Oware, a B2B warehouse and distribution firm located in Pakistan, has received $3.3 million in pre-seed investment.
Silicon Valley investors Flexport Fund and Ratio Ventures are among the round’s investors, as are significant international investors Seedstars International Ventures, The Osiris Group, Swiss Founders Fund, Reflect Ventures, +92 Ventures, Walled City Co, and other strategic angel investors.
Oware, co-founded in June 2021 by Raza Kazmi and Adil Nisar, respectively, Maersk and Careem graduates, allows businesses to flourish through flexible warehousing and intelligent distribution, providing a flexible response to demand variations as well as faster and more affordable delivery of goods.
Through its networked fulfillment centers and third-party logistics providers, Oware provides businesses with scalable and tech-driven storage and distribution for B2B and retail. Companies can easily launch operations in new places to serve more consumers, free of the operationally demanding and complex logistics planning and capital expenditure that stymies business investment.
There is a huge opportunity in the B2B flow of commodities across the area, but it remains vastly underserved, according to Raza Kazmi, co-founder of Oware. Local firms are trapped in an outdated and opaque environment, dealing with out-of-date supply chain systems that are sluggish, constrained, and capital demands. We’re on a quest to fix the time it takes to set up operations, the lack of visibility or tracking of orders, and the inefficiency of process execution in terms of speed and cost.
Pakistan’s logistics business has a $35 billion+ market opportunity and employs around 6% of the country’s workforce. Overspending on storage and inventory due to a lack of warehouse flexibility and insight results in expensive and late deliveries with poor visibility into operations. Because of the market’s hyper fragmentation, these inefficiencies occur, resulting in a time-consuming and outdated procedure. Furthermore, the fulfillment and distribution business has been under immense pressure as a result of changing consumer expectations and service needs, which Oware wants to address.
