Saudi’s Unifonic closes $125m Series B round to drive expansion

Riyadh-headquartered customer engagement platform Unifonic has closed its $125m Series B funding round.

The round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 21 and Sanabil Investments, marking the former’s first direct investment in a Saudi-based company and consolidating the latter’s ambitions to invest in high-impact technology startups in the country.

Less than three years after raising a Series A funding round, Unifonic has quadrupled in size and now processes over 10 billion transactions annually on its platform. It plans to accelerate product development and grow the team to expand into new markets globally, while bolstering its position across the Middle East, a statement said.

Unifonic raises $125M in a record Series B investment round for a local tech startup in the Middle East, less than three years from the previous Series A record set at $21M in 2018https://t.co/27QHmiHcCF pic.twitter.com/RzhdJOOaWB

— unifonic (@Unifonic) September 15, 2021

Unifonic’s solutions integrate customer communication channels including text, voice, messaging and web into a single platform to enable companies to create strong customer relationships. From SMS for online banking to WhatsApp vaccination requests, Unifonic empowers organisations to transform customer experience while allowing them to focus on core business activities without maintaining costly communication infrastructures, the statement added.

The latest investment is led by Softbank Vision Fund 2, marking its first direct investment in a Saudi-based company, and Sanabil Investments.

— unifonic (@Unifonic) September 15, 2021

Faisal Rehman, managing partner for SoftBank Investment Advisers, said: “Consumers and businesses are increasingly sophisticated in how they communicate digitally, but this has created fragmentation across multiple emerging channels. Unifonic’s technology manages this complexity into a single platform, enabling enterprise clients to form closer relationships with their customers.

“We look forward to supporting the Unifonic team in scaling the platform across the Middle East and other emerging markets.”

“At Unifonic our mission has always been to empower organisations to engage and communicate seamlessly with their customers. I couldn’t be prouder to see our solutions making such a positive impact and reaffirming that mission,” adds Ahmed Hamdan, founder and CEO at Unifonic.

“This raise is an important milestone in our journey, it will allow us to scale our offerings and expand our reach to enable more organisations to connect with customers reliably and effectively.”

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