Staff from Abu Dhabi-based start-ups have showcased their companies at the second Sushi Tech Tokyo conference held on Thursday.
About 12 start-ups debuted at the premier of the three-day event, which is expected to host more than 600 companies in the Japanese capital.
With more than 50,000 registered from around the world, businesses that work with a variety of industries, including architecture, food, health, finance, energy, sports, entertainment, space, web3 and generative AI, arrived at the event.
Emirati businesses among them, they had the chance to network with influential figures in the sector and exhibit their proposals on a global platform.
From Abu Dhabi, the Garcia group exhibited its solutions for smart and sustainable agriculture in the UAE, and the Rafiq App to facilitate maintenance and decoration services. Many of them came with the backing of the Khalifa Fund, a non-profit dedicated to supporting SMEs, and all with the goal of attracting more funding from global investors.
HyveGeo, a bio and climate technology company that turns waste such as date tree remains into a biochar that can transform dry desert sand into arable soil in one month, instead of five years naturally, needs funding to scale.
"The only way we can reach gigaton-scale removal and to green tens of thousands of hectares of desert for food security is to work with partners," said HyveGeo chief executive Abdulaziz Bin Redha.
With his start-up still at seed stage, Mr Bein Redha is looking to the event to carry his green-tech to the next level.
"We're developing patents and IP, and looking to license this globally," he said, seeking investment in the anti-desertification technology.
Wafa AL Ghallabi, a PhD student at the Mohammed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence and co-founder of Nutri-tech company Nutrigenics Care & Lawa.ai, has raised more than Dh200,000 ($54,450) for her platform that uses large language models to process more curated food health.
The chief executive of Abu Dhabi tech ecosystem Hub71 said it is not only UAE start-ups that benefit from the event.
"So you have more than 10 start-ups represented here at the pavilion, demonstrating their technologies, exploring opportunities for them to access Japan," said Ahmad Alwan. "But on the flip side, you see a number of Abu Dhabi entities here also presenting their offerings to the Japanese ecosystem, identifying great opportunities that we can import back into Abu Dhabi.
"It could be in the form of setting up, but it's really forming relationships, identifying, perhaps investment opportunities, corporate deal making opportunities and so forth," he added. "It's a two-way street."
Growing partnership
A wave of economic deals emerging from Abu Dhabi with global counterparts are helping the emirate and UAE nation to set up greater business exchange and investment.
This is deliberate, according to the chairman of the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development, as its part of its strategy.
"We're expanding our economic partnership agreements (EPAs) with a lot of countries around the world. We've already finalised, signed 27 and we're going ahead with signing further EPAs," said Ahmed Jasim Al Zaabi, chairman of the department and The Abu Dhabi Global Market, at an event panel called Towards the Development of a Global Ecosystem: The Challenges of Abu Dhabi and Tokyo.
"We are in discussion today with the UAE and Japan on an EPA, and hopefully before the end of the year that will be concluded. This will be a huge step towards our partnership," he said.
"We've been a very close part of Japan and we will continue to do so we've and that that helps connectivity for entrepreneurs.
"Our investments in Japan have more than doubled over the past five years, and our country attracted over 80 per cent of Japanese investments in the Middle East," he said
Yuriko Koike, governor of Tokyo, was also on the panel and reminisced about her first visit to the UAE.
"I visited Abu Dhabi at UAE in early 70s, can you imagine even before His Excellency was born," she said, garnering a reaction from the audience.
"It was very tiny village, living in fishery and producing pearls. Yeah, I remember the old days. But what a big development done in the last, say, 20 years. It's another country. It's really a miracle to develop such a wonderful village and such an international, competitive country," she said.
In a separate Tokyo event on the same day, called Business Connect, Mr Al Zaabi participated in the signing of a series of trade deals with Japanese companies.
"Our investments in Japan have more than doubled over the past five years, and our country attracted over 80 per cent of Japanese investments in the Middle East," he said in his opening address.
Mr Al Zaabi described UAE-Japan relations at the cusp of a new chapter, bolstered by the anticipated free-trade agreement expected to be finalised this year to increase trade and investment flow.
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Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
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Gender pay parity on track in the UAE
The UAE has a good record on gender pay parity, according to Mercer's Total Remuneration Study.
"In some of the lower levels of jobs women tend to be paid more than men, primarily because men are employed in blue collar jobs and women tend to be employed in white collar jobs which pay better," said Ted Raffoul, career products leader, Mena at Mercer. "I am yet to see a company in the UAE – particularly when you are looking at a blue chip multinationals or some of the bigger local companies – that actively discriminates when it comes to gender on pay."
Mr Raffoul said most gender issues are actually due to the cultural class, as the population is dominated by Asian and Arab cultures where men are generally expected to work and earn whereas women are meant to start a family.
"For that reason, we see a different gender gap. There are less women in senior roles because women tend to focus less on this but that’s not due to any companies having a policy penalising women for any reasons – it’s a cultural thing," he said.
As a result, Mr Raffoul said many companies in the UAE are coming up with benefit package programmes to help working mothers and the career development of women in general.
Like a Fading Shadow
Antonio Muñoz Molina
Translated from the Spanish by Camilo A. Ramirez
Tuskar Rock Press (pp. 310)
