Many SMEs in the UAE face delays between issuing invoices and receiving payments, which can stall growth and limit the ability to seize business opportunities, a financing issue Numou and ABHI aim to solve.
Numou, Abu Dhabi Global Market’s SME growth platform, has partnered with ABHI, a regional neobank, to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing small and medium enterprises: timely access to working capital.
Through this collaboration, Numou will integrate ABHI’s digital lending infrastructure, enabling faster credit assessments and loan disbursements. SMEs on the platform will gain quicker, more flexible, and transparent access to working capital, bridging the liquidity gap and supporting uninterrupted business operations.
Numou’s General Manager, Mohamed Al Binali, explained that the partnership is designed to directly address the persistent financing delays that hinder SME growth, strengthening efforts to build a more inclusive and resilient SME ecosystem across the UAE and beyond.
Omair Ansari, Co-founder and CEO of Abhi, added that the collaboration reflects a commitment to removing barriers to finance. By embedding Abhi’s digital lending tools into Numou’s ecosystem, the partnership reimagines SME access to capital, making it faster, more transparent, and more inclusive, and enabling entrepreneurs to transform opportunities into growth.
According to the IMF, in 2023 SMEs made up 94% of companies in the UAE (or 63% of non‑oil GDP), but they still face credit access challenges. Another IMF report found that UAE SMEs receive only 6.6% of business loans, compared to the OECD average of ~45%. More broadly in the GCC, the SME financing gap is estimated at $250 billion.
