The venture capital arm of Standard Chartered is readying the rollout of an SME-focused e-commerce platform in the Middle East, hiring trade finance veteran Farooq Siddiqi to lead the regional expansion.

Siddiqi, who started in August, reports to SC Ventures’ member Gautam Jain and will soon relocate from Singapore to the UAE.

In the post, he is tasked with establishing and scaling the Solv platform in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region and will look to form strategic partnerships that can help grow business in the Middle East.

The B2B platform was first launched in India in 2020. It enables SMEs to conduct business with verified buyers and sellers and access loans and solutions, such as buy now, pay later (BNPL) and supply chain finance.

SC Ventures is planning for a commercial launch of Solv in the GCC region by the second half of 2025 and the platform will work to facilitate cross-border trade among Middle Eastern countries, Jain says.

He tells GTR that it is still “under consideration” as to which types of financing would be made available via the Solv platform in the Middle East and whether Standard Chartered would be the sole funding bank for transactions.

Siddiqi joins after nearly four years as CEO of dltledgers, a Singaporean fintech that runs a blockchain platform – built on R3’s Corda – aimed at resolving multi-party issues between corporates and banks involved in global trade.

He also previously served as chief executive of Falcon Group for a year, following 19 years at Standard Chartered. During his time at the international bank, Siddiqi worked his way up through various regional and global roles within trade and cash management to become global head of trade finance.

Following its launch in India, Solv has since been rolled out in Kenya and Ghana. Earlier this year, SC Ventures said it has “set its sights” on global expansion to over 300 cities in India, Africa and Southeast Asia.