Syarah, a Riyadh-based startup that offers a marketplace for buying and selling cars in Saudi Arabia just secured $2 million investment in a Series A round that was led by Middle East VC firms BECO Capital, Raed Ventures, and Vision Ventures. This is considered Syarah’s second investment round where it has previously closed a seed round of $600,000 from BECO Capital and Raed Ventures in 2016.
The startup was launched back in 2015 by Saudi entrepreneurs Salah Sharef and Fayez Alanazi. With the new funds, the entrepreneurs are planning on expanding and accelerating the platform’s growth. According to the Co-Founder and CEO Salah Sharef, Syarah was launched with the aim of “empowering consumers with online tools to help them to search and find the car that they seek, empowering them to make informed decisions in the car buying process, and making the car buying process as smooth and transparent as possible.”
Shared also adds that the reason why they decided to launch their startup in an offline automotive market, is because Saudi Arabia has the biggest car market in the Middle East in terms of the number of cars they sell annually. “So, for an online car marketplace, it made sense to go after the biggest market in the region, especially considering that there were no dominant online cars vertical in the country yet,” Salah said.