Saudi retail technology startup Raff announced the closing of a $1.7 million pre-seed funding round led by Vision Ventures, with participation from 500 Global, Palm VC, Oqal Group, Salman Boot, co-founder of Salla, and other investors.
The company plans to use the funding to expand its operations across the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, accelerate product development, and enhance its artificial intelligence capabilities. Raff was founded in 2024 by Ali Al-Qudah and Abdulkarim Manla.
A platform connecting brands with retailers
Raff is building a technology platform that connects consumer brands with retailers, with the aim of digitizing distribution, inventory management, order fulfillment, payments, and other commercial operations. The company says the platform enables brands to move from online sales to a presence in physical stores through a unified operational process, instead of managing separate relationships and procedures with each retailer.
For retailers, the platform automates some workflows and simplifies supplier network management. It also integrates with point-of-sale and accounting software used in the region, according to the announcement.
Why does this funding matter?
The problem Raff is targeting is the gap between the ease of launching and growing brands through digital platforms and the complexity of expanding into offline retail channels. According to the company, this step requires separate registration, logistics, and commercial relationship processes with stores, making it a fragmented and costly path that takes more time.
Raff estimates the GCC retail market at more than $300 billion annually, but it did not provide details in the material about the breakdown of this figure or the amount of revenue generated by the platform. Therefore, the round’s significance is currently tied to financing expansion and building the operational infrastructure, rather than demonstrating a specific market share.
Expansion indicators and open limitations
The company said that, since its launch less than 18 months ago, it has enabled more than 900 brands in nine countries to grow their presence through physical retail channels. These markets include the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and the United Kingdom. The announcement did not identify the nine countries or the nature of the results achieved by the brands using the platform.
Ali Al-Qudah, co-founder and CEO of Raff, said the team’s experience with the difficulty brands face when moving from e-commerce sales to physical stores was one of the reasons for founding the company. For his part, Kais Al-Essa, co-founder and CEO of Vision Ventures, linked the investment to the opportunity to improve efficiency as brands move from online channels to physical retail.
In practice, Raff’s next challenge will be turning the integration of distribution, inventory, payments, and logistics into scalable operations across multiple markets, while maintaining the platform’s compatibility with retailers’ systems. The source does not provide details about the current products, revenue model, hiring plans, or the expansion timeline for each market.