Saudi-based online furniture marketplace Baytonia announced the closing of its first undisclosed funding seed round, led by Khwarizmi Ventures (KV), with participation from angel investors. Despite being bootstrapped in the past years with positive cash flow, this first funding round comes amidst the company’s rapid growth and expansion goals to scale further. Baytonia’s platform is purposely built to solve and transform how customers shop for home, from home, and plans to use the latest funding to scale their distinguished customer experience and service, and expand their high quality product offerings across the Kingdom.

Founded by Karam Rajab (CEO) and Ibrahim AlHowaish (COO), the homegrown company started off as a bootstrapped e-commerce retailer selling dinnerware products, then significantly expanded their offerings to include furniture and other homeware itembyonds. Baytonia has been successful in running efficient operations and maintaining healthy unit economics. It has positioned itself as a leader in the space, operating as a marketplace for other sellers of homeware, in addition to selling its own home brand products.

“We believe that driving accessibility and convenience into this market will attract more customers to utilize the online presence of homeware marketplaces and sustain the spike in e-commerce adoption. We are keen on growing our team with mission-believers that share our goals for Baytonia’s growth, and continue creating meaningful partnerships.” - Karam, Co-founder & CEO

Unlike common marketplaces, Baytonia caters to both buyers and sellers through its full-service offering, which includes pickup, listing, storage, assembly, and delivery. The platform also offers enhanced reach of manufacturers and sellers, and access to the logistics infrastructure necessary. In addition to individual consumers, business owners can leverage Baytonia’s full-furnishing services through their B2B portal.

“With our tech-enabled and data-driven approach and business model, we are able to efficiently and effectively develop Baytonia’s one-stop-shop offerings and continuously improve both customer and seller experiences, adding more personalized layers and aspects." - Ibrahim, Co-founder and COO

The platform addresses the pain points that customers experience during time-consuming offline shopping and the difficulty in browsing for variety while comparing price and quality. Baytonia aims to offer both businesses owners and individual consumers a one-of-a-kind full-furnishing experience that allows for convenience, style and variety, and high quality, along with other services aimed at offloading the logistical burdens off sellers to allow them to focus on core product offerings.

"Baytonia is a great use case for conscious and deliberate growth that is the result of a dedicated team with sharp focus. Karam and Ibrahim have had their priorities straight, which enabled them to deliver customer-focused products and offerings, bringing in like-minded talents that share the mission of elevating the customer experience even more, while ensuring a sustainably growing business model is maintained.” - Abdulaziz AlTurki, Managing Partner at Khwarizmi Ventures

The name “Baytonia” comes from the flower name “Petunia”, which symbolizes feelings of comfort of good company. The first part of the company’s name “Bayt” is the Arabic word for “home”, while “nia” is a common name in Georgia that symbolizes meanings such as “goal, purpose, radiance, and brilliance.”