategic importance of developing full-stack payment capabilities locally.
Briestenska explained that Neem differentiates itself through its full-stack platform, which combines collections, disbursements, branded wallets, and an integrated ledger system. She added that the company has already gained early enterprise traction across multiple sectors, including logistics, insurance, and e-commerce. Beyond the product offering, Epic Angels also showed strong conviction in Neem’s founding team, including its leadership by a woman founder and the team’s ability to execute at scale in a complex regulatory environment.
Founded by Vladimira Briestenska, Nadeem Shaikh, and Naeem Zamindar, Neem commercially launched in January 2025. Since then, the platform has scaled rapidly, recording transaction volume growth of over 30 percent month-on-month. The company currently supports more than 50 B2B businesses operating across logistics, insurance, healthcare, e-commerce, and agriculture, sectors that form the backbone of Pakistan’s real economy.
Neem says Pakistan’s payments ecosystem remains highly fragmented, forcing businesses to rely on multiple providers to collect payments, disburse funds, manage payroll, and reconcile accounts. This fragmentation often leads to operational inefficiencies, manual processes, and limited real-time visibility into financial performance for enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses. Neem aims to address these challenges by offering a unified, API-driven payments infrastructure similar to platforms operating in more developed markets.
Briestenska noted that Neem’s growth strategy prioritises large enterprises by offering an integrated infrastructure layer rather than focusing on isolated payment use cases. She said many players in Pakistan concentrate on collections alone or consumer wallets, whereas Neem unifies collections, disbursements, and branded enterprise wallets with embedded ledger systems. This approach, she added, strongly resonates with large businesses that currently manage multiple vendors for revenue collection, vendor payouts, payroll, and reconciliation. By deeply integrating into enterprise workflows, Neem reduces operational complexity and becomes a critical, long-term partner.
On geographic expansion, Briestenska said Pakistan remains Neem’s core growth focus. However, the company is selectively exploring adjacent, use-case-driven opportunities, particularly in cross-border remittance rails that naturally extend from its existing enterprise relationships. The strategy, she explained, is to build depth in the domestic market first while laying the foundation for scalable cross-border flows where regulatory alignment and commercial demand exist.
The funds raised in the Pre-Series A round will be used to scale Neem’s technology infrastructure, strengthen cybersecurity and data protection capabilities, expand enterprise partnerships, and accelerate onboarding across key sectors, including logistics, insurance, healthcare, e-commerce, and agriculture.
Commenting on the investment, Epic Angels Founding and Managing Partner Maaike Doyer said global payments giants remain largely concentrated in developed markets, leaving significant opportunities in emerging economies. She noted that major players such as Stripe and Adyen collectively account for less than 10 percent of the global payments market and are focused primarily on established regions. This, she said, creates room for local platforms like Neem to emerge as critical financial infrastructure providers. With large enterprises already onboard, Epic Angels believes Neem is well-positioned to become a financial operating system powering Pakistan’s digital economy.
Epic Angels supports early-stage, female-led startups across the Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions through capital, mentorship, and access to a global network. The collective comprises more than 800 female angel investors and has made 44 investments across a range of industries to date.
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