Saudi startup Lawazem closes $1.3m seed round

Lawazem, a Saudi-based operational procurement company, has wrapped up a seed deal totalling $1.3m. The round was led by Merak Capital, a technology investment firm licensed by the Capital Market Authority of Saudi Arabia, with participation from Merced, a Saudi VC company that covers a variety of sectors across the Middle East.

Lawazem, founded in 2020 by Abdulhakim Albisher and Nasser Alshaya, is positioned as a ‘B2B mall’ and a one-stop-shop for all business procurement needs, ranging from VIP guest services to office stationery.

The company, which reported an average quarterly growth of 150 per cent during 2021, offers a broad range of services and products to its customers, decreasing the time, effort and costs of reactive operational procurement.

Abdulhakim Albeshir, co-founder and CEO of Lawazem, commented: “We, at Lawazem, are proud to have been able in our short time of operation to be a reliable partner to our many business clients supporting their organisations’ operational needs while focusing on increasing the efficiency of their operational procurement as the process is typically expensive and time consuming. Lawazem is a new and innovative B2B model explicitly developed for operational procurement of medium to large organisations.

“More than 100 organisations, both private and government, are using Lawazem to fulfill their operational needs and accessing Lawazem’s extensive catalog supported by our partners and vendors. This investment round comes at an early stage of Lawazem’s journey, and it will be pivotal for us as we move to further develop and enhance our technology as well as help in establishing the needed infrastructure to address the ever-growing demand for our products and services.”

Nasser Alshaya, co-founder and COO of Lawazem, added: “At Lawazem, we are happy to support local companies and local content to have a wider reach to business clients. We are proud of the partnerships we’ve made and we will continue to partner with local content providers.”

The investment from Merak Capital will enable Lawazem to grow its staff, marketing initiatives and technology capabilities.

Ahmed AlJabreen, partner at Merak Capital, said: “The market of operational procurement is largely done manually with little to no technology infrastructure. Lawazem is poised to be the technology-enabled disruptor for this vertical. With an extensively experienced team in Abdulhakim and Nasser, an impressive growth record as well as a huge potential and market opportunity we saw in Lawazem what we look for in our portfolio companies; a great opportunity being executed by an exceptional team.”