Fadi Ghandour: An early summer and a hockey stick winter

• Full settlement to conflict is imperative
• Startups must diversify suppliers
• Growth will be sustained and upwards

“Summer came early for the Gulf,” says Fadi Ghandour, the UAE-based Jordanian entrepreneur behind logistics company Aramex and venture company Wamda. In the Middle East, that signals slowdown, not surge: expatriates leave, residents travel and business activity softens.

This year, that lull arrived as early as late February, brought forward by war and heightened regional uncertainty. Yet Ghandour believes the UAE’s recovery, when it comes, will be sharp, with an arc resembling a hockey stick.

Since his interview with AGBI, a fragile two-week ceasefire was announced on April 8 followed by reported breaches and unresolved tensions. 

Israel continued its attacks on Lebanon, saying the “deal” did not cover its operations against Hezbollah. 

Several strikes were reported in the Gulf, hours after the announcement of the truce. 

Iran’s demands included payments for tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz – which carries one-fifth of global oil and liquified natural gas supplies – a move that is largely unwelcome in the region. 

For Ghandour, a long-time Dubai resident, investor and social entrepreneur with deep exposure to the region’s business cycles, partial measures would be insufficient. 

“[The biggest] lesson in my view, is that there needs to be a full settlement. If there is a limbo, I don’t think that bodes well for the region,” he says. 

“We can’t stay somewhere in the middle between solutions and no solutions or partial peace and partial ceasefires.” 

Supplied

“Geography trumps everything else,” says Ghandour, pointing to how the Gulf has been drawn into the conflict by location. With geography fixed, stronger regional relationships are critical in times of crisis.

The early Amazon Web Services outage, after drone strikes hit two facilities in the UAE and close to a third in Bahrain, also highlighted concentration risks.

“The ultimate lesson of any crisis is redundancy, meaning you cannot be dependent on one data or cloud provider. You have to diversify your geography and your relationships with different suppliers,” he said. 

The startups that have diversified their suppliers are the ones that have been able to weather this storm, Ghandour says: “This is an old lesson that goes back all the way to any crisis we have had.”

Capital is scared

The conflict has softened capital inflows. As consumption slows in the UAE’s consumer- and service-led economy, funding into affected sectors has paused.

Foreign investors accounted for nearly half of total Mena funding in 2025 and are historically the first to withdraw during shocks, according to a report by VC insights platform Magnitt. This exposure is most acute in the UAE, where international participation is higher. 

“I think that [foreign investment] is off the table now until they find that the situation settles down and everything goes back to normal. By definition, capital is always scared,” he said. 

In addition, few global funds focus solely on the Gulf. In times of stress, they retreat to core markets and existing portfolios.

“So there is firefighting here,” he said. “I won’t say there’s complete disruption, but there is much more caution, including from local investors.”

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Later-stage rounds, more reliant on international capital, are especially exposed, according to a report by Magnitt. Early-stage companies, too, face tighter pipelines as investors double down on existing bets.

The result? Some startups and businesses will fail, Ghandour says. Particularly those dependent on new funding rather than existing cash buffers.

Despite the foreign pullback, Ghandour stresses the region’s foundations are domestic. 

He explains that most of the global venture capitalists piggyback on local investors, when putting their money into the businesses and funds in the region.

“The foreign investors tagged along with us, but we built the ecosystem – local investors, the private sector, the family offices of the region, the sovereign wealth funds,” he said.

Hockey stick growth

The next growth phase for the UAE, according to Ghandour, would resemble a hockey stick or j-curve chart. 

The pattern can be identified with three distinct parts: the blade when economic growth flattens, ie the summer wartime period. 

Then comes the inflection, which represents the initial burst of growth and which Ghandour expects would begin by around September-October as residents return and activity resumes. 

The handle will then follow, showing sustained and expanding growth along an upwards trajectory.

“The minute things settle, we will see an influx of people coming back,” he said. 

A similar pattern of growth was observed during and after the 2020 pandemic and the 2008 financial crisis. 

However, the caveat remains. And it no longer is when the crisis ends. 

“It all depends on how the crisis settles,” he said.