Alaan, a multi-currency spend-management platform emerges from stealth with $2.5M in funding

Alaan, a UAE based corporate spend-management fintech, announced it is coming out of stealth mode with an imminent launch after raising $2.5M in seed funding. The startup is the Middle East’s first multi-currency spend management platform enabling SMEs to spend through corporate cards and automated invoice payments.

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.

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.

Commenting on the imminent launch, Parthi Duraisamy, CEO and Co- Founder of Alaan said: “At Alaan, our vision is to offer SMEs and entrepreneurs an innovative platform to manage company spend, be it through card rails or account-to-account rails. In markets such as the UAE, over 80% 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.”

Karun Kurien, Co-founder and Head of Product & Technology of Alaan added: “We are extremely proud of the product we have built and would like to take this opportunity to thank our partners for joining us in this journey to help transform SMEs in the region. We founded Alaan after experiencing first-hand the frustrating expense and invoice management processes. We have solved critical pain points in the end-to-end payment flow by building a software layer on top of the regulated banking infrastructure.”

Alaan has partnered with multiple issuers in several countries across the region to be able to issue corporate cards and open banking players for seamless invoice payments. While in stealth mode over the last 6 months, Alaan built the product and finalized partnerships with regulated financial institutions to enable product launch.

Ludwig Ensthaler, General Partner at 468 Capital said, “Every company in the region uses different tools for payments, with finance teams spending hours working on manual tasks. Although more than 97% of all business entities in the Middle East are SMEs, they are largely underserved by traditional financial institutions. We were impressed by Parthi and Karun’s vision to help SMEs in the region digitize their payment flow using an exceptional platform that we believe is set to revolutionize spend management”

Alaan is headquartered in Dubai and will use the new funding to expand its headcount and scale in multiple markets across the Middle East.