HQ

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Dubai, UAE.

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Founders

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Mo Aziz (CEO), Mo Ridwan (COO), Nayeem Zen (CTO).

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The Problem

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Prior to Pluto, modern spend management solutions effectively did not exist in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Over 20% of employees don’t even bother to submit expense reports, with missing receipts and complex systems often cited as key hurdles. Additionally, as with most underserved spend management customers, month end closing processes extend far longer than necessary (days instead of hours). 

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Diving deeper, many of the processes in accounts payable (AP) and expense management are subject to manual intervention and reconciliation. To understand how modern solutions such as Ramp, Brex, and Bill.com simplify spend management in North America, we can look at the key processes as:

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1. Purchase and expense approvals: purchases are only made after stakeholder approval obtained via email or tools like Google Forms. This results in extensive email threads and unclear audit trails. To simplify the status quo, companies often resort to “lowest common denominator” approvals, wherein even trivial levels of spend require senior levels of approval.
2. Payments: banking portals and traditional bank cards are typically used for purchases while employee expenses are often settled out of petty cash accounts. Bank portals do not provide for the intelligent capture of invoices while corporate cards were typically designed for a single user. Most importantly, global payments, which are far more important in this region, are subject to the costs and delays of correspondent banking networks.
3. Reporting and reconciliation: ERPs and accounting tools are not connected to local payment systems, resulting in extensive manual accounting and reconciliation efforts.

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To summarize, in the absence of modern platforms, the tech stack for the above is naturally convoluted and the nuances of the region prevent the seamless adoption of North American peers.

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The Solution

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Put simply, Pluto is a Coupa, Bill.com, and Ramp rolled into one, serving the MENA region. The team is building a workflow-first product with a focus on deep integrations. The value proposition is to automate as much of the procure-to-pay workflow as possible, including pushing data to HRIS and ERP systems.

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More specifically, Pluto represents a hybrid of three software categories: 1) an intelligent intake and approvals management system for purchases; 2) an all-in-one payables management platform; and 3) an accounting and reconciliation automation co-pilot. The solution has become a critical component of its customers' workflows, reducing month-end closing processes from days and weeks to hours and quadrupling the volume of payments processed over the last year.

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The Team

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We are fortunate to partner with one of the strongest teams building in Dubai. Mo Aziz, CEO, previously founded a Y-Combinator backed fintech startup, whereas Mo Ridwan, COO, and Nayeem Zen, CTO, previously spent time building product at both Square and Shopify. They have demonstrated a speed of execution and quality of product on par with global leaders in the space.

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‍Rhino’s Perspective

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Pluto has already proven an ability to deliver a winning product with strong traction in a market where the payments opportunity is compelling. Their vision to be the future back office for enterprises is consistent with an AI-augmented world. With an outstanding team, proven results, and delighted customers, we are excited to welcome Pluto to the Rhino Crash!