A founder building practical technology for climate resilience now has a fresh place to ask for money and a year of support. Backing it is Inmā Emirates Holdings, the global investment holding company chaired by Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, a Dubai royal whose family office has spent a decade signing infrastructure agreements with national governments.
Inmā has opened the programme as an open call rather than a closed cohort, which means any qualifying venture can put its name forward without an introduction.
What the Inmā open call funds
Inmā built the programme for founder-led ventures and social enterprises working to scale solutions in four problem areas. Its published call criteria name climate resilience, food security, energy access, and environmental adaptation.
Selected applicants receive support across a 12-month period, and the call is open to ventures in every global region. Inmā says it wants companies building practical technologies that deliver measurable public benefit alongside commercial durability, a pairing that screens out both pure charity and pure speculation.
Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum framed the intent plainly. “Through this open call, we want to identify ventures that are ready to move from validation to practical implementation, especially in regions where resilience, food security, energy access, and environmental adaptation are becoming urgent priorities,” he said.
The phrase “validation to practical implementation” points to the middle stage, after a pilot works but before a venture has the balance sheet to deploy at scale.
How founders apply to the Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum-backed call
Inmā kept the mechanics deliberately light. There is no portal, no account to create, and no multi-round form to grind through.
Here is what a prospective applicant needs to know about the process.
- Submissions open June 2, 2026 and close August 31, 2026 at 11.59pm BST.
- Applications go in by email, sent as a single PDF, to [email protected].
- Eligibility is global, so a venture in Lagos, Lahore, or Lima applies on the same footing.
- Chosen ventures are supported over the following 12 months.
That submission window gives founders roughly three months to assemble a case. A PDF-only intake also signals that the firm wants a clear written argument for measurable benefit and durability, not a deck engineered for a software wizard.
Why does a holding company run a grant at all?
Inmā and its predecessor group answer that through how they have operated. This is a vehicle that builds and finances large physical assets, and a grant lets it reach earlier-stage ideas that a project-finance agreement would never touch.
A few documented commitments show the range. They include a 400 MW green hydrogen project in Pakistan, approved in 2022 and powered by 1.2 GW of wind and solar; a 250 MW power plant in Ghana, signed with the government in 2015 through his firm Ameri Energy; and a US$34 million national e-ID contract in Guyana, where he was among the signing parties alongside contract winner Veridos. All three deals were reported at the time by independent trade and local press.
That history matters to a founder weighing where to spend three months of fundraising effort. A grant from an organisation that has delivered power plants and sat at the table for national identity programmes reads differently from one issued by a fund with no build record.
What the grant says about Inmā’s wider thesis
Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum is a member of Dubai’s ruling family, and his investment work runs through more than one entity. The grant treats resilience problems as businesses to build rather than relief cases.
Sitting alongside the holding company is the Private Office of H.H. Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, the longer-running entity behind much of the earlier infrastructure dealmaking. Independent records trace its role: financial news service Sharecast reported in March 2022 that the office, represented through Kaheel Energy, took the 70 per cent side of Oracle Energy, a joint venture formed with London-listed Oracle Power to develop a green hydrogen facility in Pakistan’s Sindh province. Guyana’s Ministry of Natural Resources recorded a visit from a high-level Private Office team in October 2020, sent to scope investment in oil and gas, mining, forestry, and agriculture.
That record covers both sides of the work a grantee would care about: structuring the finance for a cross-border energy project and sitting across the table from national governments. Founders who want to check it before applying can trace past deals against named projects and counterparties in the reports above.
The Operating Record Behind the Grant
Inmā did not pick the four focus areas at random. They map onto sectors where the firm and its predecessor have already deployed capital, which means applicants pitch into a domain the company understands at an operating level rather than a thematic one.
Continuity also extends to his work on environmental resilience, a thread that runs from the infrastructure portfolio into the grant’s stated priorities. A power plant in Ghana and an energy-access criterion in a grant call are different instruments aimed at a related problem.
The holding company itself is recent even if the track record is not. Inmā Emirates Holdings was set up in October 2025 to widen a private impact-investment portfolio, consolidating activity that the family office had pursued for years under a single corporate roof.
The order matters. Project signings came first, stretching back to a 2015 power deal in Ghana, and the formal holding-company structure followed in 2025, so the open call sits on top of an existing pipeline rather than at the start of a new venture.
What a strong application looks like
Inmā’s selection language points to a specific profile. The firm is screening for measurable public benefit and commercial durability, so a winning submission needs both a metric and a revenue logic.
Founders working in the four named areas have a clear test to run against their own pitch. A venture that can name the unit of benefit it produces, prove that a pilot already worked, and explain how it pays for itself past the grant period fits the brief that Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum laid out.
That window closes August 31, and the intake is a single PDF to one address, which keeps the barrier to entry low even as the bar for selection stays high.