Parthi Duraisamy is co-founder and chief executive of Alaan, the Dubai company that provides corporate cards, business accounts, and expense automation to companies in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. He started it with Karun Kurien.
A Scholarship and a Career in Finance
Duraisamy grew up in a lower-middle-class family in India. Neither of his parents had been to high school or college. In 2005 he won a full scholarship to study engineering in Singapore, and the drive to prove himself then took him through Barclays investment bank, McKinsey, Airbus, and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
Building Alaan
He built Alaan with Karun Kurien, launched it in 2022, and went through Y Combinator’s Winter 2023 batch with Tom Blomfield as partner. The company processes spend for finance teams at companies including G42, Careem, Tabby, and Lulu Group, and it opened in Saudi Arabia in 2025.
In August 2025 it raised a $48 million Series A led by Peak XV Partners with 885 Capital. Duraisamy said Alaan had passed $10 million in annual revenue while spending $5 million, and that the money would deepen its position in Saudi Arabia and strengthen its roots in the Emirates.
Automation for Finance Teams
Alaan’s AI agents already match receipts, reconcile transactions, and extract VAT. He wants to build a full finance operations platform for businesses in the region, and Alaan competes there with Volopay, Pleo, and Payhawk. For a founder who started as an outsider in elite institutions, the goal is to give every finance team in the Gulf the controls once available only to the largest companies.
