Photos and video: All the action from our Resilience in Motion roundtable
Senior business leaders gathered for Gulf Business’ Resilience in Motion roundtable on April 15 to assess the impact of regional tensions, share real-time responses, and explore why the UAE remains structurally positioned to weather another period of uncertainty.
16 April, 2026
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Against the backdrop of ongoing regional uncertainty, Gulf Business convened 15 senior executives and business leaders for its Resilience in Motion roundtable on April 15 in Dubai, bringing together voices from across sectors to assess the current landscape and chart a path forward.
The closed-door session took place at a time when businesses across the Middle East are navigating a wave of disruption, amid recent geopolitical tensions. Yet, as highlighted in an opening presentation by Gareth van Zyl, group editor of Gulf Business, the UAE’s long-term track record offers a compelling case for resilience.
Van Zyl pointed to the country’s consistent economic expansion over the past decades, underpinned by strong GDP growth and a steady climb into the ranks of the world’s leading economies. Today, the UAE stands firmly among the global “premier league” of nations, with one of the highest GDP per capita levels internationally — a reflection of both sustained investment and economic diversification.
Building on this context, the roundtable discussion was structured to move from immediate realities to future outlooks, creating a dynamic and practical exchange of perspectives among participants.
Photo gallery
Video highlights
The speakers included:
- Abhay Bhargava, Managing Director, Frost & Sullivan Middle East
- Alex Mather, AI and outsourcing consultant
- Amit Jhunjhunwala, Director & Chief Investment Officer, Nisus Finance
- Ansh Kataria, Relationship Manager, Elevate Wealth
- Aurélien Paradis, CEO, AU Group Middle East & Africa
- Capt. Pradeep Singh, Founder & Chairman, Karma Developers
- Elias Qarut, Managing Partner and CEO, Eyeconyx
- Mahmoud Ahmed Ismail, Head of Sales, Meraki Developers
- Navneet Mandhani, Founder & CEO, Karma Developers
- Rahul Singh, Managing Director, A.A. Almoosa Enterprises (Dollar & Thrifty)
- Reena Roy, Head of Human Resources, Middle East, Cognizant Technology Solutions
- Shailesh Dash, Founder and Mentor, Dash Venture Labs
- Sheldon W. Serrao, Senior Consultant, Talion Search
- Mohammed Aamir Siddiq CEO, Main Realty
Resilience in motion: Key takeaways from the latest Gulf Business roundtable
By Neesha Salian, Editor, Gulf Business
Forty-three days into a regional crisis that has reshaped trade flows, diluted investor sentiment and put acute pressure on sectors from tourism to real estate, Gulf Business gathered 14 senior leaders at the Media One Hotel in Dubai on April 15 to have a frank conversation about what is actually happening on the ground, and what comes next.
The participants, Abhay Bhargava, MD of Frost & Sullivan; Rahul Singh, MD of A.A. Almoosa Enterprises (Dollar and Thrifty); Alex Mather, co-founder of Same Day Suits; Mohammed Amir Siddique, founder and CEO of Main Realty; Ansh Kataria, relationship manager at Elevate Wealth; Reena Roy, head of Human Resources Middle East at Cognizant Technology Solutions; Amit Jhunjhunwala, director and CIO at Nisus Finance; Mahmoud Ahmed Ismail, head of Sales at Meraki Developers; Sheldon Serrao, founder of Talion Search; Navneet Mandhani, founder and CEO of Karma Developers; Captain Pradeep Singh, founder and chairman of Aethon Group and Karma Developers; Shailesh Dash, founder of Dash Venture Labs and Ascent Partners; Aurélien Paradis, CEO of AU Group Middle East and Africa; and Elias Qarut, managing partner and CEO of Eyeconyx, represented a cross-section of sectors from real estate and finance to technology, insurance and events.
Before opening the floor, VanZyl framed the conversation with four data points. The UAE’s GDP growth over four decades is, by any global standard, exceptional, a trajectory that has absorbed the 1990 Gulf War, the 2003 Iraq war, the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic without losing direction. GDP per capita stands at $51,000, placing the UAE alongside Canada. The debt-to-GDP ratio remains low, providing meaningful fiscal headroom. A fresh report from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales projected a GCC GDP contraction of approximately 0.5 per cent in 2026, followed by acceleration of more than 8 per cent in 2027.
“There’s not a structural crisis that we’re living through right now,” VanZyl said. “It’s a situational crisis. And once the situation passes, the UAE will be in a very good position to take off once again.”
Theme 1: The Reality Check — What Has Changed?
None of the participants were inclined to minimise what had happened to their businesses. Singh described the collapse in tourism with precision. Hotel occupancies at properties operated by A.A Almoosa Enterprises had fallen to single digits, 5 to 7 per cent. Mall footfalls were down 50 to 60 per cent. Across a fleet of approximately 50,000 vehicles, the short-term rental business had been severely hit, with relief packages from airports and major malls yet to materialise. “It’s the tourist impact,” he said.
In real estate, Siddique and Mandhani both described a market that had shifted sharply from seller to buyer territory.
“I would say that for the real estate industry, whether it’s a developer or a real estate broker, it’s becoming more of a buyer’s market now than ever. The shift for many that have been used to seeing launches happening on a regular basis, now it’s more keeping a hold on projects and basically having the holding power to be able to sustain the change in climate and return of investors. Dubai always rebounds, and those with the holding power to sustain will see a benefit in the near future, like 2027 or 2028,” Mandhani said.
For Paradis, whose firm specialises in credit insurance, the current period was technically good for business, uncertainty drives demand for protection, but the wider picture was more sobering. His clients insure trades. If the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, there is no trade to insure. “The world cannot forget us,” Paradis said. Twenty per cent of global energy flows through the strait. Ten per cent of aluminium consumed in Europe and the US originates in this region. “If Hormuz stays closed, you cannot build wheels, make cars, make planes. It’s impossible that it stays closed. That’s what helps me sleep.”
Several of the most experienced voices drew on previous cycles. Dash, who has operated across the Gulf for 26 years, had witnessed the IPO boom that followed the Iraq war in Kuwait between 2003 and 2007. “The architecture of the UAE today is far better than it was in Kuwait at that point in time,” he said. Captain Singh reinforced the infrastructure argument: the Fujairah pipeline and a second pipeline due in 2027 would together cover approximately 3.3 million of the UAE’s 3.5-million-barrel daily export capacity. DP World was already expanding operations at Khor Fakkan. “Hormuz is extremely important for the region as a whole. But it doesn’t kill us today,” he said.
Serrao flagged a notable shift in inbound talent appetite. The image of Dubai as a safe haven, highly effective since Covid-19, had been complicated. Interest from candidates in India, Jordan, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia had softened. “There is a lot of uncertainty and apprehension now,” he said.
Roy noted that the crisis was producing two distinct shifts inside her organisation. Locally embedded businesses were strengthening their technology infrastructure and cybersecurity in response to the uncertainty, but the talent picture was more complicated. “We may struggle to bring really skilled people in, and we are also seeing some people wanting to head out into other markets,” she said. “We have close to 700 people here in the Middle East and Pakistan. Employees are asking for more, related to their physical safety, related to what’s next for them. We have to respond faster, because they want to see that the company has a vision for the short term and the long term.”
Bhargava offered the most calibrated medium-term read. “Take a step back and look at what UAE, Saudi and Oman have been doing in the last seven years,” he said. “They’ve been building national visions centred on diversification. The part where I see a scale back is foreign direct investment into manufacturing. Companies sitting in another part of the world considering putting $10m or $100m into the Gulf, they are pausing. That could have a cascading effect on the inflow of people, and in turn on everything those people consume: food, automotive, luxury goods, real estate.” He expected FDI to soften for eight to twelve months, but argued the disruption would accelerate something more consequential, the shift from foreign capital dependency to local manufacturing capacity. “What would have happened in two and a half to three years will probably happen in the next three to six months,” he said.
Mather argued that the UAE’s emergence as the world’s first commercially operational 10-gigabit network society, with coverage reaching 80 per cent of the country by 2028, represented a structural advantage the room was underselling. “AI companies need to move large amounts of data faster than any other country can compete,” he said. “Commercially, we are years ahead of everybody else. Our data security means we are actually a lot stronger than we give ourselves credit for.”
Theme 2: What Are You Doing Differently?
The second theme drew out what participants had changed in their operations in the weeks since the crisis began. The responses were candid and practical.
Ismail described a deliberate shift in focus, away from sales activity and toward building the systems and team capability that had been deprioritised during the boom. “We’re running training sessions, developing our CRMs, building the narrative we’re going to hand to the market,” he said. “I know the market will recover anywhere between six to twelve months. What I am doing now is getting ready.”
Roy described a two-stage response: first, accounting for the physical safety of the team; then managing mental wellbeing and flexibility demands. Annual leave had been brought forward. Remote working options had been extended wherever compliance constraints permitted. “Physical safety and mental wellbeing have been the immediate response,” she said.
Paradis drew a sharp distinction between the options available to large multinationals and those available to SMEs. For a company like LVMH, the Middle East represents a fraction of global revenue, the losses are manageable. For an SME whose business is entirely within the GCC, the statement of cash flow has become the only financial document that matters. “You need to manage your cash very carefully. And when you restart, you have clients coming to you saying, I would like to work with you, but you need to offer me 60, 100, 120 days. How do you know if those businesses managed the storm properly?” That, he said, is precisely where credit insurance becomes a tool for recovery, not just protection.
Dash, who operates both as an investor through Dash Venture Labs and as a financial advisor through Ascent Partners, said the crisis had sharpened his focus on both fronts simultaneously. “As an investor, you have to be very close to your portfolio companies, be with the team much more than you used to, because things were going great on their own. As an advisor, all your clients today need working capital, one way or the other. If they don’t need it today, in three months they will. You can see that changing in real estate very fast. Everybody was planning for a bond issue, a bond listing. Those who have done it are sitting on cash. Those who were planning are going to have an issue. CFOs are calling. CEOs want to meet you. The key story is, you must be very close to your team and very close to your client. They need help today.”
Jhunjhunwala described a pivot to selective value investing, deploying capital only where fundamentals were intact and downside was demonstrably protected. “As private equity fund managers, our role is to protect the capital first,” he said.
Theme 3: Leadership Under Pressure
The third theme generated some of the most direct exchanges of the morning, as participants grappled with the human dimension of managing through a crisis.
Singh was frank about the pressure on people. Businesses that have seen their top line effectively disappear cannot simply hold the line indefinitely. His approach was to exhaust every alternative before touching headcount, advancing annual leave, eliminating overtime, cutting the operational fat that had accumulated during years of rapid growth. “This is a time, an opportunity in a crisis, to make systems and processes better,” he said.
Qarut distilled effective crisis leadership to three principles: empathy, creativity and flexibility. He was direct about the asymmetry between large corporations and SMEs. “Multinationals can skim off fat. An SME can only skim so much. After that, it’s either paying out of pocket or going out of business.” His prescription for managing the current period was to reduce the operational burn rate deliberately. “Put the business on a simmer, not a fry. Give it time. When it’s ready, just move forward.”
Captain Singh described the first days of the crisis as a war-room exercise: stress-testing cash flow, supply chain assumptions and default scenarios. “Are we okay for the next six months? Are we okay if supply stops, if construction doesn’t happen, if 20 per cent of people default?” The discipline, he argued, was to create buoyancy, finding new investors, new customers, new conversations, while keeping the existing team stable and purposeful. “You cannot become resilient just by deciding you want to be resilient from today. You learn from experience.”
Ismail framed leadership in a crisis around the obligation to project certainty. “Leaders must make the hard decisions as fast as possible. Don’t delay. Making the tough decisions faster is better than delaying the inevitable.” Mather added that this was also the moment to be deliberate about process, identifying what to automate, what to delegate and what to eliminate entirely, using AI and technology not as a future aspiration but as an immediate operational tool.
Theme 4: The Way Forward
The final theme was the one that generated the most energy. The consensus was not blind optimism but strategic conviction, grounded in experience and data rather than sentiment.
Bhargava anticipated a significant structural shift in how GCC capital is deployed. With FDI inflows softening, family businesses and sovereign entities would increasingly look outward, acquiring assets and revenue streams beyond the Gulf as a form of resilience. The localisation push that both UAE and Saudi governments had been building toward would accelerate. “What might have taken two and a half to three years will happen in the next three to six months,” he said.
Captain Singh reframed the question away from whether capital would leave and toward how new capital was being attracted. “The government is the enabler. The moment this is over, they will come out with so many new programmes. There will be new capital coming in. The question is not whether money goes out, we need to ask how we bring new money in.”
Qarut was the most direct. “The moment this war is over, you’re going to see concerts like you’ve never seen before. Tourism will come back. Hotels will be filled. Real estate for seasoned developers who haven’t crumbled under the pressure, they will reap the rewards of it. That I am one hundred per cent certain about.”
VanZyl closed the session by noting that public and private sector collaboration would be the natural subject of a future full-day summit. Several around the table agreed it was a conversation the room was already more than ready to have.
