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gulfbusiness.com / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 6

DATAVOLT UNPACKED

WHY COMPUTE IS SAUDI'S NEXT BIG EXPORT

RISE OF THE ROBOTS Machines that mean business

TROUBLED WATERS The Gulf’s costliest resource

TASTE OF SUCCESS SADDLE GROUP'S MOHAMMED AL FALASI IS TAKING EMIRATI HOSPITALITY GLOBAL

THE EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY OF

Gulf Business

Cat STevens

CONTENTS / SEPTEMBER 2026

The brief

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An insight into the news and trends shaping the region with perceptive commentary and analysis

44 Building Saudi Arabia’s entertainment economy SEVEN COO Essam Al Jubair on creating a new domestic leisure market, keeping spending in the kingdom and building destinations for the long term

20 R EMohammed A D HAlI Falasi S BonEturning STSELLING AUTOBIOGRAPHY Saddle Group’s a single food truck into a homegrown hospitality THAT’S MAKING WAVES AROUND THE WORLD group with a growing international footprint A v A i l A b l e At A l l m A j o r b o o k s t o r e s A n d o n b o o k s A r A b i A . c o m Supplied

Supplied

Taking Emirati hospitality global

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Lifestyle

Scent-sational stories: The inspiration behind this Emirati fragrance house built on a grandmother’s bukhoor p.50

Quality over scale: How Relais & Châteaux distinguishes itself from other luxury hotel brands p.52

Luved again: Preloved luxury has shed its stigma and become a status signal, says Shaima Sibtain p.54

“Guided by the vision of its leadership, Dubai has built an environment that gives creativity room to grow, enables talent to turn ambition into enterprise, and connects promising ideas with investment and opportunity.” Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairperson of Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (Dubai Culture)

63 Getty Images

The SME Story Insights on how the region’s dynamic SME ecosystem is evolving

Chief commercial officer Anthony Milne Anthony@motivate.ae Group content director Thomas Woodgate Thomas.Woodgate@motivate.ae Publishing director Manish Chopra Manish.Chopra@motivate.ae Group editor Gareth van Zyl Gareth.Vanzyl@motivate.ae Editor Neesha Salian Neesha.Salian@motivate.ae Deputy editor Rajiv Pillai Rajiv.Pillai@motivate.ae Reporter Nida Sohail Nida.Sohail@motivate.ae Senior art director Freddie N Colinares Freddie@motivate.ae

General manager – production S Sunil Kumar Production manager Binu Purandaran Assistant production manager Venita Pinto Digital sales director Mario Saaiby Mario.Saaiby@motivate.ae Sales manager Hitesh Kumar Hitesh.Kumar@motivate.ae

This issue’s images, vectors and fonts credits: Getty Images / The noun project / Typography

Editor-in-chief Obaid Humaid Al Tayer Managing partner and group editor Ian Fairservice

Cover: Freddie N Colinares

Follow us on social media: Linkedin: Gulf Business Facebook: GulfBusiness X: @GulfBusiness Instagram: @GulfBusiness HEAD OFFICE: Media One Tower, Dubai Media City, PO Box 2331, Dubai, UAE, Tel: +971 4 427 3000, Fax: +971 4 428 2260, motivate@motivate.ae DUBAI MEDIA CITY: SD 2-94, 2nd Floor, Building 2, Dubai, UAE, Tel: +971 4 390 3550, Fax: +971 4 390 4845 ABU DHABI: PO Box 43072, UAE, Tel: +971 2 657 3490, Fax: +971 2 677 0124, motivate-adh@motivate.ae SAUDI ARABIA: Regus Offices No. 455 - 456, 4th Floor, Hamad Tower, King Fahad Road, Al Olaya, Riyadh, KSA, Tel: +966 11 834 3595 / +966 11 834 3596, motivate@motivate.ae LONDON: Acre House, 11/15 William Road, London NW1 3ER, UK, motivateuk@motivate.ae

gulfbusiness.com

September 2026

SEPT 2026

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

AS DUBAI HAS GROWN, ITS IDENTITY HAS BEEN SHAPED NOT ONLY BY THE LANDMARKS DESIGNED TO CAPTURE THE WORLD’S ATTENTION, BUT ALSO BY FAMILIAR SIGHTS THAT HAVE BECOME PART OF EVERYDAY LIFE.”

ities are usually remembered through their grandest landmarks: towers, museums and architectural statements deliberately designed to define a skyline. But sometimes, the things that come to symbolise a city are much simpler. For generations of Dubai residents, the famous red Toyota sign above the Nasser Rashid Lootah Building was one of them. It was never the tallest or most architecturally significant structure on Sheikh Zayed Road, yet it became part of Dubai’s mental map. You drove past it. You gave directions using it. You noticed when it disappeared — and when it came back. That is what makes the planned demolition of the “Toyota Building” in 2027 so fascinating. It is not simply the story of an old building coming to an end, but another marker of just how rapidly Dubai has evolved.

September 2026

When the building opened in 1974, much of the skyline we now regard as quintessentially Dubai did not exist. The Toyota sign arrived in 1981, long before the Burj Khalifa, Dubai Mall or DIFC. In many ways, it watched the modern city grow up around it. Its significance was underlined when, after disappearing in 2018, it returned four years later. As Dubai has grown, its identity has been shaped not only by the landmarks designed to capture the world’s attention, but also by familiar sights that have become part of everyday life. Through time and familiarity, even something as simple as a red sign can become an icon. Al-Futtaim, which represents Toyota in the UAE, says the famous sign will live on in some form. That feels fitting.

Gareth van Zyl, Group Editor

gulfbusiness.com

The Brief

2026 OUTLOOK DUBAI OFFICE MARKET

1.6

Projected new office space

90%

Projected office occupancy

15.0%

Projected office capital gains

15.0%

Projected office rental growth

[GLA SQ FT]

SEPT GCC update Finance Artificial intelligence

08 10 14

Source: REIDIN, MEED PROJECTS, VALUSTRAT

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The new frontline of wealth As wealth management goes digital, cyber resilience has become essential to protecting client assets, confidentiality and trust p.12 gulfbusiness.com

September 2026

GCC UPDATE

FROM HORMUZ TO RIYADH: INSIDE THE GCC’S BIGGEST SECURITY AND ECONOMY TEST OF 2026 August highlighted a changing economic landscape across the GCC, with growth increasingly shaped by security considerations. As trade routes came under pressure, Gulf states continued to strengthen their financial sectors and advance economic diversification

OMAN • SAUDI AR ABIA

RESILIENCE RESHAPES GULF LOGISTICS

T GCC

GCC ECONOMIES SHOW RESILIENCE AS SECURITY RISKS MOUNT ACROSS THE REGION

he month of August delivered a striking snapshot of the Gulf’s new economic reality: regional security risks intensified just as governments accelerated diversification, financial reform, investment and infrastructure programmes. Across the GCC, the message was increasingly clear, resilience is no longer separate from economic growth; it is becoming a central part of it. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) entered the final week of August with an unusually complex economic and security picture. It was during the month that the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait continued advancing diversification, investment, financial reform and digitalisation while confronting a deteriorating regional security environment. The central theme was clear: economic resilience and national security are increasingly intertwined, with disruptions around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz affecting energy exports, shipping, insurance, logistics, inflation and investor confidence. 8

September 2026

he security environment gave added strategic importance to alternative trade routes. On August 5, Oman-based Arkan Logistics and Saudi Arabia’s SPARK Logistics agreed to activate a Secure Green Land Corridor, with the initiative reported in detail on August 16. The route is designed to accelerate freight between Oman and Saudi Arabia, strengthening Sohar’s logistics role and providing greater supply-chain redundancy while maritime movement through Hormuz remains under pressure. The economic transformation continued despite those risks. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 entered its third phase, with authorities highlighting approximately 1,000 economic and development reforms and about 1,200 laws and regulations issued or updated. Investment licences surged, bank lending expanded, sukuk issuance continued and Saudi Aramco reported adjusted second-quarter earnings of about $33.4bn, demonstrating the depth of the kingdom’s economic and financial activity. gulfbusiness.com

Compiled by Nida Sohail

UAE • KUWAIT

SECURITY MOVES TO THE ECONOMIC FRONT

he UAE saw the security shock move directly into economic policy. On August 15, Abu Dhabi condemned an attack on an ADNOC-affiliated vessel in Hormuz. On August 18, the Ministry of Defence said air defences had detected two ballistic missiles launched from Iran, with one falling outside UAE territorial waters and another inside. On August 19, the UAE announced that “all trade, commercial exchanges and financial transactions with Iran” had been halted until further notice, underscoring how rapidly geopolitical risk can become a banking,

shipping and compliance issue. Kuwait faced an equally demanding security environment. On August 1, authorities said hostile drones had entered Kuwaiti airspace and targeted vital facilities and equipment on Boubyan Island. On August 11 and 12, authorities announced the disruption of suspected terrorist plots, including alleged Islamic State-linked activity and a suspected drone attack. The cabinet also approved draft legislation regulating drones, light aircraft and air sports, linking aviation rules directly to national-security concerns.

UAE • Q ATAR

BANKING STRENGTH PROVIDES A BUFFER

he UAE’s financial system also demonstrated considerable strength. Islamic financial assets reached approximately Dhs1.4tn by June, while the five largest banks reported combined first-half 2026 net profits of Dhs38.1bn on August 24. UAE banking assets had reached Dhs5.3tn during 2025. Qatar, meanwhile, reported banking assets of almost QAR2.2tn and inward foreign direct investment of

QAR172.2bn at the end of the first quarter. Qatar’s August data also showed real GDP growth of 2.9 per cent in 2025, with non-hydrocarbon activity expanding 4.8 per cent. That performance reinforced the broader GCC shift toward measurable diversification, with services, finance, technology, logistics, tourism and manufacturing increasingly complementing hydrocarbons.

OMAN • BAHR AIN

OMAN, BAHRAIN KEEP REFORM MOVING

gulfbusiness.com

September 2026

Pics: Getty Images

man produced several important regulatory and investment developments. On August 17, the Financial Services Authority formally introduced investment banking as a regulated activity, covering investment management, securities portfolios, research, advisory services and issue management. The country also launched a government development bond, while its trade surplus rose 37.2 per cent during the first five months of 2026. Inflation, however, accelerated to 3.2 per cent in July. Bahrain continued regulatory modernisation through capital-market reforms, pension legislation, e-invoicing preparations, instalment-sale rules and digital-payment initiatives. Its August agenda showed that institutional reform remains active even as regional security and fiscal pressures demand greater policy attention.

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The Brief / Finance

Private equity liquidity crunch drives secondaries mainstream Once the overlooked younger sibling of private equity, secondaries are becoming one of the most effective responses to today’s liquidity squeeze

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September 2026

WHAT ARE SECONDARIES?

Secondaries refer to the purchase and sale of existing interests in private equity or other alternative investment funds. Unlike primary investments, where investors commit capital to a fund at its inception, secondaries involve acquiring stakes from existing investors who wish to exit their positions before the fund’s lifecycle concludes. These transactions enable the buying party to enter mature investments, often at a discount, while providing liquidity to the selling party.

Pic: Supplied

rivate equity is facing challenges: Distributions have slowed, exits are harder to execute, and investors are under pressure to rebalance portfolios in volatile conditions. For the growing number of investors active in secondaries, however, this is not an obstacle; it is precisely the opportunity. In the world of private capital, few asset classes have undergone a more striking shift in perception than secondaries. Long dismissed as a niche solution for distressed sellers, the asset class has emerged in the past decade as an important tool for investors seeking liquidity, flexibility and resilience. At the heart of that shift is a behaviour change. A prolonged slowdown in exits has left limited partners grappling with the denominator effect, as falling public market valuations inflate private equity allocations. Distributed-to-paid-in capital (DPI) has

become an increasingly sharp focus, while general partners are under pressure to hold on to assets for longer rather than force value-destructive sales. In that environment, secondaries have moved from a tactical fix to a strategic release valve.

There are two primary types of secondaries’ transactions: LP-LED SECONDARIES: These occur when a limited partner (LP), such as an institutional investor, sells its stake in a private equity fund to another investor without waiting for a traditional exit event. This can be motivated by a need for gulfbusiness.com

Georgina Whittle is the head of Financial Services MENA at APCO

liquidity or portfolio rebalancing. Effective Portfolio Management GP-LED SECONDARIES: These Tools for PE & VC report in THE SECONDARIES are initiated by the general partner November, “the mainstreaming MARKET IS STILL IN ITS (GP) of a fund and often involve of secondaries reflects a broader creating a continuation vehicle shift in private markets, where EARLY STAGES OF MATURITY to hold high-performing assets. flexibility, liquidity, and active IN THE MIDDLE EAST. Existing LPs are given the option to management are increasingly sell their stakes or roll them into the valued by investors.” Relative to HOWEVER, THE STRATEGY new structure. private equity, secondaries remain IS GAINING TRACTION, What has changed in recent a small part of the market, but years is not the mechanics, but the with nearly 50 per cent of GPs DRIVEN BY HIGH DEMAND motivation. Secondaries are now looking to utilise secondaries, the FOR LIQUIDITY AND THE increasingly used proactively — to potential for such strategies is only manage overallocation, generate set to increase. Buy-out firms are INCREASING NUMBER OF liquidity in uncertain markets, aware of this: January saw the sale INTERNATIONAL FUND and provide buyers with access of one of the industry’s pioneers, MANAGEMENT FIRMS to assets that are typically past Coller Capital, to Swedish firm EQT the early ‘J curve’ phase, offering at a value of $3.7bn — an impressive ENTERING THE REGION. greater visibility on performance feat for a firm which, when it was and cash flows. founded by Jeremy Coller in the 2026 has not started auspiciously 1990s, saw only a few million dollars for private markets. Investor anxiety over the in transactions a year. The secondaries market is still disruptive potential of artificial intelligence triggered in its early stages of maturity in the Middle East. a rout in software stocks, causing tech valuations to However, the strategy is gaining traction, driven tumble. This public market volatility quickly spilt by high demand for liquidity and the increasing over into private capital. Institutional investors, number of international fund management firms suddenly over-allocated to private assets, found entering the region. Key activity includes large-scale themselves needing to rebalance portfolios and meet partnerships, such as ADIA and Ardian launching a redemption requests. real estate secondaries platform, and the growth of Geopolitical uncertainty has further dampened local platforms for venture secondaries. risk appetite, as investors pause exit processes and LOOKING AHEAD new investments amid market turmoil. The result is The implication is clear. As private equity continues a renewed surge in demand for liquidity, and a new to grapple with delayed exits and liquidity constraints, number of LP-led and GP-led secondary transactions. secondaries are no longer a peripheral option. Limited THE RISE AND RISE OF SECONDARIES partners that fail to incorporate them risk losing Secondaries were already gaining momentum. In flexibility at precisely the moment it is most needed. 2025, the market reached a record $240bn in deal General partners, meanwhile, face a choice: treat volume, surpassing the $200bn mark for the very continuation vehicles as a short-term workaround, or first time and marking a 48 per cent increase on embed secondaries more deliberately into long-term 2024’s record-breaking year. Closed-end fundraising portfolio strategy. for secondaries strategies accounted for 18 per cent In a market defined by uncertainty, secondaries of total private capital raised, a remarkable leap from have emerged not as a temporary solution, but as a just 7 per cent in 2021. GP-led volume for buyout structural response. For investors willing to adapt, funds soared 39 per cent year-over-year to $81bn, they may prove to be one of the most enduring while closed continuation vehicle volume surged 93 features of private capital’s next phase. per cent in Europe alone. Private credit secondaries nearly tripled in volume, reflecting the asset class’s growing breadth and IN 2025, THE MARKET REACHED A RECORD appeal. Investment bank Evercore estimates over $200bn will be raised in the next 12 months. $240BN IN DEAL VOLUME , But the story is not just about numbers — it is about SURPASSING THE $200BN MARK a fundamental shift in how secondaries are perceived FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME AND MARKING and utilised. As Jada Funds of Funds, the Saudi A 48 PER CENT INCREASE ON 2024’S investment company, detailed in its Secondaries: RECORD-BREAKING YEAR gulfbusiness.com

September 2026

The Brief / Cybersecurity COMMENT

Mission cyber impossible? Why UAE wealth managers must rethink security As wealth management becomes increasingly digital, here’s why cyber resilience is now essential to protecting client assets, confidentiality and trust

he UAE has become one of the world’s fastest-growing hubs for independent wealth managers, with about 200 new firms established in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and continued growth in Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM). As firms increasingly rely on digital platforms to serve clients and manage cross-border wealth, their exposure to cyber risks continues to grow. In financial hubs where stability, confidentiality, and global connectivity underpin the value proposition, cyberattacks have now become one of the primary operational and reputational threats for external asset managers (EAMs). Protecting client wealth today requires more than sound investment expertise – it demands organisational resilience in an increasingly complex digital landscape. WHY EAMS ARE PRIME TARGETS

Unlike banks, EAMs often operate with more limited IT and cybersecurity resources while navigating increasingly demanding regulatory environments, including MAS in Singapore, SFC in Hong Kong and DFSA and FSRA in the UAE. At the same time, they handle highly sensitive personal, financial and legal information often with direct access to banking or trading platforms. This combination makes them attractive targets for cybercriminals seeking high-value data protected by comparatively smaller security teams. Threat actors are also evolving their methods in most regions. Messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, WeChat, and Telegram are increasingly used to impersonate clients or relationship managers, bypassing traditional emailbased controls and exploiting the trust that sits at the heart of private wealth management.

sophistication of cyber threats, but the speed at which they unfold. So far this year, 128 confirmed cyber threat incidents have targeted organisations across the UAE, including ransomware attacks, government breaches and data leaks. Recent CrowdStrike analyses also highlight that once initial access is gained, lateral movement can begin in under 30 minutes and, in some cases, in less than 30 seconds. By the time an organisation detects suspicious activity, the damage may already be underway. Artificial intelligence is accelerating this shift, enabling attackers to generate convincing emails, realistic voice deepfakes and highly personalised requests. Yet technology itself is rarely the point of failure. Most breaches still begin with misplaced trust: a familiar voice, a convincing message or a request arriving at a vulnerable moment. At the same time, wealth managers increasingly depend on cloud providers, custodians and partner banks to deliver client services. Cyber resilience is therefore no longer confined to an organisation’s own systems. A vulnerability anywhere across this interconnected ecosystem can quickly become an entry point for attackers. BUILDING CYBER RESILIENCE

The solution is not for every independent wealth manager to replicate the cybersecurity capabilities of a global bank. Rather, it is to strengthen the organisational foundations that attackers are most likely to exploit. Verification should become a routine part of everyday operations. As AI-generated content becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish from reality, employees should be encouraged to pause, question unexpected requests and confirm instructions through an independent communication channel before taking action. Equally important is reducing unnecessary complexity. Clearly defined access rights, streamlined systems and consistent governance reduce opportunities for attackers to move across networks or exploit weak integrations between

RECENT CROWDSTRIKE ANALYSES ALSO HIGHLIGHT THAT ONCE INITIAL ACCESS IS GAINED, LATERAL MOVEMENT CAN BEGIN IN UNDER 30 MINUTES

WHEN ATTACKS OUTPACE DECISION-MAKING

The defining challenge today is not simply the 12

September 2026

gulfbusiness.com

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Laurent Pellet is the head of EAM at Lombard Odier Group

platforms. Simplicity, in many cases, is a stronger defence than additional technology layered onto fragmented systems. Third-party providers should also be treated as an extension of the firm’s own security perimeter. Assessing the cybersecurity practices of custodians, cloud providers and technology vendors should become as routine as evaluating their operational or financial capabilities. Finally, preparedness must become an ongoing discipline rather than a one-off exercise. Regular crisis simulations, tested incident response plans and clearly defined responsibilities enable organisations to respond decisively when incidents occur, rather than relying on improvisation under pressure. Ultimately, cyber resilience is no longer just a technical issue – it has become a defining element of operational excellence and client trust. In an environment where attacks rely on speed, deception gulfbusiness.com

and interconnected systems, independent wealth managers that strengthen both their technology and their organisational culture will be best positioned to safeguard client relationships and preserve confidence over the long term.

AT THE SAME TIME, WEALTH MANAGERS INCREASINGLY DEPEND ON CLOUD PROVIDERS, CUSTODIANS AND PARTNER BANKS TO DELIVER CLIENT SERVICES. CYBER RESILIENCE IS THEREFORE NO LONGER CONFINED TO AN ORGANISATION’S OWN SYSTEMS. September 2026

The Brief / Artificial intelligence

The data paradox Getty Images

Here’s why more information isn’t necessarily making us smarter

rtificial intelligence is transforming the way organisations operate. Across industries, advances in sensing technologies, earth observation, connected infrastructure and intelligent systems are providing unprecedented visibility into complex operational environments. Yet despite this growing capability, one assumption continues to shape the way organisations think about technology: that more information naturally leads to better decisions. Increasingly, the opposite is proving true. Modern organisations rarely struggle because they lack information. The real challenge lies in understanding what matters, recognising emerging risks and determining the 14

September 2026

right course of action quickly enough to make a meaningful difference. Operational environments have become more dynamic than ever before. Infrastructure operators, emergency responders, defence organisations and industrial enterprises now rely on information generated across geospatial platforms, myriad sensors, connected assets and digital operational systems. Individually, these technologies provide valuable insights. Together, they create an increasingly complex picture that humans alone cannot always interpret in real time. This is the emerging data paradox: as information becomes richer and operational environments gulfbusiness.com

Dr Chaouki Kasmi is the chief innovation officer at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII)

more connected, the challenge no longer lies in obtaining visibility but in transforming complexity into understanding. More information does not automatically produce greater clarity.

THE ORGANISATIONS THAT PERFORM MOST EFFECTIVELY ARE NO LONGER THOSE WITH ACCESS TO THE GREATEST QUANTITY OF OPERATIONAL INFORMATION. THEY ARE THOSE THAT CAN COMBINE INFORMATION FROM MULTIPLE DOMAINS, ESTABLISH CONTEXT AND TRANSLATE COMPLEX SITUATIONS INTO TIMELY, ACTIONABLE DECISIONS.

WHEN MORE DATA CREATES LESS CLARITY

Without context, additional information can increase uncertainty, slow decision-making and make it harder to distinguish routine activity from the events that genuinely require attention. Decision-makers are increasingly expected to process complex operational environments while balancing competing priorities, compressed timelines and evolving risks. The result is often not a shortage of information, but a shortage of interpretation. This represents an important shift. FROM VISIBILITY TO UNDERSTANDING

For years, organisations focused on improving visibility by expanding sensing capabilities and connecting more operational systems. Today, competitive advantage is becoming less about seeing more and more about understanding more. The organisations that perform most effectively are no longer those with access to the greatest quantity of operational information. They are those that can combine information from multiple domains, establish context and translate complex situations into timely, actionable decisions. Interpretation is becoming the new competitive advantage, and this is where decision intelligence is beginning to redefine the role of artificial intelligence.

becomes most valuable when it provides context, highlights what requires attention and enables operators to act before small signals develop into significant operational challenges. Ultimately, organisations do not compete on information alone. They compete on how effectively they transform complexity into understanding. As operational environments continue to evolve, competitive advantage will belong to organisations that combine human expertise with AI-enabled reasoning to make faster, more informed decisions. The future of operational leadership will not be defined by access to more information, but by the ability to interpret it with greater clarity, confidence and purpose. The next operational advantage will not come from collecting more information. It will come from helping people understand what matters most and enabling them to act on it with confidence.

AI AS AN OPERATIONAL REASONING LAYER

Rather than simply automating repetitive tasks or generating additional outputs, AI is increasingly acting as an operational reasoning layer. By correlating information across multiple domains, identifying relationships between seemingly unrelated events and continuously evaluating changing operational conditions, AI helps decision-makers understand not only what is happening, but also why it matters. The objective is not to replace human judgement. It is to reduce the cognitive burden so people can focus on assessing risk, setting priorities and making informed decisions with greater confidence.

The next generation of intelligent systems will not be defined by their ability to generate more information but by their ability to help people interpret increasingly complex operational environments. AI gulfbusiness.com

Pic: Supplied

TURNING COMPLEXITY INTO COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

TOGETHER, THEY CREATE AN INCREASINGLY COMPLEX PICTURE THAT HUMANS ALONE CANNOT ALWAYS INTERPRET IN REAL TIME

September 2026

Why Athar Festival is the must-have date on every marketer’s 2026 calendar With four content streams, more than 200 voices, and an awards programme rebuilt around collaboration, the kingdom’s largest gathering of the creative marketing industry is back in Riyadh to push the conversation forward

audi Arabia is no longer just a market to watch. The kingdom’s economic transformation is creating new opportunities for brands to connect with a growing and increasingly digitally engaged consumer market. As new sectors emerge and established industries expand, the kingdom is becoming an increasingly important market for regional and international brands. That growth is already visible across the wider media, advertising and creative industries. Digital advertising spend across MENA reached $8.185bn in 2025, growing 17.8 per cent year on year, as brands continue to invest in new ways to reach and engage audiences. Against this backdrop, demand for creative talent, new capabilities and platforms that bring the industry together continues to grow. It is in this environment that Athar – Saudi Festival of Creativity has moved from an ambitious industry gathering to a

genuine fixture of the kingdom’s creative calendar. The event returns to Riyadh this November for its fourth edition, spanning two days of learning, discourse, and celebration in the capital. The festival’s third edition drew more than 3,000 industry professionals and over 250 speakers. The majority are senior decision-makers and directors. This is not a niche creative meet-up. It is where the people who control budgets and strategy come to do business. “Saudi creativity right now is at a turning point,” says Mohamed Al Ayed, vice chairman of Athar Festival and CEO of TRACCS. “There is a new confidence in this generation and the next, a confidence in our region’s potential and in the stories we are telling, not just to ourselves but to the world. As the kingdom’s economy diversifies and digital engagement deepens, that creative confidence is becoming commercially potent. This year’s Athar Festival is designed to

celebrate exactly that: work that is deeply Saudi and undeniably effective. That is the future this festival exists to build.” Ian Fairservice, chairman of Athar Festival and managing partner of Motivate Media Group adds, “We are operating in a market where digital engagement is surging, ad spend is climbing, and brands are asking harder questions of their creative partners. The programme we have put together responds to that directly, from content streams that explore how creativity drives growth in Saudi Arabia, to an awards framework that recognises sustained impact across every type of agency. I see this as Athar growing up alongside an industry that is growing too, and that is exactly where we want to be.” The main festival runs from November 24–25 at the Crowne Plaza Riyadh RDC Hotel & Convention, bringing together more than 200 speakers across three stages. The keynote lineup this year covers a wide range of perspectives, each bringing a specific lens to the Saudi market. HRH Princess Lamia Bint Majed Al Saud, secretary general and member of the Board of Trustees, Alwaleed

Pics: Supplied

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Actor, comedian and producer Ahmed Helmy (right) with Noha Bashir (left), standup comedian and founder of the Human Playground at Athar Festival 2025

Philanthropies, offers a perspective on social impact and cultural leadership at the highest level. Sir Martin Sorrell, founder and executive chairman of S4 Capital, comes with the architecture of modern global advertising and a digital-first operational mindset. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, the interior designer and media personality, reads consumer engagement through the prism of design and entertainment culture. Huib van Bockel, who built Red Bull’s marketing machine before founding TENZING Natural Energy, understands how brands become cultural phenomena rather than just advertised products. Marcus Prosser, marketing director of Atlassian Williams F1 Team, straddles high-performance sports marketing and enterprise technology. Alongside them, a mix of Saudi, regional, and international voices will fill the programme. This year’s content is built around four streams. Returning favourites Future Forward and Screen & Influence explore how technology, data, and content creation are reshaping the industry. Joining them are two new tracks: Strategic Creativity, which looks at how brands grow and stay relevant in crowded markets, and Decoding Saudi, a deep dive into the cultural nuances that help brands and creators connect authentically with local audiences. Within these streams, delegates can expect sessions on everything from AI and business model transformation to production craft and authentic

Mo Gawdat, bestselling author and former chief business officer at Google X delivering a keynote at Athar Festival 2025

There is a new confidence in this generation and the next, a confidence in our region’s potential and in the stories, we are telling, not just to ourselves but to the world.” content creation. Between the streams, Athar-curated panel discussions will tackle some of the industry’s most pressing themes. Conversations will cover creative leadership in turbulent times, how global brands crack the code on regional relevance, the rise of the Saudi CMO as a business strategist rather than just a campaign director, and how family enterprises modernise without losing their heritage. Another panel, Quiet Branding, will explore how trust is built within Saudi communities through subtle, consistent engagement rather than loud promotion. Campaign Showcases will also run throughout, offering behind-the-scenes looks at standout work and the thinking that shaped it. However, the festival’s energy starts before the main stage opens. From November 23-25, the Maheerah Programme powered by

Publicis Group Middle East enters its fourth edition, continuing its mission to support mid-career women in the creative sector through mentorship and professional development. The week builds toward the Athar Awards on November 25. The 2026 programme introduces a cumulative points-based recognition system, awarding points to all officially credited brands, agencies, and production partners behind winning entries. Gold wins five points, silver three, and bronze one, with the highest cumulative scores determining Brand of the Year, Creative Team of the Year, and Production House of the Year. Nine of the 17 campaign categories now feature dedicated entry pathways for network and independent agencies, reflecting the breadth of Saudi Arabia’s agency landscape. A new Best Sport Campaign category has also been added, recognising work that harnesses the power of sport in line with Saudi Vision 2030 as the kingdom prepares to host major international events. With over eighty jury members drawn from leading agencies, brands, and government entities, this year’s panel is the largest in the festival’s history. The awards welcome entries from across the industry, including brands, in-house teams, agencies, government entities, production companies, startups, and freelancers, with work judged on impact and effectiveness rather than channel or discipline. Supported by Growth Partner MBC Media Solutions, Social Partner AlSayegh Worldwide, and partners such as Publicis Groupe Middle East, Kantar, Kliq, and Guinness World Records, Athar Festival 2026 is positioning itself as the definitive meeting point for the kingdom’s creative community. After three editions, the festival has become more than a date in the diary. It is where Saudi creativity takes stock of how far it has come and maps where it is headed. This November, that conversation picks up right where it left off.

The Athar Festival will run from November 24–25 at the Crowne Plaza Riyadh RDC Hotel & Convention in Saudi Arabia. Registrations for the Athar Festival are now live. Visit atharfestival.com to be a part of it.

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Opella’s Feirouz Ellouze on putting self-care at the heart of healthcare Opella’s GM for Africa, the Middle East and Turkey discusses the region’s growth potential, the shift towards preventive healthcare and the company’s plans to expand access, local capabilities and health literacy Opella recently celebrated its first year as an independent company. Can you introduce our readers to Opella and what sets it apart? Opella is a global self-care company with a simple but ambitious mission: to put health in people’s hands by making self-care as simple as it should be. While we became an independent company in 2025, we build on decades of scientific expertise and a globally trusted healthcare heritage. Today, we are the world’s third-largest player in the over-the-counter (OTC) and vitamins, minerals and supplements (VMS) categories, serving around half a billion consumers through a portfolio of more than 100 brands globally. What truly differentiates Opella is our belief that better health begins by empowering people to take a more active role in managing their everyday wellbeing. As healthcare systems continue to evolve, self-care is becoming an increasingly important part of the solution helping to expand access, support prevention, and

build more resilient and sustainable healthcare systems. Everything we do is guided by one clear ambition: to make self-care more accessible to people, wherever they live. Africa, the Middle East and Turkey are incredibly diverse markets. How important is the region to Opella’s longterm growth strategy? The Africa, Middle East and Turkey (AMET) zone is strategically important to Opella because it brings together some of the world’s fastest-growing populations, rapidly evolving healthcare systems and a growing demand for accessible, high-quality self-care solutions. Across the region, governments are making significant investments in prevention, health literacy and more sustainable healthcare systems. These priorities align closely with Opella’s purpose, creating a strong opportunity to expand access to effective self-care solutions while supporting national health

priorities and improving long-term health outcomes. Saudi Arabia is an excellent example. The kingdom’s Health Sector Transformation Program under Vision 2030 is placing greater emphasis on prevention, patient empowerment and enhancing healthcare outcomes, creating strong momentum for self-care. Across Africa, meanwhile, growing populations and expanding healthcare access reinforce the importance of resilient local manufacturing and reliable supply chains. At present, our operations are primarily dedicated to ensuring a reliable and uninterrupted supply of our products to consumers across the region. This commitment is supported by a resilient and agile manufacturing and distribution network designed to meet growing consumer healthcare needs while maintaining the highest standards of quality and compliance. By partnering with trusted local manufacturing organisations across key markets, we are able to enhance supply security, improve responsiveness to market demand, strengthen business continuity, and create a more efficient and sustainable operating model. At Opella, our role extends beyond supplying products. We work closely with healthcare professionals, distributors, policymakers and other stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem to improve health literacy, strengthen access to self-care and empower people to make informed decisions about managing their health. Self-care has become one of the defining trends in modern healthcare. Why do you believe it is becoming increasingly relevant and important in today’s world? Healthcare systems everywhere are facing similar challenges today; ageing populations, increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, growing consumer expectations, and rising pressure on healthcare resources. Self-care has an important role to play in addressing all these challenges. The market’s growth trend is also indicative of the rising awareness and importance of self-care among consumers. According to Euromonitor data, the global vitamins, minerals, and supplements (VMS) market has reached a value of $39.9bn, while the total global consumer healthcare market is

BRAND VIEW

Sustainability is another area where Opella has recently made significant progress with the launch of Health³. What does this new strategy represent? Health³ represents the next evolution of how Opella approaches sustainability. It reflects our belief that healthier people, a healthier planet and a healthier business are fundamentally interconnected. Rather than treating these priorities separately, Health³ recognises that the greatest impact comes from advancing all three together. The launch builds on strong

Feirouz Ellouze

progress already achieved. In 2025, Opella exceeded all its sustainability targets, including achieving 100 per cent renewable electricity across operations, ensuring eligible manufacturing sites became landfill-free, sourcing all paper-based consumer packaging from certified sources, and reaching 238 million people through health awareness and responsible medicine use initiatives. Looking ahead, our ambitions are even greater. We are currently working towards net-zero emissions by 2050, with sciencebased targets already validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). At the same time, we aim to improve health literacy for 50 million people annually and train 200,000 pharmacists by 2030, recognising the vital role pharmacists play in enabling responsible self-care. Sustainability is not simply an environmental commitment for Opella, it is central to how we create long-term value for patients, consumers, communities and healthcare systems.

What truly differentiates Opella is our belief that better health begins by empowering people to take a more active role in managing their everyday wellbeing.”

As the GM for Africa, Middle East and Turkey, what opportunities excite you most over the coming years? This region is characterised by extraordinary diversity, but there is one common theme across almost every market: healthcare is becoming increasingly proactive rather than reactive. Consumers today want greater ownership of their health. At the same time, governments are prioritising prevention and health literacy, while healthcare professionals are increasingly recognising the role self-care can play in improving outcomes. Together, these trends create major opportunities to improve healthcare in meaningful ways. At Opella, we will continue to invest in innovation, expand access to efficient self-care solutions, and develop local capabilities wherever we operate. We also see considerable opportunity to further strengthen manufacturing, digital engagement and pharmacist education as demand for self-care continues to grow across the region. Ultimately, our ambition is to help build healthier, more informed and more empowered communities while contributing to stronger and more sustainable healthcare systems. Looking towards the future, what is your long-term vision for Opella across Africa, the Middle East and Turkey? Our vision is to establish Opella as the region’s leading partner in advancing self-care. For us, success goes beyond commercial growth. It is measured by our ability to empower people to manage their everyday health with greater confidence, support stronger healthcare systems through prevention and education, and create lasting value for society. The AMET zone represents tremendous opportunity, and we remain deeply committed to investing in its future. Whether by expanding access to trusted self-care solutions, strengthening local manufacturing capabilities, advancing sustainability through our Health³ strategy, or fostering partnerships across the healthcare ecosystem, our ambition remains the same: to put health in people’s hands, build more resilient healthcare systems, and help create healthier communities for generations to come.

*1 GSCF Socio-Economic Research 2026 Brochure 230426 (1).pdf

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estimated at $337.9bn. The VMS category is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.3 per cent during the 2025-2030 period. We see self-care as empowering people to confidently manage everyday health conditions using trusted, science-based solutions, while ensuring healthcare professionals can dedicate more time to patients with more complex medical needs. Importantly though, self-care is not about replacing healthcare professionals. It is about complementing healthcare systems through greater collaboration between consumers, pharmacists, physicians and healthcare providers. The wider societal benefits associated with self-care are also becoming increasingly more evident. According to research from the Global Self-Care Federation, there remains up to 50 per cent additional potential for self-care to be unlocked by 2040. Realising this opportunity could save an estimated 13 billion hours of individual time, 2.2 billion hours of physician time each year and generate approximately $144bn in healthcare system savings.[1] These figures demonstrate that self-care is no longer simply a consumer trend, it is becoming a key pillar of sustainable healthcare systems.

September 2026

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TAKING THE DUBAI STANDARD GLOBAL WORDS NEESHA SALIAN

n 2017, Mohammed Al Falasi built his first Saddle food truck in the UK and flew it to Dubai because he couldn’t find exactly what he wanted locally. Nearly a decade on, that single truck has become a hospitality group spanning cafés, dining and juice bars across five countries, with outposts in London, and the French Riviera and a buzzed-about new concept, Cherryhouse that drew an early visit from HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. Here, the Saddle Group founder talks to Gulf Business about walking away from a corporate career, why consistency beats novelty, and his conviction that an Emirati brand can stand alongside the world’s best — because, as he puts it, Dubai is now the benchmark. Saddle famously began in 2017 not as a café but as a single food truck, one you reportedly had built in the UK and flown to Dubai. Take us back to that decision.

When we started Saddle in 2017, the idea was never simply to open another coffee business. I felt there was an opportunity to create something that was contemporary and international in its standards, but still very much connected to where it came from. The food truck gave us the freedom to test that idea in a very direct way. We could go to the customer rather than wait for the customer to come to us. It also forced us to focus on the fundamentals: the quality of the product, the experience, the branding and, most importantly, the relationship with our customers. From day one, I wanted Saddle to feel Emirati without having to constantly say gulfbusiness.com

COVER STORY

SADDLE GROUP'S MOHAMMED AL FALASI ON BUILDING AN EMIRATI HOSPITALITY GROUP — FROM A SINGLE FOOD TRUCK TO CAFES IN FIVE COUNTRIES AND COUNTING

that it was Emirati. The confidence, generosity and attention to detail should communicate that naturally. Looking back, that first truck taught us lessons that still influence Saddle and Saddle Group today. You spent over a decade in senior roles in the Dubai Government and at KPMG before moving into hospitality. What made you walk away from a secure, established career to start a food truck, and how has that finance and consulting background shaped the way you run Saddle today?

It wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I had spent years building a professional career, and there is obviously comfort in having that stability. At some point, you have to decide whether you want to continue on a predictable path or take the risk of building something you genuinely believe in. My previous career was one of the biggest advantages I brought into Saddle. It taught me discipline, structure and the importance of understanding the numbers behind a business. Hospitality can look very glamorous from the outside, but behind every successful concept there must be a strong business model. Creativity gets people through the door, but consistency, financial discipline and good operations are what allow you to grow. I think that balance September 2026

HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, with Mohammed Al Falasi at the Saddle Café

HH Sheikh Mohammed at the Saddle Café in London

has become part of the DNA of Saddle Group: the emotional side of creating brands that people connect with, combined with the disciplined side of building sustainable businesses.

Saddle is now in London, Cannes, Saint-Tropez and Riyadh. You’ve said Europeans “see you differently” and that every country demands you learn its business culture. What was the hardest lesson from taking an Emirati brand into Europe, and what surprised you most about how it was received?

Saddle has grown to more than 25 outlets in under a decade, yet you’ve spoken about authenticity being the way to “stand out in an oversaturated market”. In a region where new cafés open constantly, what specifically has made Saddle stick where others fade?

The biggest lesson was understanding that success in your home market doesn’t automatically give you permission to succeed somewhere else. Every market has its own customer behaviour, regulations, expectations and business culture. You must enter with confidence, but also with humility. Europe was particularly important for us because customers there are exposed to some of the world’s strongest hospitality and lifestyle brands. You cannot rely on the novelty of being from Dubai. The product and experience must stand on their own. What surprised me positively was how naturally people connected with Saddle. They didn’t necessarily see it as an “Emirati coffee brand” first. They saw a brand and an experience they liked and then discovering that it came from Dubai added another layer to the story. That was very rewarding.

Consistency. People sometimes think success in hospitality comes from constantly creating something new. Innovation is important, but I believe customers return because they trust what you are going to give them. From the beginning, we were very protective of the Saddle experience. The product has to be right. The coffee has to be right. The environment, packaging, service and smallest details all matter. We have also never tried to become everything for everyone. Saddle has its own personality, and we have stayed true to it. Trends come and go very quickly, particularly in F&B. If you build entirely around a trend, you risk disappearing with that trend. We have always tried to build something with longevity. You’ve described wanting Saddle to be a symbol of modern Emirati identity. What does that mean in practice — in the design, the menu, the service, and how do you keep that identity intact as you scale across very different cities?

September 2026

Pics: Supplied

For me, modern Emirati identity is about being proud of where you come from while being completely comfortable operating on a global level. The UAE itself is a global country. We grew up surrounded by different cultures, nationalities and ideas, while maintaining a very strong sense of our own identity. I wanted Saddle to reflect that. You see it in the hospitality, the generosity, the way we welcome people and the attention we give to the customer. At the same time, the design and product need to work whether you are in Dubai, London or the South of France. As we grow internationally, we don’t want to copy and paste Dubai into another city. We respect the local culture and adapt where necessary, but the character and values behind Saddle remain the same.

Most homegrown F&B brands expand regionally first and stay there. You went to some of the most competitive, design-conscious markets in the world — London and the French Riviera. Was that a deliberate statement about where Emirati hospitality belongs, or a commercial bet, or both?

It was both. Of course, every location must make commercial sense. We are building a business, and expansion cannot be driven by ego. But there was also a bigger ambition behind those decisions. I wanted to demonstrate that a brand created in the UAE could confidently operate alongside international names in some of the world’s most competitive destinations. For many years, our region imported global hospitality concepts. Today, we are seeing the opposite movement as well: concepts created here are travelling outward. That is exciting not just for Saddle, but for the entire gulfbusiness.com

COVER STORY

FROM DAY ONE, I WANTED SADDLE TO FEEL EMIRATI WITHOUT HAVING TO CONSTANTLY SAY THAT IT WAS EMIRATI.” UAE entrepreneurial ecosystem. We should be ambitious about where our brands belong. There is no reason an Emirati brand cannot be in Dubai, London, Riyadh or Saint-Tropez and be equally relevant in each market. The year 2025 marked a real inflection point: your first-ever franchise, with Emirates Leisure Retail (ELR), opening at Dubai International Airport’s Terminal 3. Why hold out on franchising until then, and what made ELR and the airport the right place to start?

We were never against franchising. We were simply waiting for the right partner. For us, it was never about finding someone who could just open another Saddle location. We were looking for someone who understood the value and position the brand has built today — someone who deserved to represent Saddle and who shared the same level of ambition, creativity and attention to detail that we have. Saddle today has reached a very strong position, not only in the UAE but internationally. Our London operation, for example, has become one of the strongest-performing café concepts in the capital. When you have built that kind of equity around a brand, you have to be extremely careful about who you hand it to. That is why we took our time. We wanted a franchise partner who would think like us, innovate with us and, most importantly, protect what we have spent years building and what we present to the world. When ELR came into the picture, we felt there was a genuine alignment. And for our first franchise location to be at Dubai International Airport made it even more meaningful. Dubai International is one of the world’s most important gateways, so for Saddle — a brand that started from one food truck in Dubai — to begin its franchising journey there was a very special milestone. For me, franchising isn’t about how quickly we can multiply Saddle. It’s about finding the right people who can add value to the brand while preserving its identity.

Franchising means handing some control of a brand you’ve kept tightly held to partners. How do you protect the Saddle experience — the thing that makes it Saddle — once it’s no longer entirely in your hands?

You accept that you are sharing the operation, but you never outsource responsibility for the brand. For us, franchising isn’t simply putting the Saddle name above somebody else’s operation. There have to be clear standards around everything from product and sourcing to training, service, design and customer experience. Choosing the partner is probably more important than choosing the location. You need partners who understand that the long-term value of the brand matters more than short-term returns. We remain very involved because customers don’t distinguish between a company-owned Saddle and a franchised Saddle. They simply see Saddle. Their expectation should be the same, and so should ours. Beyond Saddle, you’ve built Feels Juice Bar & Kitchen and co-founded Represents. How do these pieces fit together? Are you building a collection of brands, or a single hospitality group with a shared philosophy?

Today, I think it’s important to look at what we are building as Saddle Group, rather than looking at Saddle only as a coffee brand. The group today brings together more than four brands and concepts, each with its own identity, purpose and customer, but all of them share the same philosophy: creativity, quality, strong identity and a constant desire to evolve. We are building an ecosystem. We don’t create brands simply to add another name to a portfolio. Every concept needs to have a reason to exist and the potential to stand independently, while still benefiting from the experience, infrastructure and creative thinking of Saddle Group. And as the world changes, the group has to change with it. Artificial intelligence is a good example. We are living through an extraordinary period of technological development, and at Saddle Group we are actively working with that pace of change. We look at how AI and new technologies can make us smarter and more efficient as a business, help us understand our operations and customers better, and support our teams as we continue to scale. But technology should enhance hospitality, not replace it. Hospitality will always be about people, emotions and human connection. The opportunity is to use technology behind the scenes so that the experience in front of the customer becomes even better. When I think about Saddle Group today, I don’t see a collection of cafés. I see a growing Emirati hospitality and lifestyle group that is building brands with the potential to compete internationally. You’ve partnered with luxury names like Tiffany & Co., Bentley and Land Rover. What do those collaborations do for a coffee brand, and how do you decide which partnerships are right for Saddle?

Enjoying coffee and conversations at Saddle Cannes

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We never approach collaborations simply as a way to put September 2026

COVER STORY

two logos next to each other. A successful collaboration should make sense culturally and creatively for both brands and, ideally, create something the customer wouldn’t experience otherwise. Working with established global names can introduce Saddle to new audiences, but it also tells us something important about how the brand is perceived. When respected international companies see Saddle as a relevant partner, it demonstrates that a homegrown Emirati concept can participate in that global brand conversation. At the same time, we are selective. Not every opportunity is the right opportunity. The question is always: does this feel authentic to Saddle, and will it add something meaningful to the customer experience? If the answer is no, then the size of the name doesn’t really matter. The UAE has made championing homegrown talent and taking Emirati brands global a national priority. Do you feel a responsibility as one of the more visible Emirati F&B founders, and what would you say to the next generation of Emiratis weighing a corporate career against building something of their own?

Absolutely. I do feel a responsibility, especially because we are fortunate to be building businesses in the UAE and in Dubai. We live in a country where our leadership has taught us that nothing is impossible and that there should be no ceiling to our ambition. HH Sheikh Mohammed has always taught us not to settle for anything less than first place. When you grow up surrounded by that mindset, it naturally influences the way you think about business, ambition and what is possible. That is also why, when I think about Saddle Group expanding internationally, I don’t see an Emirati brand as being limited to the UAE or even the region. Why shouldn’t a brand born in Dubai compete in London, Paris, New York or anywhere else in the world? Our country itself has shown us what can happen when ambition is combined with execution. At the same time, I would never tell a young Emirati to leave a corporate career simply because entrepreneurship looks exciting.

The inviting interiors of Cherryhouse

CREATIVITY GETS PEOPLE THROUGH THE DOOR, BUT CONSISTENCY, FINANCIAL DISCIPLINE AND GOOD OPERATIONS ARE WHAT ALLOW YOU TO GROW.” 24

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A view of Saddle London

Your career can teach you enormously valuable skills. My own professional experience became part of the foundation I used to build Saddle. My advice would be to learn as much as you can, understand the industry you want to enter and don’t romanticise entrepreneurship. There will be difficult periods that nobody sees. And don’t be afraid to start small. Saddle started with one food truck. You don’t need to begin with an empire. You need to begin with something good enough that people want you to build the second one. And once you start, don’t put a ceiling on where it can go. Looking three to five years out: where does Saddle Group need to be for you to feel the vision is realised? New continents, more franchise partners, an IPO — what does continuing “success” look like from here?

I don’t think I will ever reach a point where I say the vision is completely realised. Every time the group reaches one milestone, it creates the ambition for the next one. When I look at Saddle Group today, I don’t measure our progress only by the number of locations we have opened or the number of countries we have entered. One of the most important indicators for me is the strength of the business itself. Our revenue continues to grow significantly year on year, and for me that is important because it demonstrates that the growth of the group is not simply expansion for the sake of expansion. There is a healthy and growing business behind it. The next three to five years are about taking Saddle Group to another level: strengthening the brands we already have, continuing to create new concepts when we see a genuine opportunity, expanding internationally in a disciplined way, embracing technology and AI, and finding strategic partners who can add real value to the group. But I also want us to remain entrepreneurial. As companies become bigger, there is always a risk that they become slower and more corporate. I never want Saddle Group to lose the curiosity and courage that allowed us to start with one food truck and eventually take our brands outside the UAE. Success for me would be seeing Saddle Group recognised internationally as a gulfbusiness.com

homegrown Emirati group that creates relevant global brands — not simply an Emirati company operating overseas. And ultimately, I want the next phase of growth to be even stronger than the last, while never compromising the standards that brought us here in the first place. Cherryhouse drew extraordinary attention from the start, including an early visit from HH Sheikh Mohammed, and the buzz has held. What was the vision behind it, why did it capture so much attention, and how do you sustain that beyond the initial hype?

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PLAYBOOK

ON LEADERSHIP, LONGEVITY AND BUILDING A GLOBAL BRAND 01 START SMALL, PROVE IT WORKS Saddle began with one food truck in 2017, a deliberate, low-risk way to test the concept directly on customers. His advice to founders: “You don’t need to begin with an empire… begin with something good enough that people want you to build the second one.” 02 DISCIPLINE BEHIND THE CREATIVITY A finance and consulting background underpins the brand. Creativity gets people through the door, he says, but consistency, financial discipline and strong operations are what allow a business to grow. 03 CONSISTENCY OVER NOVELTY He credits Saddle’s staying power to trust, not constant reinvention: customers return because they know what they’ll get. Build around a trend, and you risk disappearing with it. 04 EMIRATI BY FEEL, GLOBAL BY STANDARD Saddle should feel Emirati “without having to constantly say that it was Emirati”, carrying that identity abroad while adapting to each market rather than just copy-pasting Dubai. 05 GROW WITHOUT DILUTING From franchising to collaborations, the same test applies: expansion must strengthen the brand, never weaken it. Also, choosing the right partner matters more than the location.

Pics: Supplied

Cherryhouse is very special to me because it wasn’t created to follow a trend. The idea goes back several years. I wanted to create something that brought together everything I had experienced through travelling, discovering coffee cultures and studying some of the best bakeries and hospitality concepts around the world, but to interpret all of that through an Emirati point of view. The idea was to create a destination, not simply another café. At Cherryhouse, the entire process is part of the experience. Guests can see the coffee being roasted, watch the beans move through the space, see the bakery at work and understand the craftsmanship behind what eventually arrives at their table. We wanted to make what normally happens behind the scenes part of the experience. Of course, the attention we received from the beginning was incredible. Having HH Sheikh Mohammed visit Cherryhouse so early in its journey was a moment I will never forget. As an Emirati entrepreneur, it meant a great deal to me and to the entire team, but it also gave us an even greater sense of responsibility. There was actually a moment after we opened that stayed with me. Someone came to Cherryhouse and said to me, “Mohammed, you’ve created something at a world-class standard.” I told him: “No. This is Dubai standard.” And I genuinely believe that. Dubai has reached a point where we shouldn’t always measure what we create against somewhere else in the world. Dubai itself has become the benchmark. When you build something here, the expectations are incredibly high because people have access to the best experiences, the best restaurants, the best hotels and some of the most ambitious concepts in the world. For me, Cherryhouse being described as world-class is a compliment, but our ambition was always to create something worthy of Dubai. The attention and hype around the opening were incredible, but the real achievement isn’t being busy for the first few weeks. Dubai loves new concepts. The real test is whether people still want to come back once the initial excitement is over. Months later, seeing Cherryhouse continue to be busy, talked about and discovered by new customers is what makes me most proud. You can create hype with a launch, but you cannot manufacture loyalty. That comes from the product, the service, consistency and constantly giving people a reason to return. My ambition for Cherryhouse is much bigger than being the most talked-about opening of one season. I want it to become another homegrown Emirati hospitality brand capable of travelling internationally — but wherever it goes, I want people to understand where that standard came from. It came from Dubai.

MOHAMMED AL FALASI’S

06 BUILD BEYOND YOURSELF Nearly a decade in, what keeps him going is the sense Saddle is still only beginning, and the lesson that a founder’s role must evolve. Early on he was across every detail; growth forced him to build teams, trust people and create a culture that outlasts him. “The goal isn’t to build a business that depends on one person. It’s to build a brand and an organisation strong enough to continue growing for generations.”

September 2026

FEATURE / WATER SECURITY

BEYOND SCARCI HOW THE GULF IS ENGINEERING SMARTER, MORE RESILIENT WATER 26

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THE GLOBAL PICTURE IS STARK, COLLAPSING AQUIFERS, A WIDENING SUPPLY GAP, MILLIONS OF PREVENTABLE DEATHS A YEAR. IN THE GULF, THE RESPONSE IS A SHIFT FROM BUILDING MORE WATER TO MANAGING IT BETTER. HERE, INDUSTRY EXPERTS DISCUSS THE TECHNOLOGIES REMAKING THE REGION’S WATER SYSTEMS

ater is the resource on which every other one depends, and by the best current measures the world is not managing it well. Roughly half of humanity experiences severe water scarcity for at least part of the year, according to the UN World Water Development Report 2024. The human cost is measured most starkly by the World Health Organization (WHO): 2.1 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water, while WHO estimates that unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene contributed to at least 1.4 million preventable deaths in 2019. Beneath the surface, reserves are thinning too. A landmark 2024 study in Nature, led by Scott Jasechko, analysed 170,000 monitoring wells across 1,693 aquifer systems and found that extensive and often accelerating groundwater declines are widespread in the 21st century. For the Gulf, where groundwater depletion has made reliance on conventional freshwater sources increasingly difficult to sustain, that is the essential backdrop: desalination has become central to water security. Saudi Arabia, for example, is the world’s largest producer of desalinated water, with production capacity exceeding 16 million cubic metres a day, according to Saudi government data. As ACCIONA’s Julio de la Rosa, chief development officer for its water business in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, put it in an earlier interview with Gulf Business, the point is “to distinguish between dependence and vulnerability”, and to treat desalination “as a strategic asset that continues to evolve and secure the supply of potable water.” The more consequential shift now under way is in how that water is produced, moved and managed. Three companies supplying technologies and expertise to the region’s systems, Grundfos, Autodesk and AVK, describe a sector moving from scarcity management to circular strategies, from reactive repair to predictive intelligence, and towards more resilient networks. CIRCULARITY AND ENERGY

WORDS NEESHA SALIAN

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TY I TI Y

For Michael Nielsen, Grundfos’s regional sales director for India, Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa, the defining change is the move towards circularity. “Circularity is no longer a conceptual ambition; it is becoming central to how the region plans for resilience,” he says. Across the Gulf, Nielsen says utilities are increasingly targeting double-digit reductions in non-revenue water and energy use, driven by high-efficiency desalination, expanded wastewater reuse and lifecycle-based asset optimisation. Dubai illustrates the gains already being made in network efficiency. Water transmission and distribution losses fell to 4.4 per cent by the end of 2025, which Dubai Electricity and Water Authority says is among the lowest rates globally. The largest near-term prize is energy. “Pumps account for a large share of energy use in water systems, and the next two years will see a rapid shift toward autonomously optimising pumping stations, using AI and realtime data to reduce energy consumption by up to 25 per cent in certain network configurations,” Nielsen says. September 2026

BUILDING RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE REQUIRES HIGH-QUALITY MATERIALS AND THE EXPERTISE TO DESIGN NETWORKS THAT CAN PERFORM RELIABLY FOR DECADES.” “These savings are no longer theoretical - utilities we work with across the GCC are already moving toward self-regulating pressure management and remote performance optimisation.”Digital optimisation, he says, is also strengthening the resilience of water infrastructure by allowing utilities to detect irregularities earlier, maintain operational continuity and respond more effectively to disruptions across complex networks. FROM REACTIVE TO PREDICTIVE

Naji Atallah, head of construction and manufacturing for EMEA Emerging at Autodesk, sees the same inflection through the lens of intelligence. “Water utilities across the GCC and globally are rapidly shifting from reactive operations to predictive and proactive management enabled by AI-driven modelling and real-time data,” he says. “This shift is redefining how infrastructure is protected which entails moving from responding to failures to anticipating and preventing them.” Digital twins are playing a growing role. Atallah says their increasing adoption in Saudi Arabia and the UAE allows utilities to simulate extreme conditions, stress-test infrastructure and identify vulnerabilities before they become real-world failures. “In a region exposed to both climate extremes and rising demand, this capability is critical to reducing long-term risk,” he says. AI-driven maintenance, leak detection and integrated asset management platforms are also helping utilities intervene before disruptions occur. “This transition from ‘fix after failure’ to ‘intervene before impact’ is essential to protecting critical infrastructure and maintaining service reliability.”Public investment is backing that shift. Saudi Arabia’s National Water Company said it completed 50 water and sanitation projects worth more than SAR2.4bn in 2026. The projects expanded main lines and feeder networks by more than 1,360 kilometres and added 210,000 cubic metres of operational reservoir capacity. 28

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NWC said 33 of the projects were water developments worth more than SAR1.1bn, while 17 sanitation projects were valued at a combined SAR1.3bn. For Atallah, the transition is reaching an important point. “At Autodesk, we see this year as a tipping point. Digital tools and cloud collaboration are already transforming how water infrastructure is designed and delivered.” “The next phase is system-wide optimisation where entire networks are continuously monitored, analysed, and improved using design, sensor, and historical data.” BUILDING RESILIENT NETWORKS

For Ole Hedegaard, regional managing director at AVK, resilience begins with recognising the strategic importance of infrastructure that is largely unnoticed until something goes wrong. “Water infrastructure is often invisible when it works well, but becomes highly visible during times of conflict, when it quickly rises to the level of a national priority,” he says. “This is especially true in the Middle East, one of the most waterscarce regions globally. As GCC countries rely heavily on desalination, an effective but energy-intensive and costly solution, protecting this critical infrastructure is fundamental to the long-term resilience of cities and industries.” The focus is not new. Hedegaard points to a longstanding commitment across the region to investing in more intelligent, efficient and resilient water networks. “Protecting and strengthening water infrastructure remains a top priority for governments and utilities worldwide. These systems are critical assets that support long-term urban development, and their reliability has a direct impact on a country’s economic performance and overall quality of life.” For AVK, resilience also depends on the quality and longevity of the physical infrastructure itself. “Building resilient infrastructure requires high-quality materials and the expertise to design networks that can perform reliably for decades,” Hedegaard

says. Across the GCC, he says, consistent investment has enabled municipalities and industry players to build capabilities that are now recognised globally. AVK has worked with utilities and industrial clients across the region for more than 40 years. Wastewater is another part of the equation. Hedegaard says advances in treatment and reuse, particularly for irrigation, are supporting more sustainable water management while strengthening local food production and reducing reliance on imports. “In parallel, there is an increasing focus on expanding water storage capacity to ensure a more stable and reliable supply during periods of peak demand or disruption.” MANAGE IT MOST INTELLIGENTLY

For all the focus on production, the research and industry experts converge on the same conclusion: security is decided by how water is managed, not merely how much is made. Nature researchers found that groundwater decline is not inevitable. Some aquifers in their global dataset showed recoveries associated with measures including reduced groundwater extraction, surface-water transfers and managed aquifer recharge. Wastewater reuse, smart networks, leak detection, improved storage and demand management are therefore increasingly central to the region’s approach to water resilience. De la Rosa framed it succinctly: “The most resilient countries will not necessarily be those that produce the most water, but those that manage it most intelligently.” Nielsen reaches almost identical ground from the supplier’s side: “The next phase for the region will not be defined by access to water, but by how effectively it is managed and protected.” That is the shift the whole sector now describes, from scarcity management to strategic asset management, from reactive repair to predictive intervention and from single-source dependence to circular reuse. It is not a future scenario but an increasingly important part of how the Gulf is approaching water security in 2026, and the countries that combine desalination, reuse, more efficient networks, digital intelligence and sound governance will be best placed to build resilient water systems for the decades ahead. gulfbusiness.com

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RISE OF THE

O ROB TS WHY THE GCC IS EMERGING AS A PROVING GROUND FOR PHYSICAL AI WORDS GARETH VAN ZYL

September 2026

gulfbusiness.com

Pics: Supplied

FEATURE / ROBOTICS

CHINA’S HUMANOID BOOM IS MOVING FROM SPECTACLE TO USEFUL WORK, WHILE THE UAE AND SAUDI ARABIA PUT AUTONOMOUS MACHINES TO THE TEST ON ROADS, FACTORY FLOORS AND LOGISTICS NETWORKS FROM SPECTACLE TO COMMERCIAL SCALE

rom record-breaking humanoids to robo-trucks and driverless taxis, robotics is entering a new phase of commercial deployment — with the Gulf at the centre of the race. Two humanoid robots recorded 100-metre times faster than Usain Bolt’s 9.58-second human world record at Beijing’s World Humanoid Robot Games in August. Yet the most consequential contests may prove considerably less glamorous. Robots are also being asked to connect cables, load materials, work in restaurants and charge electric vehicles. More than 40 per cent of events require full autonomy, exposing machines to the untidy realities of the physical world. “Only when it can work in those end scenarios does it have real value,” Lumos Robotics chief executive Yu Chao recently told Reuters. “Simply running and jumping does not improve efficiency.” That distinction increasingly defines the global robotics race. gulfbusiness.com

here were 4.664 million industrial robots operating in factories globally in 2024, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), with 542,000 installed during the year. Asia accounted for 74 per cent of new deployments. Humanoid robotics is attracting its own surge of investment. IDC estimates China accounts for 82 per cent of global humanoid shipments. Chery-backed AiMOGA offers one glimpse of where the market is heading. By August, the company had delivered

more than 3,000 robots globally, including 2,000 overseas, and was operating in more than 60 countries and regions. It is targeting 10,000 global robot deliveries in 2027 and is considering a potential stock-market listing. Zhang Guibing, president of Chery International and AiMOGA Robotics, has identified the Middle East and Southeast Asia as promising overseas markets. “Only by genuinely integrating into local markets can companies achieve sustainable development,” Zhang said in a company statement. That shift from demonstration to deployment is already visible in the UAE. In Ras Al Khaimah, RAK Ceramics integrated Evocargo N1 autonomous electric trucks into logistics operations at its Al Jazeera Al Hamra industrial zone in 2025. “Our robots-as-a-service model makes this technology accessible and scalable,” Evocargo Autonomous Logistic Services UAE CEO Shaheem Musthafa told Gulf Business. “It means businesses can use autonomous vehicles on a subscription basis, without the need for upfront capital investment.” September 2026

FEATURE / ROBOTICS

ABU DHABI MOBILITY SAYS 69 AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES ARE REGISTERED IN ITS COMMERCIAL FLEET, WHICH

THE GULF’S ROBOTAXI LABORATORY

HAS RECORDED MORE THAN 91,075 TRIPS

n public roads, robotaxis are becoming the GCC’s most visible experiment in physical AI. Abu Dhabi became the first city in the Middle East to begin commercial Level 4 fully driverless robotaxi operations in November 2025. Abu Dhabi Mobility says 69 autonomous vehicles are registered in its commercial fleet, which has recorded more than 91,075 trips. Space42 and e& UAE are meanwhile working on vehicle-toeverything technology allowing autonomous

vehicles to communicate with other cars, road infrastructure and pedestrians. “By combining Space42’s autonomous systems with e& UAE’s advanced networks, we can turn vehicles into more intelligent, connected and embodied agents that move safely through our cities,” said Hasan Al Hosani, CEO of Smart Solutions at Space42. Mercedes-Benz, Momenta and UAE mobility company Lumo are also developing an SAE Level 4 S-Class robotaxi programme for Abu Dhabi. Mercedes-Benz chief

technology officer Joerg Burzer said it would “raise the bar for automated mobility”. Dubai has moved further into commercialisation. Its robotaxi programme has logged more than four million kilometres and completed 7,613 passenger trips, according to the RTA, with 144 vehicles in the fleet in August. WeRide began fully driverless, farepaying operations through Uber in Jumeirah and Umm Suqeim on March 31. “Autonomous mobility is entering an exciting new phase in Dubai,” said Yousef Hussein, CEO Middle East & Levant at Jameel Motors, which is investing in vehicles for WeRide’s fleet. On August 20, Uber added Baidu’s fully driverless Apollo Go robotaxis to its Dubai platform, making the emirate the first market where Uber’s multipartner autonomous strategy went live on public roads.

A REGIONAL RACE

audi Arabia is moving in the same direction, although at a different stage. WeRide robotaxi rides have been available through Uber in Riyadh since October 2025, initially on dedicated routes with a vehicle operator on board. WeRide and Uber plan to deploy at least 1,200 robotaxis across Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Riyadh as soon as 2027. PIF-backed Lucid is another link between Saudi Arabia and the global autonomous-mobility race. Its robotaxi programme with Uber and Nuro is a strategic priority, with nearly 100 vehicles in testing in the US, while its AMP-2 factory in Saudi Arabia moves towards industrialisation. For the GCC, the opportunity is bigger than simply importing the latest robots. Regulation, connectivity, manufacturing and a willingness to test new technologies at city scale could allow the region to become an important laboratory for physical AI. The robots sprinting around Beijing show how quickly the hardware is improving. But the more important race will be won by the machines that can connect the cable, deliver the package or complete the journey — safely, repeatedly and cheaply enough to make themselves indispensable.

September 2026

WERIDE AND UBER PLAN TO DEPLOY AT LEAST

1,200 ROBOTAXIS ACROSS ABU DHABI, DUBAI AND RIYADH AS SOON AS 2027

gulfbusiness.com

DATA CENTRES

Getty Images

INTERVIEW

‘We want the kingdom to be one of the largest exporters of compute’: DataVolt CEO Rajit Nanda SAUDI ARABIA BUILT AN ECONOMY ON EXPORTING OIL. DATAVOLT’S CEO STATES THE NEXT EXPORT IS COMPUTE POWER, AND THAT THE KINGDOM’S REAL ADVANTAGE IS NOT ENERGY ALONE, BUT WHERE IT SITS ON THE MAP

ajit Nanda does not describe DataVolt as a data centre company, at least not first. He describes it as an energy company that arrived at data centres from the other direction. “We come from the world of energy and are gravitating towards the world of data centres,” says the CEO of the Saudi firm, now two and a half years old. 34

September 2026

“If you look into our name itself, it says it all: Data and Volt. Volt represents the energy part of it, and data represents the intelligence part of it.” That lineage matters. DataVolt sits within Vision Invest, the Saudi industrial holding group that incubated ACWA Power, the listed water re-use firm Miahona, and Saudi Tabreed, its district cooling joint

Supplied

BY NEESHA SALIAN

Rajit Nanda

gulfbusiness.com

WE BELIEVE THAT INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT, ESPECIALLY CRITICAL AND STRATEGIC INFRASTRUCTURE LIKE DATA CENTRES, WITHOUT TALENT DEVELOPMENT IS A BATTLE THAT IS DEAD ON ARRIVAL.”

venture with the UAE’s Tabreed. The group also holds interests in cargo and logistics and in LNG, in partnership with US energy private equity firm EIG and Aramco. By Nanda’s account, it has built around $120bn of greenfield infrastructure across energy, water and green hydrogen in roughly 15 countries over two decades. DataVolt was the conclusion the group reached about what comes next. “We all came together and realised that the future of the world is not just going to be energy and water from an infrastructure perspective, but it’s going to be the nexus of energy, water and intelligence. And what was underpinning intelligence was digital infrastructure.” The company positions itself across what Nanda calls the AI infrastructure layer of the stack, energy, conventional data centres, and compute infrastructure. “If you add all of them together as one vertical plane, that’s what is essentially the AI infrastructure.” SOLD OUT BEFORE COMPLETION

The current build is deliberately modest by the group’s standards: around 60MW, split between Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, with 48MW across two Saudi sites and 12MW in Tashkent. All of it – in phases – is due to be operational by the end of the year. Nanda calls these “our initial baby steps” and “market validation sizes”, though he concedes the point when pressed on the roughly $1bn involved. “It’s not small. Let’s put it that way.” More striking is the take-up. “As we speak, I’m very happy to share with you that all of our facilities are sold out,” he says. “We are just about a few megawatts of spare capacity out of the 60.” He is also careful to distinguish the commercial model from the rest of the gulfbusiness.com

infrastructure world. Airports, independent power producers and desalination plants are, in his framing, business-to-government propositions with a single offtaker, usually a utility or a state concession. Data centres are not. “The data centre business is slightly different. It is a B2B business, because your customers are enterprises or hyperscalers.” Around 70 per cent of DataVolt’s Saudi capacity is being used for AI workloads, Nanda says, with the balance for cloud. In Uzbekistan, the split is closer to even. The company is among the first operators in Central Asia and the GCC deploying liquid cooling at scale, which enables the highdensity racks AI training requires. MAKING A NEW ASSET CLASS BANKABLE

The development Nanda is keenest to discuss is not a building but a financing. DataVolt recently reached financial close on its Tashkent project with a syndicate of European development finance institutions, including the EBRD, France’s Proparco, Germany’s DEG and the OPEC Fund. “Single asset project financing has not happened in the world of data centres,” he says. “This is one of the first ones that is happening at scale.” The significance, he argues, is not the capital raised but the precedent set. Those institutions had to work through the risk allocation required to lend against a data centre as a standalone asset, the kind of structuring long established in power and water, and largely absent in digital infrastructure. “This financing is not a milestone for DataVolt. This financing is a milestone for the industry,” he says. “Whatever we do, we always realise that to be successful, you cannot be successful alone. You have to make the industry succeed. If the industry succeeds, by default, you will succeed.”

GREEN POWER AND A COOPERATIVE GRID

The Tashkent facility runs on renewable power around the clock, an arrangement Nanda says was reached with the grid rather than around it. “Our data centre, without any cost burden, is green. We have worked very closely with the grid in order to create a mechanism through which we are using some of the renewable plants in the grid, directly attached to our data centre and able to generate 24 by 7 green power. It’s a play of wind and solar. The solar runs during the daytime and the wind runs during the night.” Grid readiness is one of the sector’s most persistent bottlenecks, particularly in emerging markets. Nanda says Uzbekistan proved an exception. “We haven’t encountered any such challenge, to be very honest. We have found the regulatory regime and both the political will to be extremely supportive, friendly and progressive. A lot of what we have been able to do is because our creativity has been reciprocated.” The contrast, he suggests, is with markets where unconventional proposals die in process. “The issue in many of the countries is when you go with non cookie-cutter ideas, but with creative ideas, it just burns you out. It takes so much time to deal with the bureaucracy.” THE GEO-ECONOMICS ARGUMENT

The larger thesis concerns Saudi Arabia, and it rests on three legs. The first is energy. Nanda points to utility-scale green power produced in the kingdom at around two cents per kilowatt hour, a figure he claims is 30 to 40 per cent below Chinese equivalents. “And we know that China is legendary in the world for producing everything cheap.” The second is connectivity. “Saudi has over the last nine to 10 years invested heavily in terms of connectivity on the subsea cables. Today, 17 subsea cables land in the kingdom, and in the next two years those 17 are becoming 24.” Combined with terrestrial fibre, he argues, this is what makes compute exportable rather than merely local. And local demand, he is blunt, is beside the point. Saudi data centre capacity today sits at roughly 300MW and is expected to reach around 800MW by 2030 or 2031. September 2026

INTERVIEW

DATA CENTRES

“That’s not what is moving the needle for us. We are doing these AI factories to be the factories of the world, the compute factories of the world.” The third leg is the one he thinks the market overlooks entirely. “We hear about geopolitics, but no one talks about the geo-economics,” he says. “What I mean is the country’s strategic location vis-à-vis the world’s population.” From Saudi Arabia, he argues, roughly half the world’s population sits inside a 120-millisecond latency envelope: 1.4 billion people in Africa directly across the Red Sea, around two billion across South and Southeast Asia, 450 million in Europe, and a further 350 million reachable via Europe to the US. “So, wherever you need compute power which can be done within those 120 milliseconds of latency, that is your addressable market. And that’s half the world.” The ambition follows from the arithmetic. “Just as much as the kingdom is today one of the world’s largest exporters of oil, in the next eight, ten years we want the kingdom to be one of the largest exporters of compute.” The vehicle for that is the campus at NEOM’s Oxagon, which DataVolt is developing at 1.5GW. Nanda expects to break ground within roughly 12 weeks, with a first phase of a couple of hundred megawatts. TALENT BEFORE CONCRETE

Getty Images

Asked about localisation, Nanda’s answer is unusually emphatic. “We believe that infrastructure development, especially critical and strategic infrastructure like

September 2026

data centres, without talent development is a battle that is dead on arrival.” DataVolt began training before it began building. “One of the first things that we did after the formation of this company was that we did not invest in hard infrastructure,” he says. Working through the Energy & Water Academy, a vocational institute, the group had already used for its power business, DataVolt began putting young Saudis through a three-year programme that Nanda says is equivalent to an undergraduate degree, to qualify as certified data centre operators, with an even split between men and women. The same model is running in Uzbekistan, where the company has committed that all data centre operators will be Uzbek nationals by 2029. Demand for the places has outstripped anything the company modelled. For a data science and AI diploma launched about six weeks before the interview, DataVolt offered 100 seats and expected around 400 applications. Applicants had to hold an undergraduate degree and come from outside the kingdom’s major cities. “By day four, we closed the applications. We had 16,500 applications for 100 seats.” WHAT KEEPS HIM UP

Nanda divides risk into the controllable and the uncontrollable. Talent, he argues, belongs firmly in the first category. “If you invest in it, you can control it. The problem is that most business leaders run after the business and later find out that, oh, I forgot

WE HEAR ABOUT GEOPOLITICS, BUT NO ONE TALKS ABOUT THE GEOECONOMICS. WHAT I MEAN IS THE COUNTRY’S STRATEGIC LOCATION VIS-ÀVIS THE WORLD’S POPULATION.”

about the talent that needs to run this.” The uncontrollable one is silicon. “The only thing around which, from time to time, we have challenges in our mind, because of the geopolitics, is the access of the data centres to what we call the chips. Access to chips is not a slam dunk. It’s not a commodity that you can just go to the internet and order on one of these e-commerce platforms. It’s a highly regulated and controlled element.” For now, he says, the kingdom’s relationship with the US, where the advanced GPUs are made, works in its favour. That uncertainty is, in his telling, the defining condition of the industry. Unlike other sectors, he argues, the pace is set not only by technology but by geopolitics, and both are moving at once. “I go to bed thinking the world is in a particular shape every night, but when I wake up in the morning, I think I am born to another planet. That is the pace at which this industry is moving.” Ask him what makes it worth it and the answer returns to the cohorts, not the campuses. “When I meet these young boys and girls between the ages of 18 and 22, and I see the energy in them, the hunger in them, how they want to conquer the world on the back of artificial intelligence, how they want to contribute to the digital revolution. When you provide the means and tools to them, there is nothing more satisfying in your life.” gulfbusiness.com

SPACE

Supplied

INTERVIEW

How UAE is reshaping the space economy SPACE42’S KHALID AL AWADHI EXPLAINS HOW SOVEREIGN SATELLITE CAPABILITIES, SAR TECHNOLOGY AND AI-POWERED GEOSPATIAL INTELLIGENCE ARE STRENGTHENING THE UAE’S POSITION BY NEESHA SALIAN

s the geospatial intelligence market in the Gulf reaches $2bn annually and the global sector races toward $10bn by 2030, Khalid Al Awadhi, senior vice president of Earth Observation Systems at Space42, explains why sovereign capability in advanced satellite systems is the foundation of competitive advantage. Space42 is emerging as a global leader in earth observation. What gives the company an edge in this fast-developing domain?

Space42’s leadership in earth observation (EO) comes from decades of experience in deploying national space infrastructure and capabilities forming the UAE’s EO backbone and its modernised integrated architecture that combines sovereign manufacturing, advanced SAR sensing, and AI-powered gulfbusiness.com

analytics. While many organisations either produce data or analyse it, Space42 does both through assets it owns and operates in the UAE. In fact, we are delighted to have just announced that Foresight-3, Foresight-4, and Foresight-5 are now live, expanding our Foresight EO constellation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites. The UAE is one of the few countries in the world that owns and operates its own SAR constellation. This capability is underpinned by the latest generation SAR technology onboard our satellites and strengthens national sovereignty in EO, delivering all-weather, day-and-night imaging that continues producing data when optical systems cannot. At Space42, we then process this data through GIQ, our AI-powered geospatial intelligence platform, which converts our premium-quality satellite imagery into decision-grade outputs for governments

and enterprises. The result is a system that delivers data and follows through to the insight that drives rapid action. Space42 completed AIT for Foresight-3, -4, and -5 at the Space Systems facility in Abu Dhabi. What does this represent for the UAE in the global space value chain?

Completing the critical integration and testing of three advanced SAR satellites in Abu Dhabi for the first time last year, marks a significant advancement in the UAE’s position in the global space value chain. With the satellites now live, we are advancing the country’s evolution from a purchaser of space-based capabilities to a nation developing and operating advanced EO systems with growing technical expertise. Through our partnership with ICEYE, Space42’s engineers worked directly alongside specialists to understand and September 2026

THROUGH OUR PARTNERSHIP WITH ICEYE, SPACE42’S ENGINEERS WORKED DIRECTLY ALONGSIDE SPECIALISTS TO UNDERSTAND AND CONTINUALLY UPGRADE THE TECHNICAL STANDARDS AND QUALIFICATION PROCESSES REQUIRED TO PREPARE ADVANCED SAR SATELLITES FOR FLIGHT.”

continually upgrade the technical standards and qualification processes required to prepare advanced SAR satellites for flight. This direct exposure expands what teams deliver. Engineers with AIT experience identify where designs can be refined and where mission requirements can be extended. Beyond the satellites themselves, this milestone demonstrates the UAE’s ability to participate more fully in high-value segments of the space economy, combining advanced manufacturing, mission operations, and geospatial intelligence within a national capability base.

Why is the localisation of advanced satellite manufacturing and testing critical for long-term competitiveness?

How does SAR-based EO fit into your intelligence architecture?

SAR-based EO serves as the persistent sensing layer within Space42’s broader intelligence architecture. Our Foresight constellation delivers persistent wide-area monitoring, providing a continuous stream of geospatial data that the broader Space42 ecosystem depends on. That capability is complemented by high-altitude platform systems (HAPS) developed by Mira Aerospace, which provide more localised and responsive data collection over specific areas. GIQ then integrates inputs from SAR, HAPS, and third-party sources into a unified AI-powered geospatial intelligence platform. By correlating multiple data streams, the system can identify patterns, monitor change, and generate operational insight for government and enterprise users. Combined, space-based SAR imagery and near-space platforms create a layered intelligence architecture that combines scale, persistence, and agility.

Pic: Supplied

What are the strongest near-term use cases for SAR EO?

Global infrastructure and national security spending now top $12tn a year, creating assets whose performance and protection depend on geospatial visibility. In the Gulf, the SAR intelligence market is worth up 38

September 2026

geospatial intelligence systems are already demonstrating measurable impact: improving emergency response times by up to 90 per cent, reducing operational inefficiencies by up to 25 per cent, and lowering predictive maintenance costs by up to 30 per cent through persistent monitoring and AI-driven analysis.

Khalid Al Awadhi

to $2bn annually, part of a global sector expected to reach nearly $10bn by 2030. This growth shows that continuous, weather-independent monitoring has become essential. SAR’s near-term value is clearest in environments where uninterrupted situational awareness directly affects operational response. During the 2024 UAE floods, Space42’s EO and AI analytics delivered near-realtime visibility into affected areas despite challenging weather conditions. That enabled authorities to assess conditions more quickly, allocate resources efficiently, and improve coordination across response teams. SAR capabilities have proven and continue to be an essential complement to electro-optical systems that are bound by solar illumination and clear-sky conditions, particularly in monitoring and surveillance where operational continuity and national security relevance are critical. Beyond emergency applications, SAR is becoming increasingly important across national security, maritime domain awareness, environmental monitoring, and infrastructure assessment. In these operational environments, integrated

Sovereign AIT (assembly, integration, and testing) capability is the difference between participating in the space economy and shaping it. Developing in-country assembly, integration, and testing capabilities establishes technical authority within the UAE while strengthening long-term control over mission development, operational readiness, and technology roadmaps. For Space42, building this capability in Abu Dhabi has created a talent base that develops with each mission. The cumulative effect is a team whose judgment is grounded in real programme execution. Over time, that creates accelerated development cycles, a stronger national supply chain, and the specialised expertise that draws further programme responsibility to the UAE. With EO insights projected to generate more than $700bn in economic value by 2030, Space42 is building toward a position as a trusted global leader in geospatial intelligence, AI platforms and services. How is Space42 planning to expand its EO capabilities?

With Foresight-3, Foresight-4, and Foresight-5 now operational, following their November 2025 launch, Space42 has entered the next phase of scaling its EO capabilities. The expansion of the constellation strengthens our ability to deliver persistent monitoring across strategically important regions while increasing the volume and continuity of data available to customers. Looking ahead, our focus is on expanding sovereign geospatial intelligence capabilities that support decision-making. The next milestone is accelerating the collection and transformation of that data into operational intelligence, shortening the time between identifying the need for observation, acquiring the data and decision-making. gulfbusiness.com

INTERVIEW

DEFENCE

Pics: Supplied

EDGE’s Rodrigo Torres on scaling to the world’s top defence ranks

BY NEESHA SALIAN

THE PRESIDENT AND GROUP CFO ON EDGE’S EUROPEAN EXPANSION, ITS PARTNERSHIP-DRIVEN M&A, AND WHY HE THINKS THE ECONOMICS OF MODERN CONFLICT HAVE FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED gulfbusiness.com

Rodrigo Torres

September 2026

INTERVIEW

DEFENCE

n just over six years, EDGE has grown from a government drive to consolidate the UAE’s scattered defence firms into one of the world’s leading defence and technology groups, with around $5bn in revenue, a backlog exceeding $20bn and 18,000 people across more than 40 companies. Rodrigo Torres, who joined at its founding in 2019 after 21 years at General Electric, spoke about the group’s ambitions abroad, how it has grown so fast, and how warfare itself is being reshaped. How do you balance commercial

with international Q performance expansion and the country’s strategic priorities?

The government’s vision in 2019 was to aggregate the country’s defence companies to improve sovereign capability and avoid fragmentation. At the time, each was largely a single-product business, with varied origins, some born from offsets, others family-owned. Six years on, we’ve made significant progress on that consolidation, but we’ve also expanded abroad through 25 transactions, split between M&A and joint ventures. Our mandate has shifted from building domestic service capability

to driving international growth, and we’re now among the world’s leading defence companies and still growing fast. What does the revenue mix look like today?

Our intake is currently around 70 per cent international and 30 per cent local. Revenue takes longer to reflect that shift, since projects typically run three to five years from order to delivery. As a result, revenue today is still weighted more towards local at roughly 80-20, and we expect that to move to around 70-30 next year as international projects mature. How should investors read the size and quality of your international backlog?

It’s very healthy, and these are signed orders. In Angola, we’re building the navy almost from scratch, which includes three large vessels, drones and interceptors. We signed a strong contract to deliver nationwide surveillance programmes with several countries across Africa and South America, and in Brazil we’re supplying the weaponisation and missile capability for four new frigates. Just recently, we received an order from a NATO country for our

armoured vehicles. Our backlog was initially concentrated in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia; we’re now expanding into Europe as well. What’s the thinking behind the European push?

Our footprint already includes companies in Estonia, Switzerland, Poland, a recent acquisition in Italy and a joint venture in Spain. We used those capabilities to win orders outside NATO, and now the idea is to generate business inside NATO too, with a commercial base in Paris. Europe isn’t only pushing defence budgets towards 5 per cent. There’s also financing coming through Brussels. Even though our backlog there isn’t large yet, we believe we need to invest ahead of demand, so that the groundwork is already in place by the time orders materialise. How are you prioritising investment in AI, autonomous systems and advanced technologies?

We have a strong local team and benefit from the Abu Dhabi ecosystem, TII and the wider AI landscape, but we also look to Europe, Latin America and South Africa. Even with a large portfolio, we always concentrate investment on a few key areas: electronic warfare, communication systems, smart weapons, and autonomy. Our recent acquisition of AKAER in Brazil is a good example: it brings capability in designing supersonic and stealth aircraft, built around an engineering centre rather than manufacturing, which benefits the whole group. Defence spending has become a priority. How is EDGE capturing that while keeping financial discipline?

Pics: Supplied

We were roughly a billion-dollar company; we’re now five billion, and our international backlog has grown around 400 per cent from a standing start. We can’t outmatch decades of legacy competition alone, so we’ve done it through the right partnerships. In the last two years, joint ventures and M&A alone captured around $2.5bn of orders, roughly 10 per cent of our intake. That includes what we’ve done with Fincantieri and Leonardo in Italy, and Indra in Spain, making ourselves and our partners successful. 40

September 2026

gulfbusiness.com

WE WERE ROUGHLY A BILLION-DOLLAR COMPANY; WE’RE NOW FIVE BILLION, AND OUR INTERNATIONAL BACKLOG HAS GROWN AROUND 400 PER CENT FROM ZERO. WE CAN’T BOIL THE OCEAN AGAINST DECADES OF LEGACY COMPETITION, SO WE’VE DONE IT THROUGH THE RIGHT PARTNERSHIPS.”

not a short-term spike. The more pressing question is what kind of company EDGE becomes: a technology company with a strong defence portfolio, like Thales or Leonardo, or a defence contractor built primarily around military platforms, like Rheinmetall or Lockheed Martin. Third, and this is really an opportunity rather than a challenge, we’re deeply multicultural, with more than 95 nationalities, which brings huge richness in experience and background across the group. As a government-backed company with global ambitions, is it hard to stay aligned with national objectives?

Honestly, I don’t see it as a challenge, it only looks like one from outside. We operate as a commercial company, but every major defence peer also has national programmes at their core, Leonardo, Indra, Rheinmetall, Thales included. Having that national mandate doesn’t limit our global ambitions. If anything, it strengthens them, since many of our international contracts, including in Africa and the recent $7bn Indonesia announcement, are themselves governmentto-government agreements. Which markets matter most, and where is the industry heading? How is EDGE building supply-chain resilience while scaling globally?

With this many partnerships, how do you stay agile day to day?

Recent conflicts made clear that we cannot rely entirely on external sources, so we classify our supply chain by criticality. Class A covers the most critical subsystems, which we develop and manufacture domestically or within one of our companies abroad. Class B is important but less critical, so it becomes a make or buy decision based on the circumstances. Class C covers commodity items that any qualified supplier can provide.

Strong governance is a given, but we try to trust people. Having worked at a large global corporation before this, I saw checks and balances sometimes taken to an extreme. One example: in all our acquisitions, we’ve never replaced the founder as CEO, we keep them running the company, which creates the speed to decide quickly. Our chairman, Faisal Al Bannai, is a huge promoter of agility. When you become big you can become slow, and we work hard not to.

What are your priorities for the next three to five years?

Our ambition is to become a top 10 global player. That means growing significantly while keeping the mentality of a startup. Top 10 in scale, but agile in mindset, with strong partnerships and a solid global footprint. Ultimately, we want to be recognised as a technology company: big in reach, but agile in how we operate. gulfbusiness.com

What are the main challenges you’re tackling?

The biggest challenge is integration. We’re now more than 40 companies, and full integration isn’t there yet, the task ahead is bringing the group’s full horsepower together. Second, some see the current defence spending surge as a bubble. I don’t, and even if it is, it’s a 10-year one,

On backlog, Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia remain our core markets, with NATO becoming increasingly important going forward. We’re also looking closely at law enforcement, which in some countries rivals defence in scale. Brazil, for instance, has more than 350,000 police officers, and demand there is strong for surveillance and AI capabilities. As for where systems themselves are heading, the economics of warfare have shifted. An air-defence missile can cost $3m to intercept a $20,000 drone, a cost imbalance that isn’t sustainable at scale. That means the priority now is fielding large quantities of lower-cost systems that can be sustained over long, drawn-out conflicts. There’s also a major investment in connectivity, the ability to link all your forces together. Finally, decisionmaking is increasingly driven by AI, which holds a live picture of the adversary and allows far more informed decisions to be made, faster. September 2026

INTERVIEW

TECHNOLOGY

The AI-driven future of flash GHASSAN AZZI, SANDISK’S SALES DIRECTOR FOR THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA, DISCUSSES HOW AI IS RESHAPING STORAGE DEMAND, THE COMPANY’S REGIONAL STRATEGY AND THE TECHNOLOGIES IT IS DEVELOPING TO ADDRESS THE GROWING MEMORY AND CAPACITY REQUIREMENTS OF ITS CUSTOMERS BY NEESHA SALIAN

September 2026

sk Ghassan Azzi how business is, and he does not reach for nuance. “Since AI demand took off globally, storage has really developed — it’s exploded across the board,” says Sandisk’s sales director for the Middle East and Africa. The numbers give him room to talk. In the fourth quarter of its 2026 financial year, reported on August 5, Sandisk posted revenue of $8.97bn, up 372 per cent on a year earlier. Full-year revenue reached $20.25bn, up 175 per cent. The data centre was a major growth driver, with full-year revenue from the segment rising 437 per cent to $5.15bn, while fourth-quarter revenue more than doubled sequentially to $2.98bn. It is a striking milestone for a company that struck out on its own over a year ago. Sandisk separated from Western Digital in February 2025, becoming an independent, Nasdaq-listed pure-play flash business, and has since rebranded its internal NVMe SSDs previously sold under the WD_ BLACK and WD Blue labels as Sandisk Optimus. Azzi is unbothered by questions about the split. “Whatever you read in the news is what actually happened — two companies deciding to separate at the top level,” he says. “The company is very strong and still growing, and the results speak for themselves.” His job is to convert that momentum into sales on the ground, and his pitch rests on a simple chain of logic: people want quality, and quality eats storage. “They now have access to content from every YouTuber, every TikToker, every Instagram creator,” he says. “People are demanding more quality, and quality requires more storage, more capacity, more endurance.” AI, in his telling, only sharpens the need. A chatbot answering in three seconds is “analysing billions of data points and delivering instantly,” he says, and the devices carrying those features, phones, laptops, anything AI-enabled, need faster, higher-endurance memory to keep up. GAMERS, PHONES AND CAMERAS

The clearest demand, Azzi argues, comes from three consumer tribes. First, serious gamers, “not amateurs like me who play a couple of hours a month, but people sitting at a console or PC every day.” For them, Sandisk is rolling out its Optimus gulfbusiness.com

Pics: Supplied

WE COVER THE ENTIRE SPECTRUM, FROM THE SMALLEST USER TO THE VERY HIGH END, MUCH OF THE GROWTH IS COMING FROM PEOPLE WHO “STARTED ON THEIR PHONES, THEN TURNED IT INTO A PROFESSION” AND NOW NEED BROADCAST-GRADE KIT.”

internal-drive range across the region. Announced at CES 2026 to replace its WD_BLACK and WD Blue internal SSD branding, the family comprises Optimus for content creators, Optimus GX for gamers and the flagship Optimus GX PRO for developers, professionals and gamers building AI PCs, workstations and high-end PCs. The PCIe 5.0 Optimus GX PRO 8100 is rated for sequential read speeds of up to 14,900MB/s, with a Dashboard Gaming Mode designed to enhance drive performance for gaming workloads. “Gamers don’t want latency,” Azzi says. “Any fraction of a second matters to them.” The second group is everyone with a phone. Azzi says rising memory prices have led some manufacturers to limit storage in value models to protect price points, trimming a model “from 256 to 128, keeping a certain [average selling price] to meet most of the consumer’s purchasing power.” That, to him, is an opening rather than a threat. Sandisk’s Ultra Dual Drive offers additional external capacity for compatible phones “for far less than the cost of buying a new one”, while the newer Extreme Fit pushes the idea further: a USB-C drive offering up to 1TB, “so small you can barely tell it’s plugged into your phone.” It lets a handset offload files and free up storage, he says, and drops just as easily into a laptop, providing “an extra terabyte you’d never know was there.” For anyone shooting in 4K or 8K, “where you’re doubling your storage by the minute,” that headroom has to come from somewhere. The third group includes creators and photographers, and Sandisk has built an entire product line to follow them from capture to edit. A refreshed three-tier portable SSD range runs from a 1,000MB/s everyday drive up to the Extreme PRO, which hits read speeds of 4,000MB/s and, Sandisk says, can move 10 minutes of 12K footage in under a minute. Both Extreme gulfbusiness.com

SANDISK POSTED

REVENUE OF $8.97BN, UP 372 PER CENT ON A YEAR EARLIER

models ruggedised to an IP65 rating with three-metre drop protection and hardware encryption. A parallel Creator Series adds a MagSafe-mounted Creator Phone SSD that records Apple ProRes 4K video directly from a compatible handset, alongside desk drives scaling to 8TB and Extreme PRO SD cards built for continuous 6K and 8K capture. “New cameras are arriving with powerful processors and AI features,” Azzi says, “and our SD cards close that gap.” That breadth, he says, is the real moat. “We cover the entire spectrum, from the smallest user to the very high end,” he says, adding that much of the growth is coming from people who “started on their phones, then turned it into a profession” and now need broadcast-grade kit. It is also, he insists, why he refuses to compete on price alone: “Competition can be about pricing, but those details aren’t what matter most to us. What matters is the breadth of our range.”

THE PRICING QUESTION — AND THE CLOUD ONE

Pricing remains an important part of that growth story. Sandisk said roughly twothirds of its 51 per cent sequential revenue increase in the fourth quarter came from higher pricing, with about one-third coming from greater volumes. At the consumer level, Azzi says higher memory prices were leading some manufacturers to reduce storage capacity in value models to preserve their price points. Even so, Azzi remains unconvinced that cloud storage will reduce demand for local hardware. Cloud storage “has its limits and its costs,” he says, and cannot match the feel of local hardware: a gamer running off the cloud “won’t get the experience he has with an Optimus GX built into his console.” In emerging markets especially, he says, buyers still want their data physically close — “in the drawer where they sleep, next to their bed.” Behind the consumer shelf, Sandisk is pushing the same flash technology deeper into AI itself. Its BiCS10 TLC 3D NAND technology delivers a 59 per cent improvement in bit density over BiCS8, according to the company. Separately, Sandisk and Kioxia have unveiled a ninthgeneration 2Tb QLC 3D flash technology designed for AI infrastructure, with an interface speed of 4.8Gb/s, 33 per cent higher than their eighth-generation devices. Sandisk is also working with SK hynix and other industry participants to standardise high-bandwidth flash, or HBF, which is designed to combine high bandwidth with high capacity for AI inference systems. Across the Middle East and Africa, Azzi says Sandisk is widening its distribution and targeting the region’s growing communities of creators, gamers and developers. Azzi’s own formula is less about silicon than presence. The company’s edge, he says, comes from staying “on the ground, with our distributors and with the end user who actually buys the product.” For all the talk of AI infrastructure and next-generation flash, his regional task is more immediate: make increasingly complex products easy to understand, show consumers why more storage matters and ensure Sandisk is there when a phone, camera or gaming system runs out of room. September 2026

ENTERTAINMENT

Pics: Supplied

INTERVIEW

SEVEN’s SAR45bn plan for the Saudi night out SEVEN COO ESSAM AL JUBAIR ON BUILDING 14 DESTINATIONS, KEEPING SPENDING IN THE KINGDOM, AND WHY SUCCESS ISN’T MEASURED ON OPENING DAY BY NEESHA SALIAN

or decades, a family night out in most Saudi cities meant dinner and little else — anything more required a flight abroad. Public Investment Fund-owned SEVEN was built to change that, and this August it began to, opening its first destination in Abha on August 5 and a second in Tabuk eleven days later, with Riyadh next in a first wave that anchors an SAR45bn national programme and plans for 14 destinations across the kingdom. Here, chief operating officer Essam Al Jubair talks us through the openings, the economics, and why he insists a full car park on opening day matters far less than a destination that becomes part of people’s lives. What’s the timeline for

first destinations in Q SEVEN’s Riyadh, Tabuk and Abha?

SEVEN ABHA opened first, on August 5, 44

September 2026

in the Aseer region. It is an approximately 64,000-square-metre destination across eight themed zones, designed with Gensler to reflect Aseer’s stone-built heritage. It features Formula E karting alongside SEVEN-developed experiences including Kawaken, GolFi, Cyber Bowling and Scene Cinemas. SEVEN TABUK opened second, on August 16, bringing together Discovery Adventures and Hot Wheels E-Karting alongside homegrown concepts including Kawaken, Kawaken Junior, GolFi, Cyber Bowling and Scene Cinemas — a different mix suited to Tabuk’s own community in the north of the kingdom. Riyadh is next in our first wave. Every SEVEN destination is different and designed around its own city and community. While the quality and safety standards are the same everywhere, the experiences, design and atmosphere at each

location are shaped by the local culture — so no two destinations feel the same, even if they share some of the same attractions. What level of investment is being committed to these initial destinations, and which commercial targets will SEVEN use to measure their performance?

SEVEN’s national programme represents an investment of more than SAR45bn, of which more than SAR35bn in contracts has already been awarded. For SEVEN ABHA specifically, our ambition is to welcome more than 3.5 million visitors a year by 2030. That is the clearest public marker of success for our first destination, and the same discipline — sustained visitation and guest satisfaction over the long term — will apply as Riyadh, Tabuk and other destinations open. Rather than tracking short-term revenue figures, we measure success by what matters: how often guests choose to come back, how satisfied they are when they do, and the lasting value each destination creates for its community. For us, a full car park on opening day is far less meaningful than a destination that becomes a genuine part of people’s lives over the years that follow. How large is Saudi Arabia’s domestic entertainment opportunity, and what trends are shaping SEVEN’s strategy?

The opportunity is substantial and gulfbusiness.com

AT A NATIONAL LEVEL, SEVEN IS HELPING TO ESTABLISH SAUDI ARABIA AS A SERIOUS, LONG-TERM ENTERTAINMENT MARKET. FOR REGIONS LIKE ASEER, THAT MEANS BECOMING A GENUINE TOURISM AND LEISURE DESTINATION IN THEIR OWN RIGHT.” Essam Al Jubair

structural. Until recently, families in many Saudi cities had few entertainment options beyond dining out. Today, more than 60 per cent of the kingdom’s population is under the age of 35 — a young, urban demographic actively seeking world-class leisure closer to home, and that demand is what SEVEN was built to meet. We are also seeing a shift in how families choose to spend leisure time and budgets: toward experience-led, repeatable outings rather than one-off events, and toward destinations that serve multiple generations of the same family in a single visit. That is why our destinations combine global IP with homegrown Saudi concepts, dining and retail under one roof. Keeping that spending inside the kingdom, rather than families travelling abroad for equivalent experiences, is part of the opportunity, and it directly supports Vision 2030’s goals around economic diversification and quality of life. How will SEVEN maintain a consistent guest experience across the kingdom while adapting each destination to its local market, culture and audience?

Consistency and localisation operate on different layers of the business, and we are deliberate about not confusing the two. Safety, quality and operational standards are non-negotiable and identical everywhere: every attraction is delivered by established global manufacturers and partners, commissioned to international standards, and inspected through five defensive lines of inspection from design through to ongoing maintenance. We hold ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 certifications across our operations, and have deployed IBM Maximo as our gulfbusiness.com

enterprise asset management system to support that consistency at scale. Content and design are where we localise. More than 60 per cent of SEVEN’s experiences are locally inspired, and each destination’s design — from Abha’s stone-heritage-led architecture to the mix of global and homegrown attractions on offer — is shaped around its own city and community rather than replicated from a template. In practice, that means a guest should recognise the same standard of safety, service and quality at every SEVEN destination, while experiencing a genuinely different, locally rooted offering at each one. Beyond attracting visitors, what impact are the new destinations expected to have on the economy?

SEVEN’s impact goes well beyond the destinations themselves. On employment, the numbers speak for themselves. Our recruitment campaign across the first wave of destinations attracted more than 5,000 candidates, and today we stand at 71 per cent Saudisation, with around 50 per cent of leadership roles held by Saudi nationals and 27 per cent female representation — figures that exceed our own diversity targets. The training programmes we have built in partnership with HRDF, SEEMA and Qiddiya Investment Company go far beyond guest services. They cover safety, technical operations, attraction management and leadership development, building a generation of Saudi talent that will grow with the industry. Beyond our own workforce, each destination is designed to support local businesses and entrepreneurs, particularly across food and beverages and retail, extending the economic benefit beyond our

own walls into the surrounding community. We are deliberate about local procurement, sourcing from Saudi businesses wherever possible, because we believe the value of what we are building should be felt by the whole city, not just by those who walk through our doors. At a national level, SEVEN is helping to establish Saudi Arabia as a serious, long-term entertainment market. For regions such as Aseer, that can support their development as tourism and leisure destinations in their own right. For private-sector investors and global partners, it means a proven, investable market that is only getting started. And for Saudi families, it means world-class experiences at home — which is ultimately what Vision 2030’s quality-of-life ambitions are all about. How will the lessons from Riyadh, Tabuk and Abha influence SEVEN’s wider national rollout?

SEVEN’s ambition remains a national network of 14 destinations across the kingdom. Every decision we have made in bringing these first destinations to life — from how we recruit and train our people to how we design and localise each experience — has been made with the full programme in mind, not just the first two openings. Rather than racing to open as many destinations as possible, we have focused on getting the model right. We have invested deeply in market research, refined our operational standards, and built a workforce development programme with HRDF, SEEMA and Qiddiya Investment Company that goes far beyond basic training. It covers safety, technical operations, attraction management and leadership, and it is designed from the ground up to be repeatable at scale. That is the real legacy of Abha and Tabuk. Every lesson learned, every process refined, and every Saudi professional developed through this first wave becomes the foundation for what comes next. We expect each new destination to open stronger and faster than the last because we are better prepared. By the time our 14th destination opens, the industry infrastructure, the trained workforce, and the guest expectations we are building today will have transformed Saudi entertainment landscape in ways that go beyond anything a single opening can capture. September 2026

FINANCE

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INTERVIEW

IQ-EQ’s Pete Unwin on the new era of Gulf family wealth AS REGIONAL WEALTH PASSES BETWEEN GENERATIONS, FAMILY OFFICES ARE TRADING INFORMALITY FOR GOVERNANCE, DIVERSIFICATION AND PROFESSIONAL MANAGEMENT, SAYS THE HEAD OF PRIVATE WEALTH AND FAMILY OFFICE, MIDDLE EAST

BY NEESHA SALIAN

September 2026

or decades, the Gulf’s family wealth sat where the family business sat. Investments were held privately inside the conglomerate, decisions were made by the person who had built it, and the distinction between corporate capital and family capital was largely academic. That model is now being dismantled, not by crisis, but by success. Large liquidity events, more complex family structures and a globally educated younger generation are pushing families to separate their wealth gulfbusiness.com

SOMETIMES A MEDIATOR IS NEEDED BETWEEN THE WEALTH CREATOR WHO DOESN’T WANT TO GIVE UP CONTROL OF ANYTHING, WHO ALWAYS WANTS TO HAVE THE FINAL SAY, AND THE SECOND OR POSSIBLY EVEN THE THIRD GENERATION.”

from their businesses and manage it with institutional discipline. “We’ve seen that increase of sophistication, which I think has been driven by families having liquidity events – very significant liquidity events,” says Pete Unwin, head of Private Wealth and Family Office, Middle East at IQ-EQ, who has spent almost 12 years with the firm and two decades working in the region. “While in the past a regional family with a conglomerate would hold their private investments within the conglomerate, family wealth is now being demerged out of the family business.” That decoupling has created demand for something the family business never needed: a formal framework for deciding how capital is deployed, by whom, and against what mandate. “Together with the younger generation being highly educated and very motivated, we’re seeing heightened demand for governance, having things done correctly within both the business and the actual family office that’s been established,” Unwin says. In practice, that means hiring C-suite talent, including chief investment officers, chief executives, and building the architecture around them. “It’s looking at how the governance is being undertaken within the family office itself, the strategic asset allocation, the investment policy statement. All of those are key areas in building out governance, and are, in turn, increasing the sophistication,” he says.

Pic: Supplied

BUILDING INSTITUTIONAL DISCIPLINE

The direction of travel is global. Deloitte research puts the current single-family office universe at just over 8,000 worldwide, rising to around 10,700 by 2030, at which point the assets they manage are expected to exceed those of the global hedge fund industry. Scale of that order leaves little room for improvisation. “Families gulfbusiness.com

Pete Unwin

need the governance in place and the sophistication in place,” Unwin says. One structure gaining ground is the investment advisory committee, which allows families to bring genuinely disinterested perspectives into the room. Unwin points to Sally Tennant, founder of Acorn Capital Advisors, who has argued that independence is central to effective governance. “They are the truly independent ones. There’s no financial conflict, there’s no emotional loyalty. So, they can truly advise and act as that sounding board.” The cumulative effect, he says, is that family offices are starting to look and behave like the institutions they invest alongside. “This alignment with institutions is driving further professionalisation. It’s bringing in the disciplines that institutions have themselves and allowing family offices sometimes to use those institutions for their expertise.” MANAGING THE GENERATIONAL TRANSITION

The hardest part is rarely technical. It is persuading a wealth creator who has controlled every decision for 40 years to share control. “Sometimes a mediator is needed between the wealth creator who

doesn’t want to give up control of anything, who always wants to have the final say, and the second or possibly even the third generation,” Unwin says. The generation waiting is not short of credentials. “They’ve done their internships in the likes of Goldman Sachs, UBS, JP Morgan. So, they are financially sophisticated.” But succession, he states, is not a straightforward handover of authority. The more useful conversation is about where each family member can genuinely contribute, and where they cannot. “The younger generation is saying to their parents, ‘We can be involved, we would like to be involved’.” “Some of them want to be involved because it’s their passion and what they’re good at. Others are more actively involved in the family business because they’ve been away, they’ve done their MBA.” His advice to founders is deliberately unglamorous: “Help your children find those paths and speak to them about it.” Regional families are also on a different timeline from their European counterparts, where family office structures may be several decades old. Gulf families, by contrast, are early in that journey, and each generational step widens the base of the pyramid, as a single founder’s wealth comes to serve a far larger group with diverging risk appetites. Unwin sees an advantage in how regional families handle that. Where friction in Western families is often triggered by breakdowns in personal relationships, Gulf families tend to convene regularly and talk. “At this moment in time, there is more interaction, more mutual respect. And I think this will continue to become easier for them as they move through the generations.” No two families arrive at the same answer, he adds, which is precisely why the conversation matters more than the template. DIVERSIFYING INVESTMENT STRATEGIES

As governance matures, so does the portfolio. Unwin describes a clear move away from conventional discretionary mandates as families look for higher returns to support a widening beneficiary base.“There’s been a move, I would say, away from the traditional discretionary investment portfolios,” he says. September 2026

WHEN IT COMES TO SOME OF THOSE DIRECT PRIVATE EQUITY INVESTMENTS OR VENTURE CAPITAL INVESTMENTS, THEY MAY TAKE BOARD SEATS.”

“Because, again, next generation down, there are more mouths to feed per se. So, to do that, you have to look for some enhanced returns, perhaps accept some more risk within a disciplined approach.” That has pushed capital towards private equity, venture capital and digital assets and, in some cases, towards direct involvement rather than passive allocation. “When it comes to some of those direct private equity investments or venture capital investments, they may take board seats.” Those seats serve a dual purpose, giving younger family members operational experience while building a track record the founding generation can assess. “It will enable them to gain more experience but also will then prove to the older generation that they are becoming very capable of steering the family wealth through the generations.” STAYING DISCIPLINED THROUGH UNCERTAINTY

Against a volatile geopolitical backdrop, Unwin’s observation is that well-run family offices are notable for what they are not doing: reacting. “It’s the discipline of staying within those frameworks.” Strategic asset allocation, investment policy statements and advisory committees exist precisely for conditions like these. “While they may want to tweak strategic asset allocation to look at an opportunity, it’s remaining within that discipline framework. So, that’s the professionalism for them.” Infrastructure is one area families may weigh as regional opportunities develop, though Unwin resists prescribing an allocation. “Again, there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s a question of those families helping shape that strategic asset allocation with the professionals in the family office.” “I’m finding that families are looking at greater diversification as part of the professionalism within the family office. They don’t put all their eggs in one basket,” he adds. 48

September 2026

THE CROSS-BORDER PROBLEM

For families holding assets across multiple jurisdictions, the operational burden has grown considerably. Shifting international regulation, economic substance requirements and reporting regimes such as the Common Reporting Standard mean decisions must be demonstrably made in the right place, by the right people. That is where outsourcing earns its keep, Unwin says, handling the middle and back office so families can be confident their structures remain compliant, and, as he puts it, sleep well at night.

“The entrepreneurial sector, startups, venture capital, that will become an important play. The manufacturing and development within the region itself will drive a lot of future demand.” “The areas around technology, reporting, transparency – those are very key players for the future.” On ESG, he offers a corrective: much of what the international community treats as a recent framework is already embedded regionally through Sharia principles, and regional families have long been practising it. Complexity, though, cuts both ways. A family buying a hotel in France, another in New York and student accommodation across Asia and the UK, alongside a luxury asset portfolio, financial investments and philanthropy, needs a provider who can hold all of it together. The more complicated the world becomes, Unwin argues, the greater the opportunity for those equipped to navigate it.

COMMUNICATION IS KEY

Family constitutions and charters can help codify responsibilities, but Unwin is careful not to oversell them. “Having family members buy into a formalised constitution is important, I think, especially to understand the responsibilities they’ll have to the family, to society.” “But while everyone says it’s great to have a family constitution, it doesn’t work for all families.” The arithmetic explains why. A third generation of four can become a fourth generation of 50, spread across a wide age range and an even wider set of ambitions. “The key to that succession plan is communication – and bringing people in at the right time.” COMPLEXITY CREATES OPPORTUNITY

Looking ahead, Unwin expects the operating environment to get harder before it gets simpler, driven by regulation, taxation, entrepreneurship and technology. “I think it’s more complexity.” “Implementation of taxation, whether personal or corporate. Every country within the GCC has a different timeline around that. But there are two certainties in life, and one of those is taxes.” He also expects entrepreneurship and regional industrial capacity to become significant destinations for capital.

TRUST IN A DIGITAL WORLD

His principal concern is that families may come to see professional advice purely as a cost line, and let technology displace something it cannot replicate. “The concern for me is people will rely so much on technology that they’ll lose the personal contact.” “There are certain aspects of what we do that cannot be replicated by machines.” Responsiveness matters. “The ability to respond quickly and then adapt to families’ needs is critical,” but so is presence, says Unwin. “The personal contact, being able to shake somebody’s hand, look properly into their eyes and gain their trust, those are the key things that I think we still need to have.” THE UAE’S CONTINUED APPEAL

On whether the UAE will hold its position as a magnet for high-net-worth individuals, Unwin is unequivocal. “I think it will go from strength to strength.” “I think the regulatory and business environment that they’ve created will enable them to keep doing that.” As family offices mature, the objective is shifting. It is no longer simply about managing money well. It is about building structures durable enough to carry investment decisions, governance and succession across generations that have not yet arrived. gulfbusiness.com

SEPT

Lifestyle

A sense of place Relais & Châteaux is building its global presence around independent hospitality, distinctive destinations and a more sustainable approach to travel p.52

IWC MARKS 140 YEARS OF MERCEDES-BENZ

Pics: Supplied

GENESIS GV90: A NEW ELECTRIC FLAGSHIP Genesis has unveiled the GV90, its first full-size flagship electric SUV, offered in GV90 and GV90 Neolun variants. Built on its eMP platform, it features a 123.5kWh battery, with the seven-seat model offering an estimated 500km range and 10-80 per cent fast charging in 22 minutes. The Neolun introduces hidden B-pillar coach doors, while safety tech includes 12 airbags and what it calls the world’s first roof airbag.

gulfbusiness.com

IWC Schaffhausen is marking Mercedes-Benz’s 140th anniversary with a limited-edition Big Pilot’s Watch, restricted to 140 pieces. The watch introduces IWC’s Perpetual Calendar ProSet, allowing calendar adjustments both forward and backward through a single crown position. The 42mm stainless-steel watch features a black dial, gold appliqués and a double moon-phase display accurate to within one day over 1,040 years. IWC has partnered Mercedes-AMG since 2004 and its Formula One team since 2013.

September 2026

Lifestyle / Travel

SCENT-SATIONAL AND HOMEGROWN AT LOOTAH PERFUMES, THE EMIRATI HOUSE BUILT ON A GRANDMOTHER’S BUKHOOR, CHAIRMAN SULTAN ABDULLA IS BOTTLING THE DESERT AT NIGHT, THE COAST AT NOON, AND A FAMILY LEGACY NEARLY FOUR DECADES IN THE MAKING BY NEESHA SALIAN

he coffee has barely poured when Sultan Abdulla puts the question back to me. “What’s your mood — happy, sad? What’s your colour?” To the chairman of LOOTAH Perfumes, this is where any conversation about fragrance has to start, because a scent, in his telling, is never merely a product you spray. “Every perfume has a story that presents

September 2026

your character,” he says. “An evening scent is different from an early-morning one. Winter is different from summer. It’s an art, that’s the hardest thing to explain briefly.” The house he leads has been telling those stories since the 1950s, when his grandfather, Saleh Bin Nasser Bin Lootah, founded the house, trading pearls and perfumes across the Gulf and India. It

was his grandmother, though, who gave the brand its soul, evolving the family’s oriental blends and bukhoor, and, after trips to London, daring to fold French fragrance into Emirati oud. “That was the revolution,” he says. Having spent much of his childhood at her side, he speaks of her not as a grandmother but as a mother, and as his first teacher. “From the beginning she taught me never to compromise — always the best bukhoor.” The chairman is the generation that carried that inheritance into the present tense. The first LOOTAH boutique opened in 2012; today, the brand is a fixture of the UAE’s fragrance boom, sold with the deliberate ceremony of Emirati hospitality. “We don’t look at the people who come to us as customers,” he says. “We look at them as guests.” In the stores that means coffee, conversation, and being walked through a scent the way a host walks you through a home. Creation, in his telling, resembles painting more than chemistry. It starts with a mood board, “almost like a painting”, which he develops closely before handing it to a perfumer, then refines in collaboration. Inspiration keeps no schedule: sometimes the ideas pour out, sometimes four or five months pass in silence. Once a direction is set, a fragrance can take eight to twelve months to test and perfect. The reference points are unmistakably local. A brief to imagine the Emirates in winter conjured cold, dry air over the dunes; summer became the humid breeze off the Jumeirah coast, all citrus and turquoise light. A January night in Liwa, sand, dry wind, darkness, became a scent of its own. That instinct for balance is, he argues, the regional advantage. “The whole secret is in the mix,” the chairman says. Where many oriental fragrances stay static from first spray to last, LOOTAH’s are built to evolve, a discipline he compares, with evident pleasure, to cooking, and to the way spice shifts from one Indian region to the next. It runs through the home line too, a collection named Barjeel after the wind towers that once cooled desert houses, each scent keyed to a place: old Bastakiya, the spice market, mist settling over the city at dawn. For all the romance, he is briskly commercial about what comes next. Marketing, long an afterthought, is now “the main pillar”, pop-ups, exhibitions, and gulfbusiness.com

Pics: Supplied

Lifestyle / Fragrance

“An evening scent is different from an early-morning one. Winter is different from summer. It’s an art, that’s the hardest thing to explain briefly.”

Sultan Abdulla

an aggressive 2026 e-commerce push he calls “the gate to the international market.” Europe is a strategic target, Paris or London, with the US a harder prize kept firmly in view. As an Emirati house at global fairs, he admits, “we sometimes have to fight to find our place. Nothing comes easy.” He is candid, too, that homegrown brands have been underestimated, his own included, and that no one succeeds alone. “You need the right team behind you.” gulfbusiness.com

The momentum is real enough. Recent launches have arrived like clockwork hits: Velvet Dawn and Lava Oud last November, and Titan and Firebloom earlier this year. Titan, he says, is a particular point of pride. Sultan talks about his two sons the way he talks about his grandmother, as proof that the gift is inherited. “It’s in the DNA,” he says. “I hope they take it even further than I have.” By the end of the coffee, he is already somewhere else, turning over an idea for a new scent, wondering aloud how it might sit against musk. It is the reflex of a man who cannot stop composing, for whom every conversation is another mood board. “The imagination takes you to a different dimension,” he says. “That’s why we’re so emotional about our fragrances.” September 2026

Lifestyle / Hospitality

QUALITY OVER SCALE INDEPENDENT HOSPITALITY ASSOCIATION RELAIS & CHÂTEAUX IS EXPANDING SELECTIVELY, USING GASTRONOMY, CULTURAL HERITAGE AND MEASURABLE ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENTS TO DISTINGUISH ITSELF FROM THE BRANDED LUXURY GROUPS BY NEESHA SALIAN

resident Laurent Gardinier’s definition of a Relais & Châteaux property rarely begins with conventional markers of luxury. Across recent interviews, including this one with Gulf Business, and statements, the association’s president repeatedly returns to one idea: a sense of place. A property should taste, look and feel like exactly where it stands, and nowhere else. It is a philosophy with commercial weight. Relais & Châteaux occupies an unusual position in luxury hospitality: a global name that does not behave like a global chain. Its roughly 580 independently operated hotels and restaurants span 65 countries. Many are boutique or family-run, while

September 2026

the Paris-based not-for-profit association provides the common standards and strategic framework. Gardinier speaks from inside the model. Alongside his brothers, he co-owns Domaine Les Crayères in Champagne and Parisian restaurant Le Taillevent. He also spent 17 years on the association’s board before becoming president in January 2023. Rather than impose a house design or service script, Relais & Châteaux expects properties to express their location through architecture, food, craftsmanship and relationships with surrounding communities. “I am focused on three main areas: reducing our environmental footprint with economically realistic

WHAT THE KEY NUMBERS SHOW The latest figures suggest the model has commercial momentum. Relais & Châteaux members participating in its annual business survey reported combined revenue of EUR3.308bn in 2025, up 7 per cent from 2024. The survey covered 94 per cent of members. Accommodation generated 51 per cent of the total and food and beverage contributed 41 per cent, with spas and ancillary activities accounting for the remainder. The split makes gastronomy a structural part of the business rather than a supporting hotel amenity. The US was the association’s largest source market, accounting for 42 per cent of revenue generated by travellers staying at member properties. France followed with 11 per cent, Britain with 9 per cent and Germany with 5 per cent. “The results recorded in 2025 primarily reflect the commitments of members who bring singular properties to life, deeply rooted in their landscapes,” Gardinier said. “They underscore the relevance of a demanding model in which quality, authenticity, hospitality and gastronomy are the true drivers of performance and longterm attractiveness.” That demand for singularity is enforced at the door. Candidates that pass an initial assessment undergo anonymous inspections against a quality charter containing roughly 500 evaluation points. The review covers technical and emotional elements of the guest journey, as well as service, cuisine, hospitality and sustainability. Gardinier has said the association works with a pool of between 10 and 15 anonymous inspectors. Its network committee and board make the final decision. The association received 615 applications in 2025, up 14 per cent from 540 a year earlier, and welcomed 34 members during the year. Because applications and admissions may belong to different assessment periods, the figures should not be treated as a direct acceptance rate. Existing members also face continuing scrutiny. Under Gardinier, inspections have increased from once every three years to gulfbusiness.com

Pics: Supplied

solutions; preserving biodiversity, working in particular with our chefs; and enhancing respect for each of our employees and increased social responsibility; all while maintaining the financial health of our association,” Gardinier said when his appointment was announced.

once every two years, making membership an endorsement that must be maintained rather than a permanent award. DISTINCTIVE RATHER THAN STANDARDISED The 2026 intake demonstrates the preference for distinctive properties over a repeatable format. Nine members were announced in March, followed by another 10 in July. The July additions included Verride Palácio de Santa Catarina, an 18th-century palace in Lisbon; Hiiragiya, a Kyoto ryokan founded in 1818 and run by the same family for generations; Villa Florhof in Zurich; and Wilderness Reserve in Suffolk. The Nell New York, a 134-room hotel at Rockefeller Center, is expected to join when it opens in 2027. Quintonil in Mexico City also joined the collection. Led by chef Jorge Vallejo, the restaurant holds two Michelin stars and ranked third on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2025 list. Cuisine remains central to the association’s identity. About 15 per cent of its members are standalone restaurants. In 2025, 63 per cent of those responding to the business survey increased local and hyperlocal sourcing, while 41 per cent expanded their vegetarian and vegan choices. Half reported higher non-alcoholic drink sales and 77 per cent offered alcohol-free pairings. SUSTAINABILITY SHAPED LOCALLY The challenge is applying common environmental ambitions to properties as different as a Japanese ryokan, an African safari lodge and a Champagne estate. Gardinier describes the response as an ecosystem of best practices adapted to individual members

Laurent Gardinier

rather than one operating template for the entire collection. The association provides guidance on ethical sourcing, energy and water use, waste and lower-impact operations, while helping properties identify suitable regional suppliers. The strategy was formalised in 2024 through 12 commitments supported by UNESCO. They cover the preservation of hospitality and culinary traditions, biodiversity and social responsibility, with goals involving decarbonisation, water, energy, waste, plastics and local, seasonal food by 2040. “The partnership with UNESCO is a natural step for our Association to take,” Gardinier said. “Our objective is to support and encourage change, to continue to rethink our properties’ operational models so as to dovetail travel, a source of personal enrichmen, with environmental, social, and economic objectives.” In February, the partners announced four projects involving FYN Restaurant in South Africa, Maison Pic in France, Eleven Madison Park in New York and L’Effervescence in Japan. The initiatives cover indigenous ingredients, culinary heritage, food education, biodiversity and sustainable fishing and sourcing. They build on longer-running work including the association’s Food for Change collaboration with Slow Food, which began in 2016, and campaigns promoting sustainable seafood. THE MODEL IN PRACTICE India offers a useful test of how that strategy translates into an actual portfolio. The association’s official directory listed eight member addresses in the country: six places to stay and two standalone restaurants. They range from Kerala and Mumbai to Punjab, the Himalayas and Rajasthan, giving Relais & Châteaux a presence built around regional contrasts rather than a uniform hotel format. In Rajasthan, SUJÁN JAWAI places guests in

gulfbusiness.com

leopard country, with experiences shaped by the landscape, wildlife conservation and the culture of local Rabari communities. Near Ranthambore National Park, SUJÁN Sher Bagh evokes a 1920s safari camp, while The Serai, Jaisalmer occupies a 100-acre estate of indigenous desert scrub and draws its design cues from royal caravan sites. Farther south, The Malabar House is a 17-room heritage and art hotel in Fort Cochin. Its collection and cuisine reflect Kerala’s history as a meeting point between East and West. In Himachal Pradesh, the adults-only Sitara Himalaya sits 8,200 feet above the Kullu Valley and builds its experience around the mountain setting, nature and Indian spiritual traditions. Ran Baas The Palace in Patiala adds a royal Punjabi address, while Mumbai’s Masque and The Sarvato Jaipur extend the collection into destination dining. The breadth of the Indian collection helps explain its strategic fit: the country offers independent properties with strong regional identities, deep culinary traditions and nature-led experiences, precisely the qualities the association says it looks for, without requiring them to conform to a standardised expression of luxury. REGIONAL PRESENCE For a Gulf audience, the association’s limited regional footprint is conspicuous. As of August 12, its Middle East and Egypt directory showed five listings across Egypt, Lebanon and Israel. The gap raises an interesting strategic question. Much of the Gulf’s luxury growth has been driven by international brands, large resorts and master-planned destinations. Relais & Châteaux is looking for something different: independent properties rooted in their surroundings, with distinctive ownership, cuisine and cultural character. The association has not announced a GCC expansion target or timetable, so it would be premature to suggest that entry is imminent. But the region’s growing supply of heritage hotels, desert lodges and ownerled restaurants could eventually offer the type of candidates its model requires. For now, Relais & Châteaux is not asking its members to resemble one another. It is asking them to clear the same demanding quality threshold while remaining unmistakably of their place. Growth is the result, not the starting point. September 2026

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Shaima Sibtain

September 2026

gulfbusiness.com

Lifestyle / Fashion

LOVED AGAIN

INSIDE LUVED’S BID TO MAKE AI-POWERED LUXURY RESALE MAINSTREAM IN THE GULF PRELOVED LUXURY HAS SHED ITS STIGMA AND BECOME A STATUS SIGNAL. SHAIMA SIBTAIN, FOUNDER AND CEO OF LUVED, ON THE FRICTION SHE SET OUT TO REMOVE, WHY TRUST IS THE WHOLE PRODUCT, AND HOW AI AND CIRCULAR-FASHION POLICY ARE RESHAPING THE REGION’S SECONDARY MARKET

BY NEESHA SALIAN

few years ago, the question hanging over second-hand luxury in the Gulf was whether anyone would really buy a used bag. Today, Shaima Sibtain argues, that question has all but disappeared. “The stigma has genuinely broken,” she says. “Now it’s closer to a status signal than an embarrassment.” That shift in attitude is the backdrop against which she launched LUVED, a UAE-based resale platform that stitches together luxury resale, artificial intelligence and sustainability — and it is betting that the market’s biggest barrier was never demand, but friction. THE MISSING MIDDLE When Sibtain examined the region’s resale landscape, she found it split into two extremes. “Classifieds allow you to sell directly, but with no secure payment or delivery,” she says. “Consignment is safer, but you give up a large share of the margin.” What was missing, in her view, was the middle ground: a way for sellers to sell their own pieces while retaining secure payments, delivery and most of the item’s value. The sharper problem, though, sat on the buying side. “Sellers always find a way,” she says. “Buyers have to know where to look, scroll through endless chats, and judge who to trust. That friction, not lack of demand, is why preloved stayed niche.” Remove it — make listings easy to search and sellers easy

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to verify — and, in her view, resale stops being a workaround and becomes a genuine shopping channel. Consumer mindset has moved in her favour. Shoppers are more conscious of fast fashion’s environmental footprint, and the UAE’s multicultural population means that awareness arrives at different speeds and for different reasons, from occasion dressing to holding on to a piece for its story. “Building a place for those styles to be loved again is the point,” she says. TRUST AS THE PRODUCT For a marketplace dealing in high-value goods between strangers, credibility is not a feature but the foundation. “Trust is

the entire product,” Sibtain says. “If people don’t believe the transaction is safe, nothing else matters.” LUVED’s answer is a stack of safeguards layered across every transaction. Every seller must clear identity verification before listing — a governmentissued ID paired with a live selfie match — “so every seller is verified and accountable.” Payments are held in escrow until a transaction is confirmed complete, with disputes resolved before any funds are released. Authenticity is handled at the point of sale. Authentication is compulsory on every luxury handbag before a sale can go through, using AI-assisted checks, with an add-on option for jewellery, apparel and footwear; a 10 per cent buyer protection fee underwrites that guarantee. Behind it all runs active fraud detection that flags suspicious behaviour, escalating from a warning to a ban. The aim, she says, is to be “the UAE’s first choice for everything preloved and that only works if the community feels genuinely safe.” LISTING IN SECONDS If trust is what keeps buyers on the platform, automation is what Sibtain believes will bring sellers to it. She has built LUVED, she says, “to be ahead of” the AI shift “rather than reacting to it.” The clearest example is the listing process. What once took 10 to 15 minutes of photographing, describing and pricing an item is now down to seconds. “The September 2026

Lifestyle / Fashion

biggest thing standing between someone’s wardrobe and the resale market was never willingness,” she says. “It was friction.” The platform already uses AI for product listings and pricing suggestions, and recently added LUVBOT, an AI-powered assistant. She sees the technology reshaping discovery as much as selling. “AI is already changing how people search for and discover fashion, not just how they sell it,” she says. By her account, Google Trends data shows search interest in AI-powered shopping has risen by more than 2,000 per cent in under a year — “a step change, not a gradual curve.” That same shift, she expects, will define the next phase of resale, and her ambition is to drive that efficiency across the region’s secondary market “and eventually beyond it.” MEASURING WHAT ISN’T WASTED Sustainability is woven into the proposition through a My Impact dashboard that lets users track the environmental benefit of their transactions — though Sibtain is candid about the limits of the exercise. “We can’t calculate the exact impact of any single second-hand purchase,” she says. “There are too many unknowns: did it replace a new purchase, will it get worn, is the seller selling to fund something new?” Instead, LUVED offers a credible estimate of the water and CO2 embedded in producing a garment. Its “water not wasted” and “CO2 not wasted” 56

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metrics — built on Ellen MacArthur Foundation and WWF data — start from the premise that those resources are already spent, so a second life means none is wasted. “The point isn’t precision, it’s awareness,” she says. “Every item sold, bought or given away means we’re not wasting what’s already been produced — and the numbers behind that are genuinely large.” A MATURING MARKET Beyond attitudes, Sibtain sees structural forces pushing resale into the mainstream. Affordability is one: as luxury lifestyles in Gulf cities remain costly, preloved becomes

a rational choice for the aspirational-luxury customer who once bought new. Demand, too, has matured past bargain-hunting, with buyers chasing rarity, provenance and discontinued pieces in a more investmentminded way. “A well-kept Hermès holds value in a way a new bag doesn’t,” she says, noting that Chanel and Hermès dominate regional demand. The region’s slice of the global luxury resale market, she adds, is “meaningful and growing”. What comes next, in her reading, is livestream commerce, AI-driven authentication and digital product passports. Crucially, policy is moving in step: governments are beginning to treat circularity as infrastructure. She singles out the UAE’s Naseej initiative, which she describes as the country’s first national textile-circularity programme — one that “lends the category legitimacy no start-up could manufacture alone.” THE LONG VIEW For now, the priority is proximity to users — shipping features quickly, watching what people actually use and changing course fast. “This is the stage where the product gets shaped by real usage, not our assumptions,” she says. The longer arc is regional: once the UAE experience is right, Saudi Arabia is next, followed by the rest of the GCC. The goal, ultimately, is to keep LUVED at the front edge of fashion-tech, “so buying preloved never feels like the compromise option next to buying new,” she says. gulfbusiness.com

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Lifestyle / Gadgets

SMART TRAVEL COMPANIONS

CURATED BY NEESHA SALIAN

From noise-cancelling earbuds and luggage trackers to versatile laptops and portable storage, these smart travel companions tackle some of the less glamorous realities of life on the move, from long flights, road trips and misplaced bags to depleted batteries and makeshift workspaces

ACER ASPIRE SPIN 14 A practical option for travellers who need a laptop without carrying a second tablet. Its 360-degree hinge supports laptop, tent, display and tablet modes, while the 14-inch touchscreen and included stylus suit presentations and handwritten notes. Configurations offer up to 32GB of memory and 1TB of storage. www.acer.com

SOUNDCORE LIBERTY 5 PRO MAX Designed for travelling executives, these noise-cancelling earbuds pair clear calls with a smart case that records in-person meetings, interviews and lectures. The accompanying software transcribes the audio and produces AI summaries and action points. It cannot directly record online meetings, video calls or phone calls. www.soundcore.com

APPLE AIRTAG, SECOND GENERATION Apple’s updated tracker is a sensible addition to checked luggage, provided travellers understand that it cannot prevent bags from being lost. The second-generation model offers expanded Precision Finding and a speaker that is 50 per cent louder. It uses a replaceable CR2032 battery and carries an IP67 water- and dust-resistance rating. apple.com 58

September 2026

gulfbusiness.com

THERABODY SMARTGOGGLES, SECOND GENERATION These foldable goggles combine heat, compression massage and vibration around the eyes, brows and temples. They may appeal to long-haul passengers, frequent screen users and travellers looking to relax after a long journey. A blackout design blocks light, while the battery provides up to 180 minutes of use. www.therabody.ae

SAMSUNG GALAXY WATCH ULTRA2 Samsung’s outdoor watch is designed for trips that extend beyond airports and hotel gyms. Its titanium case, GPS, LTE connectivity, 10 ATM water resistance and EN13319 certification suit hiking, cycling and recreational diving. The 800mAh battery provides up to 60 hours with the always-on display enabled, according to Samsung. www.samsung.com

TWELVE SOUTH AIRFLY PRO 2 The AirFly Pro 2 connects wireless headphones to an aircraft’s 3.5mm entertainment socket, removing the need to use airline headphones. It can pair two sets of headphones for shared viewing and provides more than 25 hours of battery life. At 16.5g, it is small enough to remain in a passport wallet. www.twelvesouth.com

SONY ULT FIELD 5

Specifications and availability vary by model and market. Some products may not be available in the UAE at the time of publication

This is better suited to road trips, villas and beach stays than minimalist cabin baggage. Sony’s portable speaker offers approximately 25 hours of battery life, IP66 and IP67 protection, and a shoulder strap. It weighs about 3.3kg, so travellers should decide whether its powerful sound justifies the luggage space. www.sony.com

SANDISK EXTREME PORTABLE SSD For photographers, journalists and business travellers, this compact SSD provides portable storage for backing up photographs, video and documents while away. Its rugged design offers IP65 water- and dust-resistance and protection against drops of up to three metres. Available capacities and transfer speeds vary by model, so buyers should check the exact version. www.sandisk.com

gulfbusiness.com

September 2026

HOW A RELATIONSHIP JOKE BECAME DUBAI’S LATEST AI STARTUP IDEA WHAT BEGAN WITH AN UNUSUAL TEXT MESSAGE BETWEEN A HUSBAND AND WIFE HAS EVOLVED INTO A DUBAI-BASED AI STARTUP BETTING THAT TECHNOLOGY CAN HELP PEOPLE COMMUNICATE BETTER WHEN EMOTIONS MAKE FINDING THE RIGHT WORDS DIFFICULT BY NIDA SOHAIL

peculiar text message from her husband, a joke between two friends and a quick round of market research were enough to spark what could become an unconventional new business in Dubai’s growing AI ecosystem. For Zainab Imichi Alhassan, co-founder of Good Husband, the idea did not emerge from a corporate strategy session or months of technology development. It began with a message that, she says, sounded unlike her husband. She was with her best friend, Sarah Curtis, who is now her business partner, when the messages arrived. “I remember saying to her, ‘This isn’t normal!’ She laughed and said, ‘Maybe he’s using an AI bot to reply to you,’” Alhassan said. The two friends initially treated the exchange as a joke. But the conversation quickly led them to a broader business question: could AI help people communicate more effectively in their relationships? 60

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“That conversation was the moment Good Husband was born,” Alhassan said. FROM A JOKE TO A MARKET OPPORTUNITY The founders say the original exchange was not the result of a serious relationship dispute. Alhassan’s husband was simply pulling her leg. But the incident prompted the pair to investigate whether there was a wider consumer need. Their subsequent market research convinced them there was an opportunity. “It actually started as a light-hearted conversation between me and my husband,” Alhassan said. “But once we looked into it and did some market research, we realised there was a genuine gap in the market.” Good Husband is positioned as an AI-powered relationship assistant designed primarily for men who want to communicate thoughtfully but struggle to find the right words during emotionally charged situations.

The founders emphasise that the platform is not intended to replace communication between couples. Instead, it aims to help users articulate their intentions, navigate disagreements and approach difficult conversations more constructively. “We realised it wasn’t that men don’t care or don’t want to communicate,” Alhassan said. “It’s that many struggle in the moment.” BUILDING A STARTUP IN 24 HOURS The speed at which Good Husband moved from concept to business reflects the founders’ broader approach to entrepreneurship. Alhassan and Curtis are longtime friends and have previously built businesses together. Their established working relationship, she said, allowed them to move quickly once they believed the concept had potential. “We looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s actually build it,’” Alhassan said. The result was a live website within 24 hours. gulfbusiness.com

Pics: Supplied

GOOD HUSBAND

Lifestyle / Technology

Zainab Imichi Alhassan and Sarah Curtis

“Our vision is to evolve Good Husband into a dedicated app, and further down the line we’d love to integrate it into WhatsApp as a seamless chat assistant.” gulfbusiness.com

THREE PRICING TIERS AND A BIGGER VISION Good Husband currently offers a free version alongside two paid plans: Good Husband at $9 per month and Better Husband at $19 per month. The premium offering includes personalised reminders for birthdays and anniversaries, prompts for thoughtful gestures such as buying flowers or arranging a date night, and a Coaching Mode designed to provide more detailed guidance. For Curtis, however, the website represents only the beginning. “Our vision is to evolve Good Husband into a dedicated app, and further down the line we’d love to integrate it into WhatsApp as a seamless chat assistant,” she said. The ambition is to make the technology available at the moment users need it. “We think that’s where the real opportunity lies,” Curtis said, “being available in the moment, exactly when people need a little help finding the right words.” For Good Husband, that distinction may ultimately define its business proposition: not an artificial replacement for a partner, friend or counsellor, but a private digital sounding board designed to help users communicate when they need it most. And for a startup born from a single unusual text message, that is a surprisingly ambitious bet on the future of human communication. September 2026

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LEADERSHIP ON DEMAND THE FRACTIONAL C-SUITE RESHAPING THE GCC’S SMES HIRING A PERMANENT CFO OR COO IS EXPENSIVE AND SLOW — AND FOR MANY FAST-GROWING SMES, UNNECESSARY. RHYS HOLDING AND SAM LOYD, CO-FOUNDERS OF FRACTIONAL, ARGUE THE UAE IS READY FOR ON-DEMAND EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP TO BECOME MAINSTREAM BY NEESHA SALIAN

or a growing company, recruiting a permanent chief financial officer or chief operating officer can be costly, slow and, when the need is tied to a single challenge, unnecessary. Fractional leadership offers another route: experienced executives working part-time or on a project basis, bringing senior expertise without joining the payroll for good. Well established internationally, the model is now gaining momentum in the GCC as business

gulfbusiness.com

formation accelerates and senior talent relocates to the region. For Sam Loyd, co-founder of Fractional, several forces have converged at once. “The UAE and the wider GCC have hit a specific convergence point,” he says. “Business formation is increasing, especially SMEs that are growing at a rapid pace, right as on-demand leadership becomes the global norm rather than the exception. That’s not a trend; it’s a structural shift in how businesses want to engage senior talent and how talent wants to work.” Saudi Arabia’s

rise, he adds, gives the region “the scale of companies needed to support a genuine fractional ecosystem.” A parallel shift is under way among executives themselves, who are “relocating to the GCC for the lifestyle it offers and increasingly choosing fractional careers over full-time roles,” drawn by the flexibility to work across sectors rather than being confined to one. Co-founder Rhys Holding frames the company’s role as bringing “a proven solution to a market that hasn’t had access to it before”, a gap he knows firsthand, having built, run and sold an SME. The opportunity is sizeable: the UAE now has more than 1.4 million registered companies, with 250,000 added in 2025 alone, according to the UAE’s Ministry of Economy and Tourism. “Growth creates pressure. Leadership gaps appear. Costs climb. Founders find themselves making executive-level decisions without executivelevel support,” he says. Fractional’s answer September 2026

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FEATURE / SME

FEATURE / SME STORY

THE UAE NOW HAS MORE THAN

1.4

MILLION REGISTERED COMPANIES

FRACTIONAL HAS A VETTED COLLECTIVE OF MORE THAN 350 C-SUITE EXECUTIVES

BUSINESS FORMATION IS INCREASING, ESPECIALLY SMES THAT ARE GROWING AT A RAPID PACE, RIGHT AS ON-DEMAND LEADERSHIP BECOMES THE GLOBAL NORM RATHER THAN THE EXCEPTION. THAT’S NOT A TREND; IT’S A STRUCTURAL SHIFT IN HOW BUSINESSES WANT TO ENGAGE SENIOR TALENT AND HOW TALENT WANTS TO WORK.”

Pics: Supplied

THE COMPANY’S ROLE IS BRINGING “A PROVEN SOLUTION TO A MARKET THAT HASN’T HAD ACCESS TO IT BEFORE”

is a vetted collective of more than 350 C-suite executives, many with Fortune 500 experience, matched to each company by stage, sector and challenge, with the scope and commercial terms managed so “a founder can bring in exactly the seniority they need, for exactly as long as they need it.” The signals that a business needs that support are often practical: a funding round, a new market, cover for long-term leave. But the most telling signal is structural. “It’s when a founder becomes too pivotal to their own business, where every decision, big or small, has to pass through them,” Holding says. The costliest mistake, in his experience, is founders “believing they can do it all themselves, or that their own experience is enough for a challenge they haven’t faced before.” Fractional, he argues, gives them access to executives “who have already solved the exact problem a founder is facing for the first time”, and the flexibility to switch profiles as needs change, “without the complexity of letting someone go.” Loyd expects artificial intelligence to accelerate the shift. “We’d expect executive hiring to keep unbundling and be outcome-focused,” he says. “Businesses will stop asking ‘do we need a full-time hire?’ and start asking ‘what specific outcome do we need right now, and who has already delivered it?’” AI’s productivity gains, he adds, may soon let some fractional executives “provide full-time productivity but in a fractional capacity.” For the executives, the draw is 64

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Rhys Holding, co-founder of Fractional Dubai

variety: “You might work across adjacent industries in the same year, and that breadth of exposure over five years can be broader than five years inside a single company. That variety is exactly what keeps them engaged.” Because engagements are commercial rather than employment, success is defined up front. “Every engagement is backed by a proposal and a statement of work that sets out the deliverables,” Holding says. “If a CFO comes in to raise a funding round, the outcome is the round.” Deployment happens within weeks, and engagements scale up or down as priorities shift, so a company is “never carrying more leadership than it actually needs.” Demand, he notes, spans “a genuinely broad mix of sectors” and shows up “wherever a

Sam Loyd, co-founder of Fractional Dubai

business is scaling faster than its leadership bench,” with national priorities such as AI, food security and manufacturing among the strongest growth areas. For all their conviction, both founders are clear the model complements permanent hiring rather than replacing it. “There’s a point where a business, particularly as it scales into a larger enterprise, genuinely needs a full-time CFO or COO, and fractional isn’t in competition with that decision,” Holding says. “It’s what gets a business to the point where it can make that decision properly, with the right structure already in place.” The expectation, he adds, is that fractional leadership becomes “a mainstream part of workforce strategy, but as a complement to hiring, sitting alongside it rather than replacing it.” gulfbusiness.com

INTERVIEW / SME STORY

service providers could easily connect. That’s when I realised the problem was much bigger than selling one ultrasound machine. The entire healthcare sourcing process was fragmented. That’s when I contacted Iuliia Belokrinitskaia, whom I had met at a business club. She has a background in building digital products and scaling technology businesses. We started analysing the market together, and we quickly realised that healthcare companies needed much more than a marketplace for equipment — they needed a connected business ecosystem.

Supplied

Why does a multi-billion dollar healthcare market still run on WhatsApp groups and word of mouth?

WHEN AN UNSOLD ULTRASOUND MACHINE INSPIRED A BUSINESS BORIS SHLEYFER AND IULIIA BELOKRINITSKAIA COULDN’T SELL A USED ULTRASOUND MACHINE — AND DISCOVERED A MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR HEALTHCARE MARKET STILL RUNNING ON WHATSAPP GROUPS AND WORD OF MOUTH. THAT GAP BECAME MEDSAHRA, A DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM CONNECTING THE GCC’S HOSPITALS, CLINICS, DISTRIBUTORS AND SUPPLIERS

How does MedSahra function, and how do you distinguish yourself from other similar platforms?

BY NEESHA SALIAN

What made you think of starting a business in the healthcare sector?

The idea for MedSahra came from a real problem I experienced while managing Regale Clinic in Dubai. At one point, we needed to sell one of our ultrasound machines. My first thought was to contact the official distributor and ask if they would buy it back. They explained that they don’t purchase used equipment unless it’s part of a trade-in programme, where you exchange your old machine for a discount on a new one. But we didn’t need a new ultrasound gulfbusiness.com

One thing that has always fascinated me is how much business in the UAE still runs on relationships, recommendations and WhatsApp groups. In many ways, that’s actually a strength. Word of mouth is incredibly powerful here. At the same time, we live in the digital age. Businesses need speed, transparency and efficiency. I believe the next generation of digital platforms, powered by AI, will gradually replace many of these fragmented WhatsApp groups and manual processes. Just a few days after the platform launched, MedSahra welcomed a medical equipment manufacturer from China that had discovered the platform through an AI recommendation. It served as an early example of how AI is already influencing the way businesses identify new platforms, suppliers and commercial partners.

system — we simply wanted to sell the one we already had. I started looking for a marketplace where healthcare providers could buy and sell medical equipment. I searched online. To my surprise, I couldn’t find a single professional platform dedicated to this purpose in the GCC. Everything was scattered across WhatsApp groups, Telegram chats, personal contacts and word-of-mouth recommendations. There was no centralised, trusted marketplace where hospitals, clinics, distributors and

MedSahra is much more than a marketplace. We’ve built a comprehensive healthcare business ecosystem that brings together everything medical organisations need in one place. Whether you’re buying or selling medical equipment, looking for specialised services, launching a new clinic, expanding an existing business, or even selling a healthcare company, MedSahra connects you with the right solutions through a single platform. This is our biggest differentiator. Today, these services are fragmented across different platforms and offline networks, or simply don’t exist in a structured digital September 2026

INTERVIEW / SME STORY

How much money are healthcare businesses losing without a connected ecosystem?

format. Another major difference is the user experience. Many industry platforms feel outdated, complicated and difficult to navigate. That’s why we invested heavily in creating a modern, intuitive interface with a clean design that feels familiar from the first click. Our goal is to let users focus on growing their business — not on learning how to use the platform. How will businesses benefit from the platform?

Businesses don’t just need another marketplace — they need a faster and smarter way to grow. That’s exactly what MedSahra provides. For businesses, this means saving time, reducing costs and

THE FIRM’S GOAL IS TO LET USERS FOCUS ON GROWING THEIR BUSINESS — NOT ON LEARNING HOW TO USE THE PLATFORM

THE NEXT GENERATION OF DIGITAL PLATFORMS, POWERED BY AI, WILL GRADUALLY REPLACE MANY OF THESE FRAGMENTED WHATSAPP GROUPS AND MANUAL PROCESSES, THE FOUNDERS SAY

September 2026

Iuliia Belokrinitskaia, co-founder of MedSahra

gaining access to new opportunities. A medical equipment supplier can reach clinics across the GCC. A hospital can quickly find trusted service providers, logistics partners and other services. A clinic owner can connect with investors or list their business for sale. One of the biggest advantages is for international companies. Manufacturers and healthcare businesses outside the Middle East often find it difficult to enter the GCC market because they don’t know the right distributors, investors or local partners. MedSahra helps bridge that gap by giving them direct access to the region’s healthcare ecosystem.

ONE OF THE BIGGEST ADVANTAGES IS FOR INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES. MANUFACTURERS AND HEALTHCARE BUSINESSES OUTSIDE THE MIDDLE EAST OFTEN FIND IT DIFFICULT TO ENTER THE GCC MARKET BECAUSE THEY DON’T KNOW THE RIGHT DISTRIBUTORS, INVESTORS OR LOCAL PARTNERS. MEDSAHRA HELPS BRIDGE THAT GAP BY GIVING THEM DIRECT ACCESS TO THE REGION’S HEALTHCARE ECOSYSTEM.” gulfbusiness.com

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Boris Shleyfer, co-founder of MedSahra

It’s very difficult to translate this into an exact number, because the losses aren’t only financial — they’re also measured in time, missed opportunities and inefficient processes. Take our own example, when we decided to sell one of our ultrasound systems, finding the right buyer proved more challenging than expected. The issue was never the quality of the equipment, but the lack of an efficient marketplace to connect with qualified buyers. With MedSahra, the equipment can be listed on a dedicated B2B platform where healthcare organisations are actively searching for medical technology. Another example came while building MedSahra itself. We needed to register our trademark. We spent days searching through Google, contacting different companies and comparing offers, and unfortunately, we even fell victim to a fraudulent service provider who took our payment but never delivered the service. We then had to spend even more time finding a reliable company. All of this takes time, and time is money. Our goal is to eliminate that friction by bringing everything together in one trusted ecosystem. At the end of the day, MedSahra helps businesses spend less time searching, avoid costly mistakes and focus on what really matters — growing their business.

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