SC Ventures, NeoVentures and LuLu Financial launch Hal, a B2B marketplace for UAE SMEs

DUBAI — Three financial institutions have launched Hal, a UAE-born B2B marketplace aimed at small and medium enterprises, in a joint venture that bundles commerce, financial referrals and business services onto one platform.

The venture brings together SC Ventures, Standard Chartered's innovation and ventures arm, NeoVentures by Mashreq, and LuLu Financial Holdings. Hal is a venture launch, not a fundraise, and no capital figure was disclosed. Farooq Siddiqi takes the chief executive role.

The platform launches with an unusually wide partner bench for a first day: Beehive, Microsoft, Visa and Aramex. That lineup covers the practical stack of SME operations, from lending and payments to cloud and logistics, and suggests the partners were assembled before the venture was announced rather than courted after.

Hal was unveiled at Investopia Bridge 2026 with the UAE Minister of Economy in attendance, a signal of official backing for private-sector SME infrastructure. The stated ambition is to scale along UAE trade corridors, which would take the marketplace into the same SME-financing territory where banks and fintechs already compete for distribution.

The open question is differentiation. SME super-apps have been announced repeatedly in the Gulf; few have reached meaningful transaction volume.

Watch whether Hal publishes merchant or transaction numbers within its first two quarters, the earliest test of whether the partner roster converts into usage. Zawya first reported the launch.