RIYADH: Riyadh-based fintech startup Lamaa has secured a $5.5m investment from Saudi Aramco’s entrepreneurship arm Wa’ed and Raed Ventures. The deal represents one of the largest seed funding rounds in Saudi Arabia. Lamaa provides financing solutions, such as supply chain finance and Buy Now Pay Later schemes, for small and medium enterprises. Wa"ed and Raed"s investment will assist Lamaa in developing its Trade Receivables Discounting System platform, which will enable factoring across thousands of suppliers at the same time. Lamaa was established in early 2021 by Sumeet Khutale, who relocated from London to Riyadh after working with global firms such as Barclays Capital and JP Morgan. “Since our initial launch in March 2021, Lamaa has grown dramatically, with over 100 corporate clients in the pipeline and a projection of over $1 billion dollars’ worth of invoices to be soon launched in its marketplace,” said Khutale. He added: “In addition to supply chain finance, we will soon start offering B2B Buy Now Pay Later plans, which would be the first offering of its kind in the region. We also plan to expand our company into Egypt, UAE and Qatar in the next few months.” Fahad Alidi, the managing director at Wa’ed, praised Lamaa’s “impressive growth” since it was established, and said: “Lamaa presents the type of entrepreneurial business that not only empowers its own team and start-up sector, but can also promote a stronger foundation for other emerging local SMEs who use the platform for financing solutions. “We’re proud to support Lamaa’s founding team as they continue to break new grounds in the local fintech space.”