UAE - Mubasher: Emirates Development Bank (EDB) has inked an agreement with Beehive to allocate AED 30 million funding to the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the UAE’s first Peer-to-Peer (P2P) platform, the Emirates News Agency (WAM) reported.
This agreement is part of EDB’s objective to support SMEs, startups, and large corporates across five priority sectors, comprising manufacturing, healthcare, infrastructure, food security, and technology, over the next five years.
Under the agreement, Beehive will also facilitate business loans to creditworthy SMEs seeking to grow their operations or improve working capital.
The Beehive platform deploys crowdfunding technology to connect SMEs looking for finance with investors to support their finance requests
The CEO of EDB, Ahmed Mohamed Al Naqbi, said: "The collaboration with Beehive is part of our mission to bridge the funding gap by offering SMEs greater and easier access to financial sources."
Meanwhile, the Founder and CEO of Beehive, Craig Moore, commented: "The addition of institutional investors to Beehive will give SMEs more secure financing and better liquidity on the platform, which means that funding can be received faster too."
