Knuru capital leads $30m financing to KLAIM

By Leandra Monteiro

Venture investor firm Knuru Capital announces that it will be providing KLAIM with a $5 million seed investment into an innovative securitized financing structure to help scale its receivable purchase operations in the UAE.

KLAIM is a FinTech company dedicated to healthcare that provides working capital to small and mid-size healthcare providers to ease their cash flow burden.

Through this deal, Knuru will provide an initial commitment with plans to increase this to over $30 million by way of a pool of Sharia-compliant investors. The funding will be used to support KLAIM’s medical claims receivable purchasing solution, which allows healthcare providers to quickly access working capital by selling their insurance claims that are pending payment and typically settled between 60 and 112 days.

Previously, KLAIM has announced working on an alternative Sharia-compliant fund provided by Al-Khair Capital which is currently under regulatory approval by CMA in Saudi. The company is poised to scale its operations with further institutional debt and Series A equity financing in the very near term. This innovative financing structure led by Knuru Capital is one of the first of its kind in the UAE and a landmark expansion phase for KLAIM, which aims to bring its advanced healthcare financing solution to the rest of the region.

This capital solution is particularly targeted at MSMEs healthcare providers that are not served by traditional lending businesses. In the UAE alone, over 35 small and medium-sized healthcare providers have been part of KLAIM’s beta program and currently benefit from KLAIM’s advanced working capital solution. KLAIM’s products give these providers visibility and freedom to expand their healthcare practice and improve the quality of care they can offer, all without relying on an unpredictable claim reimbursement process that they are very dependent on today. Claims payments from insurance companies to healthcare facilities can take anywhere between 60 and 112 days, which directly affects all types of operations of the medical facility.

“This financing will allow us to scale and help many more healthcare facilities. Financial stability of healthcare providers is crucial to the quality of their healthcare delivery,” said Karim Dakki, CEO of KLAIM. “After one year since we did our first medical claim purchase transaction, we have now proven the business model and built a track record that institutional investors such as Knuru are very comfortable with. We are ready to scale with large debt facilities or funds structures. The capital provided by Knuru Capital will help us further contribute to this stability, ensuring that people in the UAE and across the GCC have access to better and diversified healthcare”.

For Knuru, this funding is an opportunity to continue to accomplish its goal of helping FinTech companies scale with access to smart capital so they can further improve the lives of their target market. In this case, Knuru is excited about the opportunity to participate in the improvement of the quality of healthcare in the GCC.

“We are proud to be partnering with KLAIM in leading digitization of healthcare claims management and financing in the GCC,” said Alain Dib, CEO of Knuru Capital. “This combination of KLAIM’s claim management software and capital solution will greatly help SME healthcare in managing their payments and improve cash flow management and focus on delivering excellence in healthcare services”.