SILQ Relocates Engineering Centre to Qatar As Doha Shows ‘Tremendous’ Rate of Improvement

SILQ, the largest B2B commerce platform across the Gulf and emerging Asia, is relocating its entire engineering centre to Qatar, which has "tremendous" rate of improvement, according to its top official.

"We recently decided to actually move our entire engineering centre to Qatar," SILQ founder and group chief executive officer Afeef Zaman Wednesday told a panel session at the seventh edition of Investment Forum 20205, organised by Qatar Development Bank in association with Young Entrepreneurs Club.

He joined the panel on bridging entrepreneurs with private wealth, where he shared SILQ's mission and emphasised that meaningful connections require more than capital; they require models built on trust. Shariah-compliant finance, grounded in transparency, fairness, and shared risk, provides that foundation and stands as a globally relevant framework for SME (small and medium enterprises) growth.

SILQ is a platform dedicated to bridging economies and empowering businesses to trade, grow, and navigate new frontiers. By enabling seamless commerce, logistics, and finance, it unlocks opportunities in emerging economies, fuelling ambitions and redefining global trade.

The platform does roughly around $1.2bn business a year and roughly 30% of it, which is $350mn a year, is what it finances, according to him.

Stressing that if one has to make predictions about the future, the rate of improvement has to be considered; he said it has seen the Qatari market grow and when it comes to venture in Qatar, the rate of improvement is "quite tremendous".

"The entire Gulf has done very well, but Qatar particularly has done well across many vectors here," Zaman said.

"From our engineering centre in Qatar, SILQ is advancing this vision to make financing seamless and future-ready across emerging markets and the Gulf," the company said.

Referring to the government's efforts to strengthen the venture ecosystem in the country, he said such strategy "actually helped us have the conviction to put our engineering future in Qatar."

Mohammed al-Emadi, executive director of Incubation and Venture Capital Investment, QDB, said Zaman has been a beneficiary of the Startup Qatar Investment Programme and QDB worked some of the regional funds to co-invest and help relocating or expanding part of the business to Qatar.

Highlighting that the legworks for the country's venture capital system started in 2016-17; he said "as we started to evolve in the last few years, we noticed the importance of bringing the private sector to bring in more sustainability and also additional capital to this sector."

"When we started developing the private venture capital here in Qatar, we started with the first pillar, which is the angel investors," he said, adding the development of the angel investors had not happened overnight but through calibrated training programmes.

"Today, we see a rising importance of growing the private wealth through the family offices," he said.