Top 10 Emerging Leaders Shaping the Future of the UAE in 2026

The UAE has always rewarded those who jump on things early. In 2026, a new set of founders has taken notice of this and jumped on it. Some walked onto Shark Tank Dubai and left with a cheque. Others raised seed and Series A rounds that put Dubai and Abu Dhabi on the map for investors in London, Vienna and New York. They all have one thing in common: they want to solve problems that are specific to this part of the world, whether that is how rent gets paid, how pets are looked after when their owners travel, or why the Arab world has never produced a global character brand of its own.

Below are 10 of these leaders. They may not be billionaires or household names, but their stories have taken off over the past 18 months and there is more to come. Their work shows that the UAE’s future is being shaped as much in co-working spaces and cloud kitchens as in boardrooms.

Meet the founders who turned a pitch, a product or a problem into one of the UAE’s most talked-about ventures of the year.

1. Fadi Arab and Farah Merhy: Building the Arab World’s Own Collectible Brand

Fadi Arab and Farah Merhy started A22 in Dubai because they wanted to know why the Arab world had never produced a global character brand. So they created Dabubu, a collectible character with deep cultural roots. Since launching Dabubu to the public in December 2025, they have reached an organic audience of 43 million people. Their first drop sold out in two hours, and the brand has since branched out into confectionery, fashion and accessories.

On 12 October 2026, A22 appeared on the first episode of Shark Tank Dubai Season 4 on Dubai TV. The founders received offers from four Sharks and took Toufic Kreidieh’s, who invested AED 1.2 million for 20 percent of the company. A22 has trademarked its brand in the US and China, and a limited “Golden Drop” edition had a real 18K gold tag embedded in 10 of its 2,000 pieces.

Fadi Arab, A22’s CEO, sees Dabubu as a proof of concept rather than the end goal. The plan is to build a portfolio of Arab characters that can reach children the way global brands do everywhere else. With Shark Tank backing and early numbers most consumer brands would envy, A22 is one of the UAE’s most interesting bets on culture as an export.

2. Mostafa Khattab: Cutlery That Grows Into a Garden

Mostafa Khattab started Bloomspoon in Dubai in 2023 with a line of reusable cutlery you can plant. Each spoon and fork is made from wheat straw and carries a water-soluble capsule of basil or mint seeds, so when you are done with it, it becomes a herb pot instead of landfill. Bloomspoon says it is the first brand in the world to sell plantable cutlery, and it has been featured by Reuters, Forbes Middle East and Dubai One TV.

Khattab went on Season 3 of Shark Tank Dubai in May 2025 and received an offer from Toufic Kreidieh, Executive Chairman of BFL Group: AED 800,000 for 49 percent of the company. Bloomspoon will use the money to expand across the region, add more products, get into retail stores and become B Corp certified. For a business only a couple of years old, the attention showed that sustainability products made in the UAE can compete on design, not just good intentions.

Khattab says Bloomspoon is building a habit, not just selling a product. The next step is getting the cutlery into supermarkets and hotel chains around the Gulf, a good example of how one simple idea can grow into a sustainability brand when the founder keeps pushing on distribution.

3. Joey Chaaya: Cage-Free Care for the UAE’s Pets

Joey Chaaya is a Lebanese entrepreneur born in Dubai. He and his co-founder Kareem Costenoble started PetBae after first having the idea in 2019. PetBae is a marketplace where pet owners can find vetted sitters who look after pets in their own homes, cage-free. The platform launched publicly in the autumn of 2021, and by mid-2025 it had around 12,000 sitter sign-ups. Around 2,000 had been approved and roughly 1,000 were actively taking bookings, with a 65 percent retention rate and a 50 percent rebooking rate.

PetBae went on Shark Tank UAE and received what the company described as the highest offer of its episode. In a January 2026 interview with Gulf Business, Chaaya said organic traction and app downloads jumped across every channel after the show aired. The company earns a 20 percent commission on what sitters make plus a 5 percent service fee from pet owners, and its early capital came from the pet owners who used it.

PetBae now plans to add grooming and pet insurance, and to expand to Abu Dhabi and the wider GCC. Chaaya has often credited Dubai as the foundation of the business, and PetBae is a clear example of a marketplace that found its fit by solving a problem its founders lived themselves.

Joey Chaaya on LinkedIn

4. Purvi Munot: Making Financial Intelligence Everyone’s Infrastructure

Purvi Munot started Sav in 2022 with Mithil Ajmera. In September 2026 the UAE fintech raised a USD 3.5 million pre-Series A round led by Phoenix Venture Partners, bringing its total funding to around USD 6 million. Sav lets users see all their accounts, savings, investments, credit and payments on one platform, powered by its own AI layer, SavCore.

Sav operates under a DFSA Category 4 licence and makes money from interchange, wealth fees, commerce commissions and subscriptions. With the new money it plans to grow in Saudi Arabia, keep building its AI and win more users. Many have tried and failed to build a lasting business model in this space; Sav’s answer is to earn from several streams while making everyday money management genuinely useful.

Munot sums up the mission in one line: financial intelligence should not be a privilege for the few, but infrastructure for everyone. With personal finance tools in the region still catching up with payments, Sav is one to watch heading into 2027.

5. Shubham Poddar: Arab Ingredients, Global Standards

After leaving Sequoia Capital India, Shubham Poddar decided to start his own beauty brand. He launched AÏZA in December 2024 through his Dubai company, Amaani. The brand builds its skincare and haircare around ingredients with deep roots in the region, such as dates, black seed, frankincense, rose and bakhoor, developed with labs in Korea, Japan and Italy. The pitch is simple: Arab heritage, world-class formulation.

The brand has grown fast. Net revenue rose more than nine times year on year in the first half of 2026, and on 29 September 2026 Amaani announced a USD 5 million Series A led by BECO Capital, with Homegrown Ventures and Peak XV’s Surge taking part. That brings its total funding to USD 8 million. AÏZA has also moved from online into physical stores, starting with Ulta Beauty in Jeddah and Riyadh at the end of September, with Kuwait and Qatar planned for the fourth quarter.

Poddar says the funding will help AÏZA build on what it has created in the UAE and expand across the GCC. Coming from an investing background, he has turned a view on regional consumer demand into a brand that competes with global names on their own shelves.

6. Omar Abu Innab: Paying Rent the Way Salaries Arrive

Omar Abu Innab and Walid Al Saqqaf started Keyper in 2022 to fix one of the biggest pain points of UAE life: paying the landlord with a yearly cheque. Keyper lets tenants pay rent monthly while the landlord receives the full amount upfront. To make this work at scale, it has partnered with the Dubai Land Department, ADRES, Property Finder, Visa and Mashreq.

On 9 July 2026, Keyper announced a USD 11 million Series A round led by Speedinvest, with NeoVentures (Mashreq), MEVP, Dubai Future District Fund, Property Finder, Arab National Bank, Ellington and Dar Ventures also investing. The platform now supports more than 10,500 properties worth over USD 6 billion, works with around 4,000 landlords and has passed 100,000 app downloads. It has financed more than USD 44 million in rent, USD 19 million of it in 2026 alone.

Abu Innab says the goal is a fully digital renting journey for landlords and tenants alike. By building financing into a payment millions of residents make every year, Keyper could change how people rent, not just digitise the paperwork.

7. Sanjar Samiev: Giving SMEs the Payment Terms They Deserve

Sanjar Samiev founded Comfi in 2023 after seeing first-hand how much damage slow payments do to small businesses. Based in the UAE, Comfi offers B2B buy-now-pay-later: suppliers can give their customers up to 90 days to pay and still receive the money within 24 hours. Since launch, it has processed more than 15,000 invoices for over 1,000 clients and brought more than 4,000 finance leaders onto the platform.

In April 2026, Comfi announced a USD 65 million pre-Series A round made up of equity and debt. Iliad Partners led the equity, with Yango Ventures and Raw Ventures taking part, while Partners for Growth provided a credit facility and Shorooq provided mezzanine financing. It follows a USD 5 million debt facility in June 2024 and gives Comfi the balance sheet to expand across MENA.

Samiev has built Comfi with co-founders Alisher Akbarov and Amal Abdullaev. Its growth reflects a wider shift in Gulf fintech, away from consumer payments and towards the less glamorous plumbing of business-to-business trade, which matters a great deal to SMEs caught between slow-paying buyers and impatient suppliers.

8. Pravin Rai: Ambition Measured in Hours, Not Days

Pravin Rai started QuicKart, a UAE fresh-commerce company that specialises in dairy and other perishables, delivered from farm to home. In February 2026 it raised USD 1.5 million in seed funding led by Orbit Ventures, with regional family offices and angel investors joining. The money will go into building its own fulfilment network and refrigerated fleet.

QuicKart currently has hubs in Dubai, Sharjah and Ajman, with plans to open in Abu Dhabi. Unlike general quick-commerce companies, it focuses only on goods that spoil fastest, where a few hours’ delay can ruin both quality and margin. By owning its cold chain rather than renting it, the company aims to control the one thing that matters most in fresh food.

Rai sums up the business in one line: its ambition is measured in hours, not days. It is still an early-stage company, but it speaks to the UAE’s food security goals and to shoppers who increasingly want fresh produce on their own schedule.

9. Torkia Mahloul: Timely Care for Women’s Health

Torkia Mahloul founded Ovasave with Majd Abu Zant. The company offers fertility and hormonal health services, from at-home tests and consultations to menopause care. Ovasave is a Hub71-incubated company based in Abu Dhabi and is registered with the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi. In a “Fertility Your Way” campaign with Merck Gulf, it offered free screening to more than 500 women.

Ovasave raised USD 1.2 million in pre-seed funding in July 2025, led by PlusVC, Annex Investments and New York-based 25 Madison, with UAE and Saudi angel investors and family offices also taking part. It partners with companies such as Aldar, BCG and WeWork to offer its services as an employee benefit, and says it has supported more than 10,000 women and couples. In October 2026, Entrepreneur Middle East named it a Future 100 winner.

Mahloul argues that women’s health needs timely action, especially around fertility. As Ovasave expands into Saudi Arabia, it is one of the Gulf’s most visible efforts to make that kind of care routine rather than the exception.

10. Osama Shawky: Rethinking the Extended Stay

Osama Shawky has founded six startups and had three successful exits. Before starting estaie, he led commercial teams at Orange Business and Concentrix. Estaie is a Dubai proptech for extended stays, filling the gap between short holiday rentals and annual leases for professionals and relocating families who need a furnished home for weeks or months rather than nights or years.

Estaie raised a seven-figure pre-seed round in April 2026, led by PlusVC and Orbit Ventures. The money will help it grow its inventory and technology across the UAE, where a steady flow of people moving in for work has made mid-term housing one of the fastest-growing parts of the property market.

As a serial founder, Shawky brings an operator’s instinct that many early-stage proptechs lack. His bet is that the extended stay will become a category of its own, and that the UAE is the right place to prove it.

Conclusion

None of these ten founders inherited their platforms. They built them from a product, a pitch or a problem they could not ignore, and over the past 18 months the market noticed. Shark Tank Dubai has given consumer brands like A22, Bloomspoon and PetBae a national stage, while investors from Vienna to New York have put real money behind UAE fintech, proptech, beauty and femtech. As 2027 approaches, they show that the country’s future is being shaped by people who are still early in their journeys, and who are moving at the speed the UAE has always rewarded.