Spend management platform Alaan raises $4.5M in pre-Series A funding round
The round was led by Presight Capital and Y-Combinator and also saw the participation of angel investors.
UAE-based spend management platform has raised a pre-Series A funding of $4.5 million, taking its total funding to $7 million. The round was led by Presight Capital and Y-Combinator and also saw the participation of angel investors.
Alaan plans to utilise the funds to expand across GCC, Forbes Middle East has reported. It also plans to enhance its product with new features, such as automated invoice payments of domestic and international suppliers.
Founded in 2021 by Parthi Duraisamy and Karun Kurien, Alaan is a spend management platform that caters to Middle East-based businesses. It strives to help businesses manage spending through corporate cards and automated invoice payments, instantly issuing physical and virtual cards for e-commerce transactions, government services, SaaS subscriptions, vendor payments, and in-store purchases.
According to a report by Strategy&, the growth in the Middle Eastern fintech ecosystem in 2022 was driven by UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Bahrain, which launched initiatives such as free zones and regulatory sandboxes and adopted artificial intelligence.
In 2022, fintech startups in the region raised $2.4 billion across 351 deals, according to data from MAGNiTT. Among the 13 mega deals in emerging venture markets, four were related to fintech.
Edited by Swetha Kannan