From Mumbai to Dubai: How AI is bridging the gender gap in emerging markets

Ask a woman running a small business in Mumbai, India, or in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, what her biggest daily challenge is, and she will probably not say technology or funding first. She will say time — a school pickup to arrange; a mother-in-law who needs to be at a clinic; a household that does not pause while she is trying to grow a business.

In both India and the United Arab Emirates, where Indians make up roughly 35% of the population today, work for many women is treated as secondary — not because ambition is absent, but because family responsibilities are distributed unevenly, and women carry most of the load.

Both societies are deeply collectivist: Family needs come before personal plans; financial decisions are made within the household rather than by one person alone; and the expectation that women will anchor the home has endured across generations.

What has changed is that artificial intelligence is beginning to remove the practical barriers these pressures create, one specific problem at a time.

When the asset is not yours to offer

In Indian households, property and assets have historically been registered in the names of male family members. When a woman tries to get a business loan, she frequently has neither the collateral a lender requires nor the formal credit history that might substitute for it. Kinara Capital, the company founded in India by Hardika Shah, quantifies this precisely: Women-led micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) make up 20% of all MSMEs in India, yet they bear a disproportionately large share — 40%, by Kirana Capital estimates — of the country’s $400 billion unmet credit demand.

Shah built Kinara to address this by replacing the collateral requirement with something women do have: a record of transactions. The company’s artificial intelligence models evaluate loan applications using mobile payment histories and cash-flow data. Loans are approved in 24 hours. Through the dedicated HerVikas program, Kinara has supported over 13,700 women-owned businesses across more than 100 cities since 2019. The technology did not change property law or household norms. It found a route around both.

Running a business without having to choose

The deeper barrier, present in both countries, is the constant negotiation between work and family. A woman who needs to travel for business, visit a buyer in another city, or simply spend long hours outside the home faces a question her male counterpart rarely does: Who handles everything at home while she is gone? For many women, the answer has been to stay small, stay local or not start at all.

Digital commerce changed the terms of that negotiation. Mona Ataya co-founded Mumzworld in Dubai in 2011 as an e-commerce platform for mothers and children across the Middle East. The platform used data and personalization to understand what parent and baby products each family needed and later integrated an AI decision engine that predicts exactly when a household is ready to restock, replacing generic campaign schedules with individual-level timing. The result: a return on investment of 42 times, with no discounts or manual intervention required. That AI-driven precision built Mumzworld into the largest platform of its kind in the region, with over 250,000 products and delivery across more than 20 countries — and the distinction of being the top-funded women-led e-commerce company in the Middle East. As Ataya has put it, her goal was to give mothers “control and confidence.” Across India, the same logic plays out at smaller scale: Women selling handmade goods through WhatsApp Business reach urban buyers without leaving their towns.

Health care that includes women

Family responsibilities shape health care access too. Visiting a clinic takes time; often requires arranging cover at home; and in some settings involves a physical examination that many women find uncomfortable or socially awkward enough to avoid. The result, across both countries, is that screenings do not happen until something goes wrong.

Geetha Manjunath founded Niramai in India to close that gap. The company uses thermal imaging and machine learning to detect early-stage breast cancer without radiation and without physical contact. It is a solution designed not just for clinical effectiveness, but for the reality of the women who need screening that is affordable, noninvasive and deployable outside of specialist hospitals. With it, early detection became possible in communities where the conventional approach would not reach because the conventional approach assumed patients had unlimited time and unlimited comfort.

Learning on her terms

In the UAE, the gap between women’s education and women’s economic participation has long been a puzzle. Women make up 77% of university enrollees, yet female labor force participation in the Middle East sits at around 24.6%, roughly half the global average. Part of the reason is that formal employment and business ownership have traditionally required the kind of visibility and time away from home that family responsibilities make difficult. Technology, built with that constraint in mind, changes the calculation.

The UAE has responded with programs that take skills to women rather than expecting women to seek them out:

• The Dubai Business Women’s Council partnered with Oracle to launch sAIdaty, a program designed to build artificial intelligence skills among female entrepreneurs in Dubai.
• The UAE National Program for Coders committed to training 100 Emirati women in AI and cybersecurity.
• The Google for Startups Growth Academy for Women in AI, launched in Dubai, backed women-led startups in a region where, according to MAGNiTT, just 1.2% of venture capital funding currently reaches female-founded companies.

The thread running through both cities

The barriers keeping women from full economic participation in both societies were never about capability. They were about structure — who held the assets, who was expected to stay home, who got to leave and who was asked to stay. Artificial intelligence, in the hands of founders who understood those structures from the inside, is quietly rearranging them. Shah reaches women who do not own property. Ataya reaches customers without a physical journey. Manjunath reaches women who were not seeking care. Across the Arabian Sea and back, that is what closing a gap actually looks like.

About the author

Vanshika Badkul is an MBA candidate and EMC² fellow in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, graduating in 2026. She has over nine years of experience leading data and technology-driven product initiatives. She most recently served as a product manager for data and artificial intelligence at Etihad Airways, where she owned the end-to-end lifecycle of data products across global operations. Badkul, who has a passion for innovation and continuous learning, has a strong track record of delivering complex, cross-functional programs, driving platform scalability, and enabling data-informed decision-making. Based in New York City, she is focused on building user-centric, high-impact products at the intersection of technology and business.

All views expressed in articles published on the Cañizares Center for Emerging Markets webpage are those of the author(s) and should not be taken as reflecting the views of the Cañizares Center for Emerging Markets.