India's AI company Signzy partners with Dubai's Seed Group to enter UAE

Signzy, an Indian artificial intelligence start-up specialising in banking workflow automation, has partnered with Dubai-based investment company Seed Group to enter the UAE market and expand its operations in the wider Middle East.

The agreement intends to accelerate the “digital transformation of businesses across the UAE” and bring innovative AI technologies in the region, the two companies said.

“The UAE is taking giant strides to meet the objectives of the UAE Digital Government Strategy 2025 and double the size of the digital economy in the next 10 years. Businesses are going through a phenomenal digital transformation and are on a lookout to adopt affordable smart technologies,” Hisham Al Gurg, chief executive of Seed Group, said.

“Having Signzy as our strategic partner will give the country’s digitisation agenda the much-needed push … We see a huge potential for their services in the UAE and the Middle East."

The Middle East is expected to accrue 2 per cent of the total global benefits of AI in 2030 that will be equivalent to $320 billion, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the Big Four accounting firms.

The annual growth in the contribution of AI is expected to range between 20 per cent and 34 per cent across the region, with the fastest growth in the UAE followed by Saudi Arabia – the Arab world’s biggest economy.

Seed Group, a company of the Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum, acts as a springboard for global start-ups that are willing to expand into Dubai and the wider Middle East. It has invested in diverse sectors such as technology, cyber security, health care, FinTech, tourism and hospitality.

“Businesses, especially banks, financial institutions and FinTechs across the UAE and the Middle East are doubling efforts to digitise and automate services to build a robust digital financial infrastructure that improves access, transparency and speed of delivery,” Ankit Ratan, co-founder and chief executive of Signzy, said.

“Seed Group brings a wealth of experience and regional access … which will power us to rapidly grow [our] market share,” Mr Ratan said.

Founded in 2015, Signzy aims to triple its growth in the region by the end of fiscal year 2022. In December, it raised an additional $3 million in an ongoing funding, taking the total fund raised in the series A round to $8.4m.

The company, which is based in the southern city of Bengaluru, works with more than 100 financial institutions, including the four largest banks in India and the top three banks in the US. It helps financial institutions automate their back-office operations, create security and data protection infrastructure and speed up digitisation for faster customer onboarding, real-time verification and fraud detection.