Retailo raised $60 million to sell to corner shops in three countries. It kept one
Three Careem alumni launched a B2B marketplace in Karachi in 2020, raised faster than any Saudi seed before it, and by 2023 had pulled back to Riyadh.
Retailo's founders chose their customers before their country. Talha Ansari, Wahaj Ahmed and Muhammad Nowkhaiz had all worked at Careem, whose alumni also founded Bazaar and Dastgyr, and they picked the same target as those rivals: the small grocer who buys stock in cash from a wholesaler and loses a morning doing it. The difference was that Retailo launched in Karachi and Riyadh at almost the same time in 2020 and called its market MENAP, the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan.
The company was incorporated with a Riyadh headquarters, which mattered for money. When it came out of stealth on 12 October 2020 with a $2.3 million pre seed led by Abu Dhabi's Shorooq Partners, with 500 Durians and 92 Ventures, it could claim the largest pre seed round for a Saudi headquartered startup, according to MENAbytes.
Nine months to $9 million
By May 2021 Retailo said more than 30,000 retailers had used the platform and that Riyadh and Karachi produced more than 100,000 orders a month. That month it closed a $6.7 million seed co led by Shorooq and the London firm Abercross Holdings, with AgFunder and Kuwait's Arzan Venture Capital, taking total funding to $9 million within nine months. Profit by Pakistan Today reported that Pakistan was then the larger operation by team, retailers and warehouses, while revenue was roughly even between the two countries.
“With this investment, Retailo is geared for hyper growth to rapidly build on what we have already achieved in a short time.”
The Series A came nine months later. On 1 February 2022 Retailo announced $36 million led by Graphene Ventures, an early investor in Snap and Lyft, with venture debt from Nahda Fund; Wamda reported that more than 80 percent was equity. The company said it was in more than ten cities across Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Pakistan, with more than 50,000 retailers ordering monthly. Total funding stood at $45 million in 18 months, enough for 17th place on Forbes Middle East's list of the region's most funded startups.
The year the money stopped
In April 2022 Retailo bought DXBUY, a Dubai marketplace for restaurants and cafes, for an undisclosed sum, in what its head of investment and strategy, Himag Vaidya, described to Wamda as an acquihire. Two months later the mood had changed. WeTalkStartups reported in June 2022 that Retailo was cutting engineering and logistics staff, with no company statement. Data Darbar recorded the reason as strategic alignment to focus on profitability.
Pakistan went next. Profit by Pakistan Today reported in February 2024 that Retailo had shut its distribution operations there in October 2023, in the same downturn that closed Jugnu and shrank Dastgyr. Retailo did not announce the exit. Its next funding release, on 27 November 2023, did not mention Pakistan or the UAE. It described a Saudi digital distribution company raising $15 million in equity from new investors including Bahrain's Yusuf Bin Kanoo Group and Majd Digital, with Aujan, Shorooq, Abercross and Graphene returning. A month earlier Ansari had announced a $1.5 million investment from Dtonic, a South Korean data company, on LinkedIn.
What is left
Since then the public record goes quiet. Retailo's website did not respond when this magazine checked it in October 2026, and no funding, expansion or closure has been reported in 2025 or 2026. The aggregator Tracxn still lists the company as active, with about 226 employees in September 2026, though it marks both Ansari and Ahmed as former executives, and Ansari's LinkedIn now places him in Dubai with Stryber. On the evidence available, Retailo survives as a Saudi distribution business, much smaller than the three country marketplace its founders pitched, and its current leadership could not be confirmed.
