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UAE fintech platform Kema, which seeks to tap into the massive B2B payments market, has raised $2 million to scale its offering across the UAE and support its recruitment plans.
The start-up, founded by ex-Mumzworld.com co-founder Michael Ghandour, raised the capital in a funding round led by Speedinvest, with participation from Dubai Foundation District Fund (DFDF).
“The company plans to use this investment to launch its SaaS platform aimed at supporting the SME segment, scale the solution across the UAE and hire top talent to support its growth,” Kema said in a statement.
The company seeks to transform how businesses sell to one another by digitising, automating and streamlining the invoice-to-cash process, also known as accounts receivable.
The business payments volume in the UAE crossed $1.5 trillion in 2021, according to the UAE Central Bank. The figure represents nearly 50% more than the retail payments in the UAE.
Despite the high volume of payments, Kema noted that the financial operations between SMEs have always been “more analogue, inefficient and challenging than their more mature peers.”
“Having worked with B2B SMEs, a healthy and predictable cash flow cycle remains elusive for many. The problem is compounded by the combination of persistent payment delays, manual invoice workflows and follow-ups, multiple disconnected systems and limited access to SME financing,” said Ghandour.
“As a result, many businesses get stuck in a cycle of limited growth, increasing costs and unproductive use of their most valuable resource, their employees’ time.”
(Writing by Cleofe Maceda; editing by Seban Scaria)
