The problem
Saudi Arabia’s hundreds of thousands of baqalas and small retailers restocked the hard way: dawn trips to wholesale markets, cash in hand, haggling with layers of intermediaries — overpaying for stock with no delivery, no credit history, and no guarantee the goods would arrive.
How it works
Founded in 2018 by ex-Careem GM Mohammed Aldossary and Khaled Alsiari, Sary connects small retailers with a network of wholesalers and manufacturers on its platform. Shop owners browse catalogues and order pallets from mobile and web apps; Sary moves the goods across the Kingdom and is expanding its platformization model with native solutions and third-party services integrated around procurement.
Pain points
Working capital trapped in inventory, fragmented and unreliable supply, opaque wholesale pricing, and micro-retailers excluded from formal finance — the exact frictions a digitised procurement chain removes.
Business model
B2B marketplace: Sary earns on the wholesale volume flowing through the platform and layers services — logistics, embedded finance, and third-party integrations — on top of the retailer relationship, turning procurement data into underwriting signal.
Challenges
Wholesale margins are razor-thin so scale is everything; fulfilment across Saudi cities is capital-intensive; rival B2B marketplaces chase the same retailers; and extending credit to small shops carries real default risk.
Funding
- Raised: $75M (SR281M) Series C (Dec 2021), led by Sanabil Investments with Wafra International and Endeavor Catalyst plus existing investors STV, MSA Capital, Rocketship.vc, VentureSouq, and Raed Ventures — taking total funding to $112M.
- Previously: $30.5M Series B led by VentureSouq (May 2021); $6.6M Series A led by Raed Ventures.
Latest — December 2021
On 19 December 2021 Sary announced the $75M Series C to invest in product development and GCC expansion, at the time one of the top-funded Saudi startups of the year.