Dubai-based Cercli is a single modern platform for hiring, managing, and paying one’s worldwide workforce, becoming the go-to for firms across the MENA region. The company has successfully closed a $4 million seed funding round from Silicon Valley-based Afore Capital, marking its entry into the MENA region for the first time through its $150 million Fund III.
PC: TechChannel News
Investment and Key Participants
Beyond Afore Capital, the seed round was highly oversubscribed by some key investors. Among them included COTU Ventures, Y Combinator, and Rebel Fund. Individual investors also included Karim Atiyeh, a co-founder of Ramp; Sebastian Mejia, a co-founder of Rappi; Tony Dong from Rippling; Tony Jamous of Oyster, and Allison Pickens. Executives and founders from MENA-based unicorns such as Kitopi and Careem also joined in on this round of funding.
Vision and Market Potential
Cercli seeks to revolutionise how workforce management is operated and handled by organisations in the MENA region. It will help solve payroll problems within MENA, a market worth over $2 billion with very high compliance costs due to frequent human errors. One single platform where businesses can manage, hire, and pay a global workforce.
Founders’ Background and Motivation
Founders of Cercli Akeed Azmi and David Reche previously led from the front for Kitopi and Careem respectively, two of the largest unicorns in the MENA region. Their experiences in leading teams for these fast scale-ups brought into stark focus the deep need for an integrated solution to manage the complexities of a multinational workforce. Thus, Cercli was created.
Challenges Faced by Regional Businesses
Traditional workforce management in the region is characterized by manual processes using spreadsheets and fragmented legacy software, which are prone to errors and inefficiencies. These systems have given rise to fraud, data privacy concerns, payroll problems, and operational delays. Cercli seeks to replace these back-office systems with one platform, ensuring that the data is accurate and true for the organisation.
Growth and Achievements of Cercli
Since going live in 2024, Cercli has been off to a running start. The platform paid over $23 million in employee salaries for clients across 31 countries. Usage and transactions are scaling fast, at 25% month on month.
With the recent announcement of its $4 million seed round, there is no doubt that Cercli will make a dent in the sector of payroll and workforce management in the MENA region. Thus, with its ready and smooth one-stop-shop solution, it will help rid the bureaucratic headache of managing a truly global workforce and the expensive compliance errors which have greatly affected the region.
