Dubai-based Zamanat has sponsored Zamanat Fund CEIC Limited, a DIFC-domiciled closed-ended credit fund targeting up to $100 million, with fund interests issued as ZM1 Investment Tokens on ZIGChain.
The vehicle is designed to channel institutional capital toward Gulf SMEs that remain underserved by bank lending, and it is presented as the first live proof of regulated fund tokenization on the Layer 1 network.
The fund is registered with the Dubai Financial Services Authority as an Exempt Fund, managed by Truleum Venture Partners Limited and administered by Apex Group. Participation is limited to Professional Clients under DFSA rules. The announcement is informational only and is not an offer to subscribe. The fund itself is not an Islamic fund and is not marketed as Shariah-compliant.
GCC SMEs still sit outside most bank credit
SMEs generate a large share of output and private-sector jobs across the Gulf, yet they receive a small slice of bank loans. In the UAE they account for more than half of GDP and most private-sector employment, while taking less than 10 percent of total bank lending. Region-wide, only about 11 percent of SMEs have access to credit, leaving an estimated $250 billion financing gap cited in World Bank and subsequent industry assessments.
Zamanat says the fund will buy private credit exposures to established regional companies whose borrowing needs are not fully met by traditional lenders. The strategy is framed as supporting private-sector growth priorities, including Saudi Vision 2030 and UAE Centennial 2071.
Founder and CEO Umair Tariq described the structure as a route between those businesses and institutional capital, with tokenized interests as the first live demonstration of GCC private credit in a regulated digital wrapper for Professional Clients.
A $100 million target is modest against a $250 billion gap. The product’s significance is more structural than size: it tests whether a regulated credit fund can sit on a purpose-built chain without changing the underlying credit profile.
ZIGChain supplies the regulated issuance layer
Tokenization here adds an on-chain ownership and settlement layer rather than rewriting the investment thesis. Interests will be issued as ZM1 Investment Tokens on ZIGChain inside a whitelisted environment restricted to eligible Professional Clients. TradingView and other market notes describe the launch as the chain’s first live regulated fund issuance, with ZIG Markets named as distribution agent for that investor class.
ZIGChain is a Cosmos-based Layer 1 built for compliant institutional products rather than general-purpose DeFi. It is the infrastructure layer in a 2025 alliance with Apex Group, Truleum, Tokeny, Disrupt.com and Zamanat that set out to launch regulated on-chain fund structures in the region. Apex administers more than $3 trillion in assets; pairing that servicing stack with ZIGChain is intended to give institutions familiar controls plus programmable settlement.
The same network has been building adjacent private-credit rails, including work with Laser Digital, the digital-assets arm of Nomura, on Gulf on-chain credit products and risk frameworks. Putting a DFSA Exempt Credit Fund’s interests on ZIGChain therefore sits inside a broader attempt to make regulated real-world assets a live use case, not a slide-deck concept. Tokenization does not remove credit, liquidity or regulatory risk; it changes how ownership is recorded and transferred among approved investors.
Partners, pipeline and what the launch does not claim
Apex Group is fund administrator from day one. Peter Hughes, founder and CEO of Apex, said combining institutional structure with digital distribution inside a DFSA framework is how the category should be built and that the fund shows the model at institutional scale. Zamanat is backed by Disrupt.com, a MENA operator-led venture builder.
Zamanat separately positions itself as an orchestrator for what it calls Digital Shariah Assets. Global Islamic finance assets are projected by LSEG and ICD to reach $9.7 trillion by 2029. The company says it is developing a pipeline across private credit, receivables and real estate. Those ambitions should not be read onto this fund: the release states clearly that Shariah references apply to the wider platform, not to Zamanat Fund CEIC Limited.
For ZIGChain, the practical test is operational. If administration, whitelist controls and settlement hold under DFSA oversight, the network gains a reference transaction that later credit, receivables or fund products can copy.
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