A halal family gold platform for the Gulf and the families who send home to Egypt and Kerala. Seed round open. September 2026
In our part of the world, families give at weddings, at both Eids, when a baby is born, and on every birthday; they save together in monthly circles; and someone keeps a notebook of who gave what. All of it runs on cash, and cash loses value every year. When the gift matters most, these families already reach for gold. Dahab lets a family do the three things it already does in real gold, on a phone, and keeps the one book that holds them together.
47 million
people live in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, 23 million of them expatriates, most from Egypt, India, Pakistan and the Levant
$75 billion
a year leaves the two countries as personal remittances, almost all of it in currency (the two central banks' 2025 figures)
70 tonnes
of gold jewelry bought in the UAE and Saudi Arabia in 2025, much of it gifted (World Gold Council)
3.5% a year
is what cash loses on average in dollars over fifty years; a third in three years in Egyptian pounds
What a family does on Dahab
The giftالنقوطA page for a wedding, an Eid book for a child, a birthday, a newborn. Relatives give from a link in the family group, no app and no account; the gold is the honoree's that minute, in her own name.
The circleالجمعيةThe family savings circle rebuilt in gold: a handful of relatives, one goal, a hand a month. Every hand buys the payer's own grams. No shared pot, no lending, nothing to pay back.
The daily saveالحصّالةA tenth of a gram from a bank account, one tap, at your own pace; a Ramadan streak that ends in a gift. Nothing is ever pre-selected.
The bookالدفترEvery gift a line, the old paper notebook photographed in, kept for a lifetime and passed on. It is what holds the three together, and why a family stays.
The gold will be real: allocated bars in a Dubai vault, held for members apart from anything Dahab owns, one named owner per gram on the register, from a hundredth of a gram, counted in public every day. Built to Islamic finance rules from the ground up, with a scholar board to sign the rulings: no interest, no lending, no speculation.
How Dahab earns. Four small fees, printed before every tap, and no subscription: a little when cash becomes gold, a little on each circle hand, a little each year to keep the gold, and a little when a gift crosses a border. A family of ten earns Dahab a few hundred dollars a year without noticing it. Nothing is earned on the price of gold; our numbers assume it goes nowhere.
How it grows. Every page is seen by the relatives who give on it, most of whom are not on Dahab yet, and a share of them open a book of their own. Families recruit families; the launch seeds the first thousand by hand, and after the first year paid acquisition stops. The moat is the family's book: wallets are copyable, twenty years of who honored whom are not.
Why now
The loss on cash is no longer theoretical, and the instant bank rails in the UAE and Saudi Arabia (Aani, SARIE) make a gift in gold as easy as a transfer, at a fraction of a card's cost. Two years ago this product needed cards.
Each piece exists separately. Savings circles are digitised and proven, in cash. Daily gold saving is proven, as a solo product. Gold gifting happens every day, at the jeweler's counter. Nobody has put the three on one phone, in real gold, with the family's book holding them together.
What exists today
A working prototype of the full product: all three doors and the book on a phone, five family personas, in English and Arabic
The product and business playbook, twenty-one sections, from the trust structure to the launch plan
A five-year, three-scenario financial model, checked line by line against every document
The market, competitor and regulatory study, every figure sourced
The brand: canon, seal and asset kit in use
The system architecture and the first build pack: ledger-first, tamper-evident, no blockchain
Counsel's brief on licensing and custody: seventeen questions drafted, opinions pending
A named list of custodian, acquirer, jeweler and scholar-board candidates in conversation
The team
Two founders leaving senior corporate roles, self-funded through the groundwork; a founding CTO in final selection, signing at closing; a full engineering team to be hired from month 1, funded by the seed; two community leads, Arabic- and Malayalam-speaking, who sign the founding families in person; a scholar board for the rulings. The custodian in Dubai and the card acquirer are in negotiation.
The ask: a $4.0M seed, closing in November 2026.
It funds a six-month build, the licence and the vault, the founding families and the launch season, for a launch in the UAE in 2027 and Saudi Arabia after it. The seed is being raised from two or three principals sized to lead the Series A, which is planned soon after launch, on launch milestones agreed at the seed, with outside participation invited. The full investor brief, the use of funds and the model are shared in conversation, not by forward. Introductions and conversations: through the person who gave you this page.