Saee, a Jeddah-based startup providing last-mile delivery through freelancers, announced Sunday the completion of a SR9 million ($2.4 million) Series A round of funding to fuel local expansion. The round was led by Saudi Arabia-based Business Incubators and Accelerators Company (BIAC), TasHeel Holding and Abunayyan Holding's investment arm "ABN Ventures." "The new funding will enable the introduction of new services such as 45-minute express delivery and enable the company to expand its reach across the Kingdom's urban and rural areas," Saee CEO Eihab Nassier said. The innovative service platform is a key area of focus for Saee, which will enable micro and small e-commerce platforms in the Kingdom to serve their clients better and faster. The new funding will further allow the company to capitalize on its position as a leader in the freelancer-based last-mile delivery industry in the region. "The potential growth in the Kingdom's e-commerce sector is tremendous, but it is likely to create a huge operational challenge for last-mile delivery companies. Saee's elastic and scalable model will be able to reliably absorb the challenges ahead," said Nassier. Nawaf Al Sahhaf, the CEO of BIAC, stated: "Saee is disrupting the last-mile delivery using their light asset model enabling higher efficiency." "We at BIAC are always looking to lead the investment rounds to in disruptive homegrown technologies, and we aim to enable entrepreneurs to build and scale their companies, create more jobs in the market and contribute to GDP growth," Al Sahhaf added. With more than 1,000 active drivers on its platform, and over 50% of them being Saudis, Saee is providing an additional revenue stream to the many households in the Kingdom, in line with the Vision 2030 program. Saee was incorporated in the summer of 2016 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and was founded by Eihab Nassier, Tariq Alturkestani and a group of local angel investors. The company was first known as "Kasper Cab," a freelancer platform that focused on providing transport to working women between their homes and workplaces. In December 2017, the company built upon its network of freelancers and pivoted to last-mile deliveries for e-commerce platforms. Today, Saee delivers more than 5,000 shipments a day from 10 different dispatch centers across the Kingdom. — SG
