Crowdfunding

Funding 2.0 for GCC SMEs

Traditionally in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena), SMEs have found it difficult to access funding from banks. In the GCC countries, the share of SME loans in total bank loans has tended to be around 2%, as the following graphic illustrates. Figure: Share of SME Loans in Total Loans (%) Source: Union of Arab Banks Survey, 2011 Entrepreneurs in the GCC, with respect to receiving bank loans, are known to face time-consuming documentation, daunting penalties on early repayments,...

Crowdfunding in the GCC

KEY QUESTION 1: What is Crowd funding? How is it gaining at the global level? Officially, Crowdfunding stands for “Capital Raising Online While Deterring Fraud and Unethical Non-Disclosure”. Here, a venture is funded by a large number of people, via the Internet, and this concept has gained massive popularity world-over. According to a report by The Crowd Data Center, in 2014, each metric in crowdfunding is doubling every two months thanks to disruptive shifts in capital formation. This trend has...