Jeddah-based delivery startup Saee has completed a 9 million Saudi riyals ($2.4 million) Series A funding round.

Saee is specialised in freelancer-based last-mile delivery, which is transportation of goods from a transportation hub to the final delivery destination, a logistics sector that focuses on delivering items to the end user as fast as possible.

The firm will use the proceeds to fuel its expansion in Saudi Arabia, it said in a statement, adding that it delivers more than 5,000 shipments a day from 10 different dispatch centres across the Kingdom.

The funding round was led by Saudi’s Business Incubators and Accelerators Company (BIAC), TasHeel Holding and Abunayyan Holding’s investment arm ABN Ventures.

“The new funding will enable the introduction of new services such as 45-minute express delivery and enable the company to expand its reach across the Kingdom's urban and rural areas,” Eihab Nassier, CEO of Saee said.

“The potential growth in the Kingdom's e-commerce sector is tremendous, but it is likely to create a huge operational challenge for last-mile delivery companies. Saee’s elastic and scalable model will be able to reliably absorb the challenges ahead,” Nassier added.

Saudi e-commerce market for goods and services is estimated at 80 billion riyals ($ 21.3 billion), and the kingdom last year passed an e-commerce law that is set to accelerate the market. Read more here: 

(Writing by Nada Al Rifai nada.rifai@refinitiv.com ; Editing by Seban Scaria)

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