UAE Retail Revolution: AI Becomes Indispensable Engine Powering AED 300B Market

Artificial intelligence is fast becoming the quiet engine running the UAE’s vast retail market, which is now valued at around AED 300 billion. That was the big takeaway from the IBPC Dubai Annual Retail Conclave 2025 at Dubai Chambers, where industry leaders and tech thinkers gathered to unpack how AI is reshaping everything from margins to customer loyalty. I’ve seen plenty of events in this space over the years, and this one felt spot on in showing just how quickly retailers are moving from curiosity to full-on transformation.

Kicking off the discussions, Dr. Sahitya Chaturvedi, Secretary General of IBPC Dubai, pointed out that customers are evolving faster than the businesses serving them. According to him, rising expectations for speed, authenticity, and personalisation mean retailers who don’t adapt their decision-making to real-time data will, well… I mean, they’ll simply lag behind. And he has a point—more than once, founders I’ve met through Arageek events have said that understanding customer context is becoming a bit of a faff, unless AI steps in to simplify it.

In a keynote that drew a fair bit of attention, MSBC Group founder and CEO Kumar Varsani highlighted how the UAE is quietly building one of the region’s strongest AI infrastructures, with sovereign GPU clusters and large-scale data campuses enabling retailers to shift from strategy talk to actual execution. Varsani broke down how AI adoption tends to follow layers, starting with basic models and building up toward agent-driven, context-aware systems. In that world, classic business tools like CRM and ERP are being reimagined as live data ecosystems, constantly generating insights to help retailers move faster and stay competitive. I reckon many companies still underestimate how profound that shift could be.

All day long, one theme kept resurfacing: context. Not just data itself, but how businesses use it to guide decisions that directly affect revenue, costs, and margins. Several speakers argued that the future will revolve around agent-to-agent frameworks, where every employee is supported by an AI assistant to help them work quicker and more accurately. Believe it or not, some retailers are already experimenting with this.

A fireside chat moderated by Ali Asgar Saeed brought together Rajesh Garg, Dilip Sinha, and Kumar Varsani, who shared frank insights from the frontline. They noted that customers today expect authentic omnichannel communication and same-day delivery as a standard feature, not a luxury. Workforce diversity and employee empowerment also came up as important factors in achieving those goals. The panellists agreed that AI should be tied directly to business outcomes—better customer experience, smoother operations, and real cost optimisation—rather than sitting in endless pilot phases that never scale. On the flip side, they warned that chasing shiny tools without strategy can do more harm than good.

There was also a moment of reflection with the spotlight on Shilpa Bhasin Mehra’s book, Unfiltered and Unapologetic, where she describes AI as a “gift of time,” enabling leaders to focus on creativity and human connection. Sachin Joshi introduced the session, tying it neatly into the day’s broader focus on practical, human-centred innovation. As someone who’s watched founders burn out trying to juggle everything, that idea felt definately relatable.

The day’s programme was smoothly steered by IBPC members Gomathi Seetharaman and Reema Mahajan, both well-known in the business community. And through gatherings like this, IBPC Dubai continues to offer a trusted space for senior professionals to share knowledge and navigate a market that seems to change every few months.

If the conclave made one thing clear, it’s that AI is no longer an optional add-on for UAE retailers. Those who learn to harness context, unlock their data, and enable intelligent decision-making at scale are the ones most likely to keep their edge in the years ahead.

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