Other participants in this round include angel investors from Facebook, Google, Amazon, Grab, and other banks.
The funding, which also includes a grant from UK AID, will be used to enhance the core technology infrastructure of ShopUp’s credit algorithm, accelerate acquisition to 100,000 merchants, and establish partnerships with ecommerce players, logistics companies, and offline aggregators.
ShopUp works with Facebook and also partnered with BRAC, a Bangladesh-based microfinance institution providing working capital loans.
ShopUp currently has 28,000 micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) on its platform, the majority of which are female-led. In Bangladesh, female employment has seen a 35% increase, reaching 18.1 million from 2008 to 2017.
According to the World Bank, the total MSME credit gap stands at USD 2.6 trillion worldwide, due to the high operating cost. The majority of this gap exists in developing and underdeveloped countries such as Bangladesh, where the majority of the ten million MSMEs remains outside the formal credit system.
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