H. Mohamed Janahi, CEO of Graystone Capital, explains how digitisation, data-led advisory and tailored capital structures are transforming corporate access to capital
Digital trade finance, working capital digitisation and data-led advisory are transforming how companies access capital. Automated document verification, compliance screening and data analysis are accelerating financing decisions, while real-time insights into trading activity and cash flows are helping businesses secure funding structures that better reflect their operational needs.
For mid-sized and large corporates navigating tighter liquidity, choosing the right balance of debt, equity and alternative capital has become increasingly important. Technology can streamline execution and strengthen risk assessment, but experienced human judgement remains essential when evaluating market conditions, business fundamentals and long-term growth plans.
In an interview with TahawulTech, H. Mohamed Janahi, CEO of Graystone Capital, discusses how the company combines technology with human expertise to improve transaction execution and client outcomes. He also examines the growing role of private equity and alternative investment structures in supporting expansion, acquisitions and restructuring across the Middle East and India.
Interview Excerpts
What impact are digital trade finance, working capital digitisation and data-led advisory having on companies’ access to capital?
The biggest shift I’ve seen isn’t really about the technology itself, it’s about speed of decision-making. A decade ago, a working capital facility could take weeks to structure because most of that time was spent chasing paperwork, verifying trade documents, and manually assessing risk. Today, digitisation has compressed that timeline dramatically. Trade data, invoices, bank statements, all of it can be pulled, verified, and analysed far faster than before, which means capital can move at the speed business actually needs it to. What excites me more, though, is the advisory side of this. When you have better data, you can give a client a much sharper answer, not just “yes we can fund you,” but “here’s exactly the right structure for your cash conversion cycle.” That’s the real value unlock.
Companies aren’t just accessing capital faster; they’re accessing better-fitted capital, because the underlying data tells a much more honest story about the business than a set of quarterly financials ever could.
In what ways is Graystone Capital applying technology to enhance transaction execution, risk assessment and client outcomes?
We’ve tried to be quite disciplined about where we use technology and where we don’t. Execution is the easy part to automate, document checks, compliance screening, disbursement workflows, and we’ve invested heavily there because it removes friction and human error from processes that don’t need human judgment. Risk assessment is more nuanced. We use data and automation to do the heavy lifting, surfacing patterns, flagging inconsistencies, giving our team a much richer picture of a client’s actual trading behaviour rather than a static snapshot. But the final judgment on a facility still sits with experienced people. In trade finance, especially in this region, context matters enormously, relationships, market conditions, the character of a business, and that’s something no model fully captures yet. So our approach is: let technology do the analysis, let people make the call. The outcome for clients is a faster process without losing the judgment that actually protects them and us.
What strategies is Graystone Capital using to help mid-sized and large corporates secure appropriate debt financing amid tighter liquidity?
Liquidity has genuinely tightened, and I think a lot of companies are still operating on assumptions from an easier funding environment. What we spend most of our time doing now is helping clients rethink the structure of their financing, not just the size of it. A business that would have comfortably taken on a straightforward term loan two years ago might today be better served by a blended structure, some working capital financing tied to actual trade cycles, some structured debt, occasionally a bit of alternative capital layered in. The mistake we see most often is companies chasing the cheapest headline rate without matching the structure to their cash flow reality. That’s how you end up with a mismatch, debt that looks affordable on paper but creates real pressure at the wrong point in the business cycle.
Our job is to sit with a client, actually understand how money moves through their business, and build a financing stack around that, not force their business to fit a product we happen to sell.
What role do private equity and alternative investment structures play in supporting business growth across the Middle East and India?
A much bigger role than they did even five years ago. Traditional bank lending is still the backbone of the region, but it was never designed to fund the kind of growth-stage or transitional capital that ambitious companies now need, expansion into a new market, a bolt-on acquisition, a working capital gap during a growth spurt. That’s exactly the space where private equity and alternative structures have stepped in. What I find particularly interesting about the Middle East and India right now is how much cross-border appetite there is, Gulf capital looking at Indian growth stories, and Indian promoters increasingly looking to the Gulf for structuring flexibility and access to global capital pools. Alternative structures give both sides room to be creative, structured equity, mezzanine, revenue-based financing, tools that let a business raise growth capital without either over-leveraging the balance sheet or giving up more equity than necessary. It’s a healthier, more sophisticated capital market than what existed a decade ago.
How do you advise companies to balance debt, equity and strategic advisory when preparing for expansion, acquisition or restructuring?
Honestly, my first piece of advice is always the same: start with the business plan, not the capital structure. Too many companies decide “we want to raise debt” or “we want to bring in equity” before they’ve properly worked out what the money actually needs to achieve and over what timeframe. Get that sequence backwards, and you end up with a capital structure that doesn’t match the life cycle of what you’re trying to do.
As a rough discipline, I tell clients: use debt for what has a predictable, near-term return, working capital, receivables, asset-backed expansion. Use equity for what’s genuinely uncertain or long-horizon, new markets, new product lines, anything where you need patient capital that can absorb a slower payback. And bring in proper strategic advisory before either of those conversations, because the structuring decision you make at the start of an expansion or acquisition is very hard to unwind later. The companies that get this right treat capital structure as a strategic decision, not a financing afterthought. That’s really the difference between a business that scales well and one that grows into financial difficulty
Source: Tahawul Tech