“Saraaf Commodity Trading Seeks Rs. 1.5B for 20% Equity on Shark Tank Pakistan”
Bilal, Ismail & Taha are the co-founders of Saraaf. Founder said that we and our partners in Central Asia and Afghanistan, which is a unique landlock mostly region, have been solving this problem for the last 10 years. We ensure that the goods reach the buyers and the sellers get their payments. Our hero products are Onyx and cotton.
Apart from this, in the last two years, we have also done exploration in the mineral industry, in which we have invested last year and we have also traded in lead. Moving forward we want to enter the tech market in trade industry. The world’s largest hotel does not have any of its own property, the world’s largest taxi service does not have any of its own car fleet, these two giants has disturbed its market by becoming trustee between customer and vendor. Founders said that we at Saraaf want to become trustee in commodity sourcing in this region.
Founder said that Sharks we have got soft approvals from the Pakistan’s biggest textile giants to work on our tech. Besides, the world’s largest cotton trading house is ready to buy Afghanistan’s cotton exclusively from us for the next year. That alone could be a contract worth to 10 to million dollars, we are here to dilute equity at 20 % for 1.5 billion PKR.
Equity Split
Sharks asked them how many co-founders are in your company? Founder said that we are actually five co-founders and the equity split is 35% Bilal, 35% Asfaan, 10% Ismail, 10% Saeed, 5% Taha and 5% for other one. Shark Junaid asked them is this a trading business or this market place which you will make in the future? Founder said that this is our business of sourcing, we basically source raw materials for buyers in Pakistan and rest of the world, we import Onyx here and then we export it to China.
Revenue
The cotton that we deal in is Afghani cotton, specifically its a best quality cotton out of that region, so its last years import numbers were Rs. 43 Billion, our sales in Pakistan were Rs. 2 Billion so which translates about the 4% of the Market share. Our Gross Margin in 2023 is 7%, 2022 is 11% and 2021 is 10% to 15%. Net Profit Rs. 21 Cr. last year. Till date, we have generated a revenue of Rs. 11B since 2019, Rs. 3.8B in 2023.
All 3 Sharks said that you guys are amazing entrepreneur, you guys are building a great business and know how it works and you have understood how make margins but for today we are out but we wish you all the best .
Episode 3
Update
At the end Shark Usman Offer PKR 80 Cr for 20% equity ( PKR 70 Cr Line of credit 3% Royalty). Founder said that this offer in which you are reducing our valuation a little bit but I understand that this would help us in the next few years to scale up in such a way , we accept your offer. The deal is closed.
They are trading business and they are trying to tell the investors that they are raising investment for the marketplace just to look cool Infront of investors. They should not waste their time on tech as Junaid mentioned.
The founders are amazing and know what they are doing and most importantly making huge profit. Amazing thing is they don’t work on credit in such business.
https://www.instagram.com/saraafglobal/?hl=en
Sumbal is shark tank enthusiast, ever since the show started airing, she has followed it. She likes writing and researching about startups. She is also helping a few startups scale.
