Nayla raises SAR67 million as the first Sanabil Studio venture to attract outside investors

When Shaqran Alyahya and Khalid Naili started Nayla Finance in 2024, someone else had already found and tested the opportunity. Sanabil Studio, the venture-building arm of Sanabil Investments, which is wholly owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), had identified the credit gap facing Saudi micro businesses and validated it. It then partnered with the two founders to build the company and invested at formation.

About two years later, Nayla is licensed by the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) and has raised nearly SAR67 million (US$18 million) in a Pre-Series A round of equity and debt. Idrisi Ventures led the equity portion, with Suhail Ventures and other strategic investors participating. BLOMINVEST provided a debt facility to grow Nayla’s lending portfolio. The company said the round is more than two and a half times the size of its previous raise. It did not disclose the earlier amount or how the new capital is split between equity and debt.

“The successful closing of the Pre-Series A round is an important milestone for Nayla and reflects the progress our team has made since launch,” said Shaqran Alyahya, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Nayla.t

Venture studios generate business ideas in-house and recruit operators to run them. The model has spread well beyond Silicon Valley, and one criticism follows it everywhere: the founders can look like hired executives running someone else’s company. Sanabil Studio says it validates up to 50 business models a year and aims to spin out and invest in the top 10%. That means each venture that survives has to show it can win backing from investors who had no part in the original idea.

Alyahya put ownership at the centre of the relationship. “Sanabil Studio backed us from the earliest stage, helping shape the opportunity while giving Khalid and me the ownership to build and lead the company,” he said.

The studio presented the round as proof that its model works. “What excites us most about this milestone is what it represents beyond the capital raised,” a Sanabil Studio spokesperson said. “In a short period of time, Shaqran and Khalid have transformed an idea into a licensed financial institution serving an underserved segment of the Saudi economy.”

Nayla was set up to address a well-documented gap in access to finance. The International Monetary Fund reported in 2024 that micro enterprises accounted for 0.7% of Saudi banks’ total credit portfolio, and small enterprises received 2.5%. The same imbalance appears across emerging markets. Small borrowers often lack audited accounts and collateral, and the cost of assessing them can exceed what conventional lenders expect to earn from the loan.

Nayla’s answer is a technology-led lending platform that uses alternative data, automation and proprietary credit models to underwrite borrowers faster. The company received its SAMA microfinance licence in April 2025. It joined a growing group of licensed finance companies in the Kingdom, which Arab News has reported now numbers 77.

Nayla raised the round during a period of strong growth for Saudi fintech. According to the Financial Sector Development Program’s 2024 annual report, the Kingdom now has 261 fintech companies, above its 2025 target of 230. SME lending has also risen to more than 9.4% of total bank financing, up from a 5.7% baseline.

For the wider sector, the round shows state-seeded companies starting to attract private and institutional capital on their own merits. In a crowded lending market, the harder test is whether underwriting built on alternative data holds up across a full credit cycle. Growth alone will not answer that. Alyahya said the company’s priority is measured expansion. “With this new institutional backing, our focus is on scaling Nayla responsibly and expanding access to financing for micro businesses across Saudi Arabia,” he said.

Sanabil Studio expects more of its ventures to follow. “Nayla is the first venture from Sanabil Studio to reach this milestone, and we believe it marks the beginning of many more ventures creating meaningful impact across the Kingdom,” the spokesperson said.