Cercli Raises 12M to Expand in Middle East & North Africa (19459000)
Cercli, UAE’s workforce platform for businesses, has raised $12 Million to create a single platform that allows enterprises to manage their employees, data, and agents in the AI age.
The round was led by Germany-headquartered Picus Capital with participation from Knollwood Investment Advisory, existing investors Y Combinator, Afore Capital, and COTU Ventures.
Individual investors include Prabhakar reddy from OpenFX; Jaime Arrieta, from Buk; Marco Ogliengo, and Francesco Scalambrino, from Jet HR; Francesco Simoneschi, from Truelayer; Mehdi Ghissassi, from AI71.
Akeed Azmi is the co-founder and CEO at Cercli. He said, “The growth momentum that we’ve seen over the past year has been remarkable. It played a major role in attracting customers, talent and investors.” Businesses recognise the benefits of a unified, single platform for managing their most valuable asset, their employees. It’s a great time to be building AI-based solutions, as it is a rare opportunity to disrupt the 800-pound gorillas of the ERP market, such as Workday, SAP, and Oracle.
Cercli, a payroll processing company, has worked with clients ranging in size from startups to large multinational companies, including Vision Bank and Backlite Media. Other clients include Huspy, Lean Technologies, Ziina and Global Climate Finance Centre.
Cercli’s 22% MoM growth is addressing the $5.8 Billion HR software market in MENA. Many enterprises are still using legacy ERP systems that haven’t been updated to meet the needs of a modern workforce. The regional market is undergoing rapid modernization. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 Program alone has driven over $500 billion worth of economic projects that require modern workforce management capabilities.
Cercli’s AI Strategy was designed to deploy internal AI solutions first, which allowed new products and features be shipped faster to meet customer needs. This speed enabled business leaders migrate entire organisations onto Cercli’s platform in 48-72 hours, compared to 9 months for legacy software providers. This has led to an increase in demand from upmarket companies.
“Cercli’s unique founding team is evident in the speed of their product expansion.” They are shipping incredibly quickly, in a rapidly changing region with a tech-savvy work force that wants AI-native workplace management solutions,” said Robin Godenrath. Picus Capital’s Founding Partner. “We’ve seen the business model work globally in our portfolio and we are excited about backing Cercli as they grow market share by new customers and product releases.”
As part of the investment, Cercli will concentrate on developing new AI-native services and products, as well as expanding into adjacent products, as customers look to move to an all-in one suite.
David Reche, Cercli’s co-founder and CTPO, said: “We realised the need not only to add new features but also to rebuild workforce management with AI at its heart.” This gives us an advantage in delivering efficiency, integration, and intelligence that modern business needs. As we grow, we are focused on attracting top talent from around the world to join our mission to transform how businesses manage their workforces – whether they be human or agentic.
