UAE-based spend-management fintech Alaan has closed a $2.5 million seed funding round that it will use to scale in markets across the region and expand headcount.
The start-up allows companies in the Middle East access to a multi-currency spend management platform enabling SMEs to spend through corporate cards and automated invoice payments.
“In markets such as the UAE, over 80 percent of consumer payments are digital. But when it comes to business payments, we haven’t seen substantial transformation and the old world of offline payments still rules. This is where Alaan comes in. We enable businesses to manage expenses smartly, seamlessly and digitize their payment flow,” Parthi Duraisamy, CEO and co-founder of Alaan said.
The seed round was led by 468 Capital, Global Founders Capital and Presight Capital with participation from a number of angel investors including Mato Peric, Erik Podzuweit and Florian Prucker, founders of Scalable Capital as well as Philippe Teixeira da Mota, founder of Hedosophia.
“Every company in the region uses different tools for payments, with finance teams spending hours working on manual tasks. Although more than 97 percent of all business entities in the Middle East are SMEs, they are largely underserved by traditional financial institutions,” Ludwig Ensthaler, General Partner at 468 Capital said.
Founded in 2021 by ex-McKinsey employees, Parthi Duraisamy and Karun Kurien, Alaan aims to transform the processing of business expenses through its platform that provides employees with corporate cards to make company purchases and automatically reconciles spending in real-time.
Additionally, Alaan instantly issues virtual cards in multiple currencies including AED, SAR and USD for e-commerce transactions, SaaS subscriptions, vendor payments or in-store purchases. The platform also eliminates expense reports and automates bookkeeping tasks via seamless integration with various accounting solution providers.
