Saeed & Mohammed Al Naboodah Group

Saeed & Mohammed Al Naboodah Group

The Al Naboodah story begins in 1958 when brothers Saeed and Mohammed Al Naboodah launched a trading enterprise that would grow alongside the United Arab Emirates itself. By 1969 the group had formed Al Naboodah Contracting, and through the 1970s and 1980s it added travel agencies, electromechanical contracting, and the franchise rights for Peugeot and Ashok Leyland vehicles. Those operating companies — now consolidated under Saeed Juma Al Naboodah Group — function as the engine room of family wealth, distributing global brands including Volkswagen, DAF, Kaeser, and Maxus across the region. Capital allocation from the family office reaches well beyond the operating companies. The portfolio stretches into real estate with mixed-use holdings in Dubai and Sharjah, and into US industrial assets through the RP10 Industrial Project in Atlanta, Georgia. On the venture side, the office has built a strategic partnership with OurCrowd, the Israeli crowd-investing platform, to access technology deals spanning AI/ML, enterprise software, and ESG-focused ventures. Confirmed investment stages cover Seed through Buyout, and the office participates via direct deals, club-style co-investments, and alternative VC models. Sector targets include energy transition, supply chain and logistics, agritech, and industrial tech, with a geographic footprint anchored in Asia and the Middle East. The group operates from its Al Awir headquarters completed in 2015, with family principals deeply embedded in regional business networks. Abdulla Al Naboodah — Executive Director and founder of Phoenix Capital — holds board seats with the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and the European Tour Group, and maintains memberships in YPO and LIFE. The family also backs civic initiatives such as the 1 Billion Meals Initiative. In 2023, the commercial arm of the group was acquired by Saeed Juma Al Naboodah, formally separating the operating conglomerate from the earlier brother-partnership structure and signaling a generational handover to a single controlling shareholder. What distinguishes the Al Naboodah structure is the living linkage between a 3,000-employee operating conglomerate and an investment office that co-invests alongside venture platforms. Rather than a pure portfolio of third-party fund commitments, the office's posture fuses family operating cash flows with direct tech-access partnerships — a hybrid that few Gulf family offices of comparable lineage have adopted so explicitly. The 2023 acquisition of the commercial arm by Saeed Juma Al Naboodah also introduces a succession architecture where operating control and investment discretion sit under one principal, a governance choice that shapes how the office's next chapter will read.