Press Release.
Qashio, a UAE-based fintech company, has made a successful start in the MENA region by raising $2.5 million in pre-Seed funding. Qashio’s enterprise-grade expenditure management platform provides full visibility and control of all expenses to business owners and finance professionals.
Their dashboard allows companies and SMEs to make informed profitability choices by integrating real-time tracking for every company expense. MSA Novo (with $1.5 billion in AUM) led the pre-seed funding round, which was also sponsored by Rally Cap Ventures, Palm Drive Capital, Plug and Play Ventures, along with regional strategic angels, entrepreneurs, and family offices. In addition to Grubtech, Danske Bank, Two Sigma, Xiaomi, and other top global fintech businesses took part in the round.
Seamon Chan, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Palm Drive Capital, said: “Investing globally across b2b fintech platforms, we have monitored expense management players evolving across all major regions. Qashio is poised to be MENA’s breakout winner due to its founding team’s proven track record in building superior products and ability to execute in selling to enterprises. We are excited to partner with Qashio to impart best practices derived across other emerging tech markets.”
Qashio is a Fintech program that enables businesses to obtain a comprehensive corporate expenditure management solution. It was founded in 2021 by seasoned serial entrepreneurs Jonathan Lau and Armin Moradi. Armin and Jonathan previously collaborated on Carriage, where they first encountered the difficulty of expense tracking and management.
Businesses can use Qashio’s virtual cards and software to manage their spending in a more organized and transparent manner, saving hundreds of man-hours and decreasing petty cash leaks. Better expense reporting, visibility, cash flow control, and an empowered workforce benefit finance and HR departments greatly.
Nana, Grubtech, Carasti, and Swiss International Hotels are among Qashio’s customers. They have users throughout the UAE and Saudi Arabia, as well as a growing waiting list.
Abdulaziz Alshiha, CEO of Saudi Arabia’s Al Shiha Holding & Swiss International Hotels commented: “Qashio’s software empowers us to have full control of our expenses and reduce our petty cash leakages. Integrating directly to our ERP system saves my finance team hundreds of hours as well!”
Business owners, CFOs, HR leaders, and finance teams can use Qashio to limit and control spend categories and vendors, as well as set spend limitations on virtual and physical cards issued in seconds. This eliminates the use of cash, reduces the amount of time spent on reimbursements, and eventually eliminates manual invoicing and vendor/supplier payment.
Jonathan Lau and Armin Moradi, Co-Founders of Qashio stated: “Businesses in the MENA region have been operating with limited ability to issue cards and manage employee expenses. At Qashio, we are committed to helping companies move away from all those manual finance processes and get more visibility and control by providing a secure, safe solution that is ready for enterprise-grade deployment as well as SMEs.”
As for Armin Moradi, CEO of Qashio: “We are committed to having clear, easy and fast onboarding processes for brands with no long-term commitments or heavy monthly service fees.”
The launch of Qashio is aligned with the UAE’s vision for the next 50 years, which is to accelerate world-class digitalization and ICT adoption across all business sectors.
The funding will be used to expand the operations team and customer support, evolve the current features and integrations with additional fintech partners and rewards programs.