Epic Angels, the largest global all-female investment collective, has announced an investment in Oraan, a Pakistani fintech that has turned traditional women-led savings circles into a digital platform for saving, credit, and now gold. Epic Angels did not disclose the size of the investment, while returning investors WaveMaker and i2i Ventures also joined the round, reflecting continued backing from investors who had supported Oraan in earlier funding stages.
The funds raised will be used to grow Oraan’s gold savings product, build out its gold inventory, and support the fintech’s expansion into new markets. Oraan was founded in 2018 by Halima Iqbal, a former investment banker, and designs its products around credit, insurance, and savings specifically for women in Pakistan, addressing a segment of the population that has historically had limited access to formal financial services despite significant informal financial activity.
According to the statement accompanying the funding announcement, only 2 percent of women in Pakistan have access to credit, yet an estimated 60 million Pakistani women already save and lend through informal savings circles, locally known as committees, moving billions of dollars a year outside the formal financial system. Oraan digitises this existing system, allowing women to pool money monthly and take turns receiving the full amount, giving them access to a lump sum without needing a credit history or formal bank relationship, effectively formalising a financial practice that was already deeply embedded within many communities rather than attempting to replace it with an entirely new behaviour.
In November 2025, Oraan launched a gold savings product that lets users buy fractional gold through price-locked monthly instalments, a product that has grown nearly 75 times in its first seven months, reflecting strong early adoption among Oraan’s existing user base. The fintech is also expanding beyond Pakistan and has signed a deal to license its savings and credit platform to a regional bank, extending its underlying model to millions of customers in a new market outside its home country.
Halima Iqbal, founder and CEO of Oraan, said women in Pakistan were never waiting for financial products but were waiting for the financial system to catch up to how they already save, adding that committees and ROSCAs gave the company their trust, gold gave users ownership, and the company’s technology is now travelling to markets far beyond Pakistan. Maaike Doyer, founding and managing partner at Epic Angels, said access to credit for women in Pakistan is not a technology problem but a trust problem, one that Oraan solved by digitising something millions of women already use and believe in rather than trying to replace it. Doyer noted that Epic Angels first backed Oraan in 2021 and remains committed to supporting Iqbal and her team as they extend savings, credit, and gold products to more women, while leveraging the firm’s global collective of investors to support Oraan’s continued growth.
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