Tajir, a Pakistani B2B platform for small businesses cofounded by brothers Babar and Ismail Khan, has secured $17 million in a Series A investment headed by Kleiner Perkins. YC Continuity, AAVCF, Fatima Gobi Ventures, Flexport, Golden Gate Ventures, Liberty City Ventures, VentureSouq, and angel investors such as Under 30 honoree and CEO of Figma Dylan Field and Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen are among the other investors in the round.
Tajir, based in Lahore, Pakistan, serves mom-and-pop shops that struggle to buy merchandise.
“When customers stroll into local mom and pop shops, the things they want are frequently out of stock,” says Babar, the company’s CEO. “Because retail in Pakistan is so fragmented, stores are frequently unable to deliver the brands that consumers want to buy.”
He claims that shop owners often spend hours filling all of the orders, and that they sometimes have to close their stores or enlist the help of a friend or relative to physically go to the wholesaler—a pattern that he claims occurs far too frequently and takes far too long.
Tajir’s app allows stores to place inventory orders and customers to compare prices, purchase inventory, and order 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with next-day delivery.
“What Amazon did for consumers in the United States, we’re doing for stores in Pakistan,” Babar adds.
According to Ismail Khan, the company’s CTO, mom and pop stores account for 90% of the retail business in Pakistan.
These are small and difficult to reach, making it challenging for businesses to provide consistently.”
Tajir typically provides convenience store items, packaged consumer goods such as cookies and soft drinks, as well as home and personal care products such as soaps and shampoos. The business makes money by taking a cut of each order.
Tajir raised a $1.8 million seed round in the summer of last year, and income has expanded by tenfold since then. Stores may buy over 1,000 stock-keeping units through the company’s platform, and it adds about 100 SKUs per month to keep the inventory fresh.
The Khan brothers, whose father operated a distribution company in Pakistan, both got US diplomas before cofounding Tajir. Ismail has a computer science degree from Brown, while Babar has a bachelor’s degree from Tufts and an MBA from Berkeley. They took part in Y Combinator’s winter 2020 class with Tajir.
Given Pakistan’s widespread bodega model, what Tajir was doing was really attractive, according to Mamoon Hamid, partner at Kleiner Perkins (who is also originally from Pakistan).
“Their software and aim to improve that supply chain and availability of products and prices, as well as automating that process,” Hamid says, makes a lot of sense. “I believed that would be the first excursion for a corporation to try to be a consumer company rather than merely a wholesale firm,” says the author.
