The problem
Rent day in the Gulf means envelopes of cash, stacks of post-dated cheques, and landlords calling tenants one by one. Property managers keep the books in spreadsheets, disputes over who paid what are routine, and the whole asset class runs on paper.
How it works
Founded in Kuwait in 2016 as Ajar Online and now headquartered in Dubai, Ajar offers a cloud-based rent payment and collection service — tenants pay online via SMS and email links — plus a property-management platform where individual landlords, managers, and real estate companies track every unit, payment, and receipt in real time.
Pain points
Cheque-chasing, missing payment records, painful month-end reconciliation, and tenants who would pay on time if anyone gave them a button to press.
Business model
Fees on the digital rent flowing through the platform, paid by landlords, managers, and agencies, with tenant rewards for online payment and payment-network partnerships deepening the moat.
Challenges
Each new market brings its own tenancy norms and regulations; bank transfers and wallets already move money for free; and the free management tier must convert into real payment volume to pay for itself.
Funding
- Raised: $7.5M in total, including a multi-million-dollar Pre-Series A round, backed by SBX Capital, 500 Startups, Seed Partners, BECO Capital, and Sharq Ventures (Fintech News UAE).
- Valuation: MISSING.
Latest — August 2021
On 17 August 2021 Ajar expanded its property-management and rent-collection platform to Bahrain, adding the kingdom to its Kuwait and UAE footprint to ride the post-COVID surge in demand for contactless rent collection and to support digitisation of the Bahraini real-estate sector.