UAE-Based Maalexi Secures US$2.8 Million To Transform Agricultural Trade

UAE-based agri-fintech startup Maalexi has landed US$2.8 million in an oversubscribed funding round led by KSA-listed insurer Tawuniya, with participation from UAE-based venture capital firm Global Ventures.   

Founded in 2021 by Dr. Azam Pasha and Rohit Majhi, Maalexi is building the world’s first regulated real-world asset (RWA) agricultural exchange, which is aimed at bringing greater verification, standardization, and transparency to cross-border agricultural trade. The fresh capital is set to support the expansion of the infrastructure behind the Maalexi Agricultural Assets Token Exchange (MAATEX), which shall improve transparency, standardization, and efficiency in global agricultural commodity trading by bringing tokenized RWAs into cross-border markets.  

In an interview with Inc. Arabia, Dr. Pasha explained how Maalexi came to target what he called one of the world's largest yet most overlooked problems. “The reason we started Maalexi is remarkably simple,” he said. “At one end of the supply chain is a producer who has spent months cultivating a crop, hoping to access global markets and earn a better price, while risking non-payment after shipment. At the other end is a distributor committing significant working capital to fulfil customer demand, trusting that the supplier will deliver exactly what was promised. Sometimes that trust is rewarded. Far too often, it isn't. When trust breaks in agricultural trade, the consequences are immediate. Payments are lost. Shipments are rejected. Businesses built over decades can be damaged by a single failed transaction or an unreliable counterparty. The fundamental problem is that the global trading system was never designed for small and medium-sized businesses.” 

Underlying this trust deficit, Dr. Pasha explained, is a broader structural gap in the way agricultural trade is conducted. "Despite the sophistication of global financial markets, agricultural trade remains overwhelmingly a physical business,” he pointed out. “Every transaction depends on crops being grown, inspected, transported, financed, and delivered across complex international supply chains. Yet, while large commodity houses benefit from exchange-grade risk management, sophisticated financing, and institutional infrastructure, millions of small and medium-sized businesses still trade using fragmented processes, paper documentation, and trust. The technology and financial infrastructure that protects the world's largest traders has simply never been built for everyone else." 

This, then, is why Dr. Pasha joined forces with Majhi to launch Maalexi, which is now based out of Abu Dhabi’s Hub71 technology ecosystem. “Our mission is to empower small and medium-sized producers and buyers to trade agricultural commodities with the same confidence, transparency, and security enjoyed by the world's largest trading firms,” Dr. Pasha said. “We do this by combining proprietary data, artificial intelligence (AI), digital infrastructure, and embedded financial services to reduce payment risk, performance risk, and operational uncertainty across every transaction. Our vision extends far beyond digitizing trade. We are building the foundational infrastructure for the global exchange of physical agricultural commodities—bridging the gap between traditional supply chains and exchange-grade risk management.” 

Maalexi co-founders Rohit Majhi and Dr. Azam Pasha.

The scale of the opportunity Maalexi is targeting is significant, with Dr. Pasha pointing out that more than $2 trillion worth of physical agricultural commodities are traded globally each year, almost entirely outside exchange infrastructure. MAATEX has been designed to change that. “For the first time, exchange-grade infrastructure will extend beyond price discovery to the physical commodity itself,” Dr. Pasha explained. “Producers will gain certainty of payment. Buyers will transact in verified and insured inventory. Institutional and retail investors will gain access to regulated, real-world agricultural assets. And unlike traditional commodity exchanges or crypto exchanges, every token will be backed by physical inventory and designed for mandatory physical settlement—bringing transparency, liquidity, and trust to the world's largest untapped agricultural marketplace.” 

As Maalexi now looks to bring this vision to life, Dr. Pasha also has a clear view of how the user base for its exchange will evolve. “We expect adoption to begin with professional commercial participants rather than retail investors,” Dr. Pasha said. “The first users will likely be agricultural producers, exporters, importers, distributors, wholesalers, food manufacturers, and institutional commodity traders that already transact significant physical volumes and experience the highest costs from payment uncertainty, fragmented documentation, and inefficient financing. Banks, trade financiers, insurers, warehouse operators, and logistics providers are also expected to participate, because a transparent, data-rich exchange infrastructure significantly improves underwriting, collateral management, and operational efficiency. As liquidity and confidence grow, we expect institutional investors seeking regulated exposure to real-world agricultural assets to participate, followed by qualified retail investors where regulations permit.”  

That vision, coupled with Maalexi's track record, proved key to the startup securing its latest investment from Tawuniya and Global Ventures. “Over the past three years, we've built and operated a technology platform that has enabled more than 4,000 digitally registered smart contracts, served customers across four international markets, achieved 70 percent repeat business, and consistently maintained transaction performance with less than four percent execution failures across our own platform,” Dr. Pasha said. “This has solidified our verification capabilities, giving us the foundation to now move into a more robust phase of building the exchange layer. For Tawuniya, one of the region's largest insurers, those results mattered, because they evaluate businesses through the lens of risk. Our data demonstrated that technology, verified workflows, and structured execution can materially reduce uncertainty in cross-border agricultural trade. Global Ventures had already invested in our journey; so participating again alongside Tawuniya reflected continued conviction in both our execution and long-term vision." 

With Maalexi now all set to enter its next phase with MAATEX, Dr. Pasha also reflected on what its journey so far had taught him and his team. “The biggest lesson we've learned is that credibility cannot be engineered; it has to be earned, one successful transaction at a time,” Dr. Pasha said. “We could have started by building a tokenized exchange and hoped the market would trust it. Instead, we spent years solving the much harder problem: making physical agricultural trade verifiable. We built the data, the tech stack, the compliance, the execution layer, and the operational track record first. Only once that foundation was proven did an exchange become possible. Because in agriculture, technology doesn't create trust. Verified performance does. And that is the foundation upon which MAATEX will be built.”

Pictured in the lead image are Maalexi co-founders Rohit Majhi and Dr. Azam Pasha. All images courtesy Maalexi.