Saudi Startup Lendo Helps SMBs With Invoices

Lendo, a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending marketplace for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), wants to help them pre-finance their invoices so they can potentially get paid faster, according to a report. The company is doing its business as an alternative to regular short-term finance by borrowing money against outstanding invoices.

The company allows for solutions to some of the biggest problems when it comes to the SMB financing market. There aren’t many options when it comes to quickly obtaining cash, and lenders don’t have many short-term options that provide the types of returns to make the proposition attractive.

The startup was founded by Osama AlRaee and Mohammed Jawabri.

“Late payments and lack of working capital, [and]/or inadequate cash flows, are the main challenges that [SMBs] face. Comparing the banks to Lendo, banks only work with six-figure loans that are lengthy in nature, while Lendo has spent efforts to bridge that gap and welcome invoices of all amounts. Our vision is to enable [SMBs] to fully focus on their growth, and lenders to access new market segments that can provide higher returns. We are confident that Lendo will pioneer this space to become the platform of choice for [SMB] invoice financing,” said AlRaee.

Lendo is a licensed FinTech sandbox that uses data points and modern underwriting techniques.

“Current statistics reveal that the Saudi economy and overall industry [are] undergoing a huge transformation, most importantly in the [SMB] segment. At Lendo, our objective is to position ourselves as a leading supplier of digital financial technology, which will disrupt and revolutionize the [SMB] invoice financing sector, and help play a significant part in shaping this transformation, and support the overall Saudi Vision 2030,” Jawabri said.

Lendo is backed by three venture capital firms in the Middle East, as well as a group of angel investors in the area.