Alaan, a UAE based corporate spend-management fintech, announced its 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 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. 

“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,” Parthi Duraisamy, CEO and Co-Founder of Alaan, said.

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

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.