Alaan YC Application

Winter 2023Active

Alaan went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2023 batch as a Fintech company. Below: what the company does, who founded it, and its application to YC, reconstructed question by question in the real YC form.

YC batch: Winter 2023
Industry: FintechPayments
Team size: 160
Status: Active
Launched: 2022

Founders

Parthi DuraisamyFounder
Karun KurienFounder

What Alaan does

Alaan is an AI-powered finance platform for businesses in the Middle East. We help businesses instantly issue corporate cards for employees, control their spending, and automate workflows. Our mission is to simplify finance for businesses in the Middle East and help them prosper. We have grown rapidly and now work with over 2000 startups, mid-market, and enterprise customers across various industries, doing tens of millions of dollars in payment volume. We've been default alive since our launch in August 2022 (9x net revenue growth in 2023, 6x in 2024), and raised one of the largest Series A rounds in the history of the Middle East backed by Peak XV (formerly Sequoia India). Check out alaan.com/careers if you want to join us!

Alaan's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Alaan, Winter 2023 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Alaan

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Modern finance platform for the Middle East

What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do.

We built an AI-powered finance platform that lets businesses in the Middle East instantly issue corporate cards to employees, control spending, and automate financial workflows. Our product solves the mess of traditional expense management, approvals, and payments in one place tailored to regional needs.

Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC?

We live and operate in Dubai, UAE, and the company is based there. Post-YC, we expect to stay in Dubai to keep close to our customers and market.

Explain your decision regarding location.

The Middle East is our main market and Dubai offers a growing fintech ecosystem. Being local means we can deeply understand our clients' needs and build relevant solutions faster than foreign competitors could.

21 more answers in the full application

Founders, Progress, Idea, Equity, Curious, Batch Preference are in the full version. Create a free account to open it in YC Insights, next to every other YC batch.

See full application

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this the real Alaan YC application?

No. Y Combinator keeps submitted applications private. This is a reconstruction: the real YC form questions, answered from Alaan's public data (launch notes, founder backgrounds, product description). It shows how a company like Alaan would present itself to YC, not the text they submitted.