Telenor Velocity startup ‘Digi Khata’ raises USD 2 million investment

Telenor Velocity startup ‘Digi Khata’ raises USD 2 million investment

Islamabad - July 08, 2021: Digi Khata, Faisalabad-based fintech, and part of Telenor Pakistan’s digital accelerator progrmme, Velocity, has raised an investment of USD 2 million. Launched early last year, the startup has already gained over a million users in Pakistan. It offers a complete financial check and balance solution for small and micro businesses to digitally maintain their accounts and ledgers. 

Digi Khata application’s unique insight into Pakistani business has already earned it USD 2 million from China’s MSA Capital, UAE’s Shorooq Partners, SOSV, and several other angel investors. Founded by Adnan Aslam in 2020, Digi Khata helps Pakistani micro, small and medium enterprises save time and reduce trade credit losses by assisting them to remember and recover it faster through automated alerts.  Having identified the need for reliable mobile accounting, Adnan Aslam built Digi Khata with the ambition to digitalise Pakistan’s limited and micro-businesses by providing them easy, user-friendly access to their ledgers at their fingertips, and make better-informed decision making.

Designed to foster an environment of innovation and collaboration, Telenor Velocity has been credited with enabling Pakistan’s tech-startups to break new ground in digital product and service offerings, scaling them to great heights. Launched in 2016, the accelerator has to date conducted 6 cohorts, with 32 graduated startups, 4+ pilot runs and USD 40,000 pilot investment. 

Chief Operating Officer, Telenor Pakistan, Khurrum Ashfaque stated, “To see a company that has been a part of our innovative and startup network grow in a short time is a feeling of great satisfaction and pride. The immediate success of Digi Khata is proof of the effectiveness of hard work and dedication, mixed with the right guidance and resources by Velocity. I’m sure this is only the beginning of the company’s journey to becoming a household name in mobile financial management.”

Telenor Velocity facilitates startups like Digi Khata in providing them scaling opportunities and exclusive access to Telenor Pakistan’s resources, like its APIs, data analytics, retail network among other benefits. This allows startups to create the opportunities necessary to forge strategic partnerships in the longer run, just like Digi Khata - its users can now make and receive seamless payments from within the Digi Khata application, thanks to the Easypaisa API. 

CEO, Digi Khata, Adnan Aslam, commented, “Our company has grown phenomenally, thanks to the guidance and support of Telenor Pakistan’s Velocity programme. With this round of funding, we are looking to scale our team and continue building world-class utility solutions to help these MSMEs generate real economic value and grow.”

After the immediate success of Digi Khata, the company also launched an e-commerce platform, Digi Dokaan, that allows aspiring online sellers to launch their stores and sell products for free. Telenor Pakistan has also made available its SMS APIs to generate text messages from the DigiKhata app while offering the same for Digi Dokaan, as well.

The Telenor Velocity programme offers startups equity-free support for up to six months. Along with having access to Telenor Pakistan’s 48 million customers and My Telenor App’s 8 million users, startups are supported through marketing campaigns, coaching from domain experts, and access to state-of-the-art data analytics and customer insights.