Middle East spend management platform Alaan has closed a $48 million Series A funding round to accelerate its AI-driven financial automation tools and boost its presence in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The round was led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA) and 885 Capital, alongside Y Combinator, 468 Capital, Pioneer Fund, and several high-profile angel investors, including Careem founder Mudassir Sheikha, Tabby founder Hosam Arab, and well-known content creator Khalid Al Ameri. It is one of the largest Series A raises for a fintech in the MENA region.
Co-founded by former McKinsey consultants Parthi Duraisamy and Karun Kurien, Alaan was built to address the inefficiencies plaguing finance teams across the region.
Many companies still rely on outdated tools and fragmented processes, problems that Alaan aims to eliminate with full visibility, real-time control, and automation tailored for MENA markets.
Duraisamy, recalling his earlier frustrations with corporate expenses in the Middle East, explained: “I’d spend my weekends uploading receipts, reconciling every expense manually.” He said the company was designed to replace this “constant pain” with tools that work in the background, saving both time and effort.
Since its launch in 2022, Alaan has processed over 2.5 million transactions for more than 1,500 finance teams, including G42, Lulu Group, Careem, and Tabby. The platform claims to have saved finance teams over 1.5 million hours by automating tasks such as receipt matching, VAT extraction, and expense categorisation.
Early customer adoption has included major enterprises like UAE real estate developer Azizi, which centralised its spend processes across divisions, and GuestReady, which replaced shared corporate cards with Alaan’s virtual cards—allowing faster book closure and tighter spend control.
“Thanks to tools like Alaan الآن, automation and AI are not just buzzwords – they’re our superpower,” said Abhishek Tak, head of Finance at GuestReady.
The company’s AI agents now handle repetitive and error-prone processes, from flagging missing invoices to reviewing expenses against historical data. This focus on behind-the-scenes AI came after an early misstep, its initial customer-facing chatbot failed to gain traction, prompting the shift towards automation embedded in workflows.
Alaan’s profitability has been achieved with notable cost discipline. According to Duraisamy, the fintech spent $5 million to generate $10 million in revenue, a performance that has helped secure investor confidence.
“What really matters for a company at our stage is the fundamentals: how capital-efficient we are, how much revenue we generate, how strong our go-to-market motion is,” he said.
Regulatory approvals have been one of the biggest hurdles for the company, particularly in Saudi Arabia, where it only launched earlier this year after years of navigating licensing requirements. Since entering the market, Alaan says transaction volumes have doubled month-on-month for six consecutive months.
The fresh funding will be channelled into hiring across sales, compliance, and customer success, building AI-driven capabilities, and rolling out new products such as Bill Pay and Rewards Cards. These additions aim to give finance teams more control over spend and faster reconciliation, all within a single platform.
Duraisamy says the mission is focused on becoming the most trusted and widely used fintech in the region. “We’re building the finance infrastructure this region deserves. And as cliché as it sounds, we’re just getting started.”
