Alaan Raises $48 Million to Power Finance Automation for MENA Businesses
Alaan, a UAE-based fintech startup focused on expense management for enterprise clients, secured $48 million in its Series A funding round on August 5, making it one of the largest such rounds in the MENA region. The round was led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA), with support from Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, 468 Capital, 885 Capital and influential regional founders like the CEOs of Careem, Tabby and others.
Parthi Duraisamy and Karun Kurien, co‑founders and former McKinsey consultants, built Alaan after confronting challenges with corporate expense systems in the Middle East. Duraisamy described reconciliation woes as “constant pain,” involving manual data entry and weekend receipts management.
Since officially launching in 2022, Alaan now supports more than 1,500 finance teams at regional firms including G42, Careem, Lulu Group and Tabby. Over 2.5 million transactions have run through the platform. The company claims it has saved teams upwards of 1.5 million hours in manual work to date.
Peak XV managing director GV Ravishankar praised Alaan’s customer-first approach, stating “their product-led mindset from day one has enabled them to build solutions tailored to the needs of modern finance teams”. Sudeep Ramnani of 885 Capital added that Alaan is “setting a new standard for how modern companies manage spend”.
Expansion into Saudi Arabia began earlier this year after lengthy approval processes. Launch saw monthly transactions doubling over six consecutive months, with regulators approving core operations only after extended negotiations.
The new capital will fuel Alaan’s growth across Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The company plans to deepen AI-backed functionality—currently focused on receipt matching, VAT extraction and manual reconciliation—while building toward a full finance operations platform. Hiring will scale in sales, compliance, and customer support.
Revenue metrics reflect strong efficiency: roughly $10 million in revenue from $5 million in spend across the past year. Alaan is profitable, according to Duraisamy. He said investors prioritized fundamentals like efficiency and revenue generation over benchmarking against global competitors like US-based Ramp.
The company’s early adoption of Apple Pay for business card payments and background use of OpenAI tools aligns with its automation vision. Chatbot features fell flat, prompting a shift toward AI that operates behind the scenes.
With one of MENA’s largest fintech Series A raises this year, Alaan appears positioned to lead spend‑management transformation across regional finance teams.
