Situation Today

Visa, the global leader in digital payments, has unveiled its latest offering, a payment solution called “Instalments”, for cardholders in the UAE. This new feature allows Visa covered cardholders to split their purchases into smaller, equal payments at selected merchant checkouts, both online and in-stores.

“The demand for instalment payment solutions has been rapidly growing in the UAE,” said Dr Saeeda Jaffar, Visa’s Senior VP and Group Country Manager for GCC. “We believe that this innovative offering will address the evolving needs of consumers while driving digital transformation in the market.”

Dr Saeeda Jaffar speaks to Gulf Business in an exclusive conversation.

Keen to step outside the box and reimagine the expected, entrepreneur and AHS Properties CEO Abbas Sajwani is not just selling dream homes – he’s redefining the landscape of luxury living.

In conversation with Gulf Business, Sajwani speaks about the factors driving his latest real estate offering.

Making flying taxis affordable, efficient and scalable is the goal of an Austrian company called FlyNow.

The company has developed a 360 kg, electric Vertical Take Off & Landing (eVTOL) vehicle that is effectively an 'e-copter'. It has enough space to fit one passenger. Advancements in technology allow it to fly on autopilot, and it also has multiple battery and motor backups as well as flight plans submitted to relevant aviation authorities.

When in flight, it can travel up to 130 km/h, and up to 150 to 300 metres above the ground. The vehicles could help ease traditional on-the-ground car traffic, especially in cities such as Riyadh and Dubai, says the company's CEO, Jürgen Greil.

FlyNow has big goals to start setting up a 'sandbox' testing environment for the vehicles in the UAE and Saudi Arabia in 2025. At first, the pilot flights will carry cargo payloads of up to 200kg, says Greil. But the company is hoping to get off the ground with passenger tests soon thereafter. 

In terms of its business model, FlyNow is setting its sights on becoming a supplier of the vehicles while it could partner with companies that will help to build out ecosystems that will enable passengers to jump aboard these vehicles and potentially use it as a new form of mobility in years to come.

"If you don't know AI, you are going to fail," that's the prediction made by serial entrepreneur and billionaire businessman Mark Cuban during a television interview recently. Cuban is also famous as the one of the judges on Shark Tank, the business reality television show in the US. The trend espoused by the American businessman was on display in the UAE when the television show's UAE franchisee featured and awarded funding to Emirati entrepreneur Dr Abdulla Al Shimmari, founder and CEO of RestHero.i.

Dr Shimmari, has appeared on not one but two TV shows, and successfully raised funds from 'sharks'. He was awarded Dhs1.5m on Shark Tank UAE. Gulf Business caught up with him to know about his ventures, his experience pitching on TV, as well as technology trends that could shape the industry. Listen in. Or read an excerpt on GulfBusiness.com.

EFG Hermes, one of the top global financial services corporation, recently convened its 18th edition of the annual EFG Hermes One-on-One Conference. The event serves as a prime platform for investors worldwide to engage with companies from MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region.

On the sidelines of the forum, Gulf Business spoke to Hatem Alaa, deputy head of Research and head of consumer and healthcare. Alaa spoke about the key sectors poised for growth such as consumer-facing businesses, and he remains firm about the possibility of gradual interest rate cuts in the latter part of this year. Listen in.

Salam is a major telecommunications player in Saudi Arabia that is experiencing strong growth in both the fixed-line and mobile telecommunications space.

It has connected around 700,000 households to fixed line and fibre-to-the-home services over the years. In 2021, the company secured a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) licence and launched Salam Mobile to the market.

This has helped Salam become a full end-to-end telecoms provider as it is also pushing into the cloud market.

In this special podcast, Salam CEO Ahmed Al-Anqari gives us some insight into some of the 31 agreements that his company signed at LEAP 2024 to support Saudi Arabia's digital transformation agenda.

He also gives us some insight into how Salam is implementing AI into its contact centres and the company's plans to go public in the coming years.

In the past 18 months, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has exploded onto the world stage, with companies and individuals across the globe rapidly adopting the technology.

And for one of the world's biggest auditing and consulting firms, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), this technology has brought about a range of new opportunities — both from an internal perspective and in terms of their clients.

In this interview which took place at LEAP 2024, the chief technology officer of PwC Middle East, Ali Hosseini, explains more around how his company is approaching AI as well as helping other partners to drive the adoption of this technology.

The interview features Loubna Imenchal, head of Enterprise Business, for Africa, Middle East, Turkey and Central Asia region at Logitech, discussing her journey in the tech industry, challenges faced, and insights on women's empowerment. Despite lacking a technical background, Loubna's passion and resilience drove her to leadership roles, aiming to challenge gender norms.

She reflects on overcoming imposter syndrome and highlights the joy of mentoring aspiring women in technology. Furthermore, she explores the future of technology and Logitech's role in fostering inclusivity.

Loubna emphasises the importance of purpose-driven innovation and encourages aspiring professionals to prioritise kindness and empathy in their endeavors.

In this conversation with Gulf Business on International Women’s Day, Rakhee Raval Shepherd, Head of PR and Marketing at BlackLane UAE, delved into her journey as a woman leader in the services industry.

Rakhee discussed her professional trajectory, from her diverse marketing background to her pivotal role in launching Blacklane’s innovative chauffeur service in the UAE.

Notably, she highlighted Blacklane’s commitment to diversity, boasting a remarkable 50 per cent female chauffeur workforce. She candidly addressed the challenges of balancing motherhood and career, emphasising resilience and continuous growth. 

In this interview, Michelle Lee, the VP of Brand and Communication at Dubai Airports, shares her journey from New Zealand to Dubai, highlighting her passion for marketing and aviation. She emphasises the importance of balancing career and family, praising Dubai Airports’ support for women.

As far as technology events go, LEAP 2024 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is now one of the biggest technology showpieces in the world.

After the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and Mobile World Congress (MWC), LEAP is now the world's third biggest tech show in terms of square metres.

With well over 75,000 international registrations, the event is also becoming a magnet for visitors from across the globe. Last year, over 172,000 people attended LEAP 2024 with figures expected to far surpass that this year.

Getting a flight or hotel booking in Riyadh during this week has also been challenging, illustrating the success of LEAP 2024.

In this interview with the CEO of Tahaluf (the organisers of LEAP), Michael Champion gives us insight into what it takes to host and organise such a high-growth event.

Cloudflare is a company with a $32bn market capitalisation and it is a well-known global tech giant that specialises in cloud security and content delivery networks, which help to speed up the delivery web pages in your browser.

At LEAP 2024 in Riyadh, one of the interesting attendees at this year's event is Michelle Zatlyn, who is one of the co-founders of 14-year-old company.

In this interview, she highlights how Cloudflare now has 18 points of presence in the region. But because Cloudflare is able to gauge the heartbeat of the internet across the globe, she also says that the rate of internet growth in the Middle East was 20 per cent in Q4 last year, far higher than the global average of 5 per cent.

Take a listen to find out more about her take on the growth in the Middle East region and what is driving it.

Enterprise software firm Zoho has become behemoth of a technology company, expanding out of its base in India to the rest of the world.

In the space of 27 years, the company has grown to over 15,000 employees and over $1bn in revenue.

And at LEAP 2024 in Riyadh, the company's renowned CEO, Sridhar Vembu, also announced new data centres in Jeddah and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Interestingly, 83 per cent of its local team in the Kingdom consists of Saudi nationals.

In the interview, Vembu tells us more about why Zoho is ramping up its operations in Saudi Arabia now.

Patrycja Oselkowska, Deloitte’s Middle East Growth Leader, sat with Gulf Business at the LEAP 2024 tech conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
In this interview, she talks about Deloitte’s push into Neo Banks, generative AI and her company’s soon-to-be-opened Saudi Arabian regional office.

If you're old enough to remember BlackBerry phones, then you might have fond memories of the company's famous keypads and 'BBM' messenger. The Canadian company, though, went through a serious rough patch after Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone to the world back in 2007. As a phone brand, BlackBerry struggled to compete with the tidal wave of touchscreen phones that would flood the market, either from Apple or via vendors using Google's Android operating system.

Amid the dust having settled and BlackBerry facing near-bankruptcy at one point, the company has since reinvented itself and pivoted towards providing the likes of Mobile Device Management (MDM) systems as part of its renewed enterprise focus.

In this interview with Blackberry EMEA VP, Hans-Peter Bauer, we learn more about the company's latest journey as well as his take on the Middle East market.

Alat is a new Saudi Arabian, PIF-backed company which is aiming to create a new global sustainable technology manufacturing hub in the kingdom.

Semi-conductor veteran and ex-Singapore resident, Brian Rogove is the co-chief of corporate development at Alat. And in this podcast, Rogove tells us about Alat's $150m deal with Japanese tech investor, Softbank.

As part of the deal, robots are set to roll off the production floor in a year from now, says Rogove, who spoke to Gulf Business from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The whole world is trying to figure out a greener energy mix. But as Majid Jafar, the CEO of Crescent Petroleum points out, this can’t be achieved without fossil fuels and, more particularly, cleaner natural gas. In this exclusive interview with Gulf Business, Jafar unpacks why a pragmatic energy transition is the best way for the world to move forward.

Gulf Business' Group Editor, Gareth Van Zyl, speaks to Sri Lanka's President Ranil Wickremesinghe on the sidelines of the COP28 summit in Dubai. The wide-ranging discussion delves into the ongoing economic crisis and the looming climate crisis.

In an exclusive interview with Gulf Business, the CIO of Saxo Bank, Steen Jakobsen, tells us about some of the key risks facing the global economy in 2024. From potential rate cuts to clouds over Japan, Gulf Business Group Editor, Gareth van Zyl, asks Jakobsen a wide range of questions.