Cercli: The MENA Region’s Solution to Payroll Challenges Backed by $4 Million in Seed Funding
Akeed Azmi and David Reche, experienced leaders from two unicorns in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, discovered a massive $2 billion opportunity while managing teams at Careem and Kitopi. They noticed a significant challenge faced by local businesses in the region: payroll management inefficiencies and high compliance costs, often caused by human error.
In response to this challenge, they launched Cercli, a startup aimed at transforming payroll management across the MENA region. Founded in January, Cercli’s software platform enables businesses to seamlessly hire, manage, and pay their global workforce, addressing a critical need in the market.
Cercli’s innovative approach has attracted the attention of investors, securing $4 million in seed funding, led by San Francisco-based Afore Capital. This investment marks Afore Capital’s first venture in the MENA region. According to Anamitra Banerji, managing partner at Afore Capital, Cercli is poised to become the “Rippling for MENA,” solving one of the region’s most pressing challenges: managing a global workforce while ensuring compliance with local regulations.
Azmi, who previously led operations at Kitopi and Careem, identified this payroll management issue during his time at Kitopi. While leading global expansion efforts for the cloud kitchen startup, he faced significant challenges in managing payroll across multiple countries.
“In my role at Kitopi, I encountered the same challenges that Deel addresses today,” Azmi shared in an interview with TechCrunch. “As we expanded into new markets, we needed to find a reliable employee of record to handle payroll for the new hires, and this is where the pain point became clear: there was no efficient system to manage and process payroll across an entire workforce.”
Recognizing that if major tech startups in the region were struggling with payroll inefficiencies, smaller businesses would likely face similar issues, Azmi and Reche conducted extensive research. They interviewed over 30 companies, ranging from global giants like Saudi Aramco to small businesses in Dubai’s Karama area, to gain insights into their payroll practices.
Their findings revealed that smaller businesses often relied on spreadsheets, which are vulnerable to data privacy risks, fraud, and errors. In contrast, larger companies spent millions on ERP solutions like Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, or Oracle to manage payroll in-house. This led Azmi and Reche to create Cercli, a unified payroll management platform designed to replace these outdated methods and streamline payroll processes across the MENA region.
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