Alaan Raises $4.5M In Latest Funding Round
UAE-based spend management platform Alaan said Monday that it raised $4.5 million in a Pre-Series A funding round led by Presight Capital and Y Combinator with the participation of other angel investors, bringing its total funding to $7 million.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates — January 16, 2023 — UAE-based spend management platform Alaan said Monday that it raised $4.5 million in a Pre-Series A funding round led by Presight Capital and Y Combinator with the participation of other angel investors, bringing its total funding to $7 million.
Expansion plan
Alaan is now strengthening its presence in the UAE and plans to use the new fund for expansion across the GCC region. It also plans to enhance its product with new features, including automated invoice payments of domestic and international suppliers.
Founded in 2021, Alaan is a spend management platform for Middle East-based businesses to manage all company spending through corporate cards and automated invoice payments.
It allows businesses to instantly issue physical and virtual cards for e-commerce transactions, SaaS subscriptions, vendor payments, government services, and in-store purchases.
These cards can be set up with daily or monthly spending limits and can be locked to be used only with specific merchants such as fuel stations.
Further, the platform eliminates expense reports and petty cash and automates bookkeeping tasks through seamless integration with accounting solution providers.
“The Middle East has a massive spend market (of) almost $3.5 trillion in B2B payments volume, but employees waste significant time with manual processes and disjointed systems,” said Parthi Duraisamy, the cofounder and CEO of Alaan, in a statement.
Within a year, the company’s valuation has quadrupled.
Today, the company provides its services to over 100 businesses with more than 5,000 employees across the UAE, the UAE firm said in a statement.
Fintech leads
Startups across Emerging Venture Markets (EVMs) raised $7.2 billion in funding through 1,473 deals in 2022, according to a MAGNiTT report.
Fintech startups only raised $2.4 billion across 351 deals, closing four out of the 13 mega deals in EVMs in 2022, including Nigeria’s $250-million Flutterwave deal and $110-million Interswitch Group deal, Bahrain’s $110 million Rain deal, and Saudi Arabia's $100 million Tamara deal.
