Foodics, the Riyadh-based restaurant software and payments company, has invested in Funding Souq, an SME lender regulated in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. The deal comes a month after Foodics launched Capital 2.0, its push to lend to the restaurants that use its systems.
Funding Souq said on 13 October that Foodics had become a major investor in its latest round. Neither company disclosed the amount, the size of the round or Foodics’ stake, Wamda reported.
As part of the deal, Funding Souq will offer financing to restaurants on Foodics’ platform, using their sales and performance data to judge creditworthiness. That is the same idea behind Capital 2.0: lending based on what a restaurant’s own till data shows, rather than a separate loan application.
Who supplies the money
Foodics launched Capital 2.0 at Money20/20 Middle East in September with a target of SAR 375 million, about $100 million, in financing in its first year. It hasn’t said where that money comes from. When it launched the first version, Foodics Capital, in 2020, it worked with Maalem Finance, a Saudi finance company.
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Martin Jaouni, Funding Souq’s founder and chief executive, said:
“Together we have created Saudi Arabia’s first fully automated business loan, bringing Foodics’ deep reach across the restaurant and hospitality sector together with our regulated financing infrastructure to deliver capital to merchants the moment they need it.”
The companies have not said whether that loan is Capital 2.0 or how much of Capital 2.0’s lending Funding Souq would provide.
Anas AlGhanim, vice-president of investments and corporate development at Foodics, said,
“The investment brings Funding Souq’s financing capabilities and Foodics’ technology ecosystem together to make access to capital simpler for its customers. It wants eventually to become the future bank for restaurants and the hospitality sector.”
Funding Souq’s licences
Funding Souq has held a licence from the Dubai Financial Services Authority since 2020. In April 2024 the Saudi Central Bank licensed it for debt crowdfunding, making it the tenth company allowed to offer that service in the kingdom, out of 61 licensed finance companies at the time.
It matches small businesses with institutional and retail investors who fund term loans and invoice and supplier finance, all structured to comply with Islamic finance rules. It says it has more than 10,000 investors on its platform, a low single-digit default rate and a target of facilitating $1 billion in SME financing over the next three years. It hasn’t published how much it has lent so far.
