Terms of Use

These Terms of Use ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the NAIWA platform, including the NAIWA website, account areas, certification and assessment services, public verification registry, marketplace and listing features, investor-introduction features, AI-assisted discovery and assessment features, and all related services (collectively, the "Services").

By accessing or using the Services, you agree to be bound by these Terms, the Privacy Policy, the Legal Notice (which sets out NAIWA's certification scope, standards, and liability), and the Fees page, each of which is incorporated by reference. If you do not agree, you must not access or use the Services.

NAIWA is an independent, privately operated SME assessment and certification platform operated from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, under a Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism (DET) trade licence with a licensed activity of Management Consultancies.

NAIWA is remotely managed and does not maintain a public office; engagement is by appointment or remote correspondence only. NAIWA is currently not registered for VAT and does not charge VAT. NAIWA is a private management consultancy. It is not a government body and is not endorsed, accredited, supervised, recognized, or authorized by any regulator, government authority, free zone, bank, or financial institution. See the Legal Notice for full operator details.

To access or use the Services, you must be at least 18 years old, or the age of legal majority in your place of residence if that age is higher, and you must have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract. The Services are intended for business and professional use and are not directed to children. If you believe that a person under the applicable age has provided personal information through the Services, please contact NAIWA so that it can be addressed.

If you use the Services on behalf of a company, enterprise, or other legal entity, you represent and warrant that you are duly authorized to act for and to bind that entity to these Terms. In that case, "you" and "your" refer to both you as an individual and to that entity, and both are responsible for compliance with these Terms. NAIWA may request evidence of your authority at any time.

You may not access or use the Services if you are prohibited from doing so under any law that applies to you; if you are located in, or ordinarily resident in, a country or territory subject to comprehensive sanctions; or if you, or any entity you represent, appear on any applicable sanctions, restricted-party, or denied-party list.

You may not access or use the Services if NAIWA has previously suspended or terminated your account or access, unless NAIWA has expressly reinstated you in writing.

You are responsible for ensuring that your access to and use of the Services is lawful in every jurisdiction that applies to you, and that you hold any consents, licences, permissions, or internal approvals that your own role, profession, or organisation requires. Unless NAIWA expressly permits otherwise, you may hold only one account, and you must register using accurate, current, and complete information.

The Services are management-consultancy and informational services. They include, depending on your role and eligibility:

• Certification services — a private, documentation-based, point-in-time assessment of an enterprise against NAIWA's published criteria, resulting in a private certification opinion.
• Verification registry — a public lookup that reflects the current status of a NAIWA certificate at the time of viewing.
• Marketplace and listing access — optional features that allow certified or eligible enterprises to publish limited information and allow other users to express interest.
• Investor introductions — an optional communication workflow that facilitates contact between users; it is not brokerage, dealing, or arranging.
• AI-assisted discovery and assessment — optional tools that produce advisory, reviewable outputs only.

NAIWA may add, change, suspend, or remove any feature at any time. The Services are provided to support your own decision-making; they do not replace your own advisers, diligence, or judgment.

Nothing provided through the Services constitutes legal, tax, accounting, financial, regulatory, or investment advice, and nothing is a recommendation, offer, solicitation, or inducement in relation to any security, financing, loan, sponsorship, or investment.

NAIWA does not provide brokerage, dealing, arranging, advisory, custody, or payment-handling services. NAIWA does not operate a crowdfunding platform, does not facilitate fundraising, does not hold or transmit investor money, and does not offer or distribute securities. You are solely responsible for obtaining your own independent professional advice before making any decision.

NAIWA does not guarantee, warrant, or promise any outcome, including but not limited to: certification approval, continued certification, investor interest, funding, financing, sponsorship, partnership, introductions, revenue, valuation, business performance, regulatory acceptance, or any commercial result.

Submitting an application, paying any fee, completing an assessment, appearing in the registry, or publishing a listing does not create any entitlement to a favorable outcome. Assessments may result in approval, deferral, request for further information, or refusal, in NAIWA's reasonable discretion applying its published criteria.

You must provide accurate, current, and complete information and keep it updated. You are responsible for safeguarding your credentials and for all activity under your account, and must notify NAIWA immediately of any unauthorized use.

You represent that you are authorized to act for any enterprise you register, that you have the right to submit all materials you upload, and that your use complies with all laws applicable to you, including your own regulatory permissions, internal approvals, conflicts checks, and data-protection obligations.

You are solely responsible for the authenticity, accuracy, completeness, and lawfulness of every document and data point you submit. NAIWA assesses documentation as submitted and, unless expressly stated in writing for a specific engagement, does not independently authenticate documents, conduct site inspections, or verify the truth of underlying facts.

Submitting false, forged, altered, incomplete, or misleading material is a material breach of these Terms and may result in refusal, suspension, revocation, account termination, and referral to relevant authorities where required by law.

Certification is a private opinion based on submitted documentation at a point in time and within a limited scope. It may be suspended, revoked, corrected, or allowed to expire. The public verification registry is the authoritative source of current status; the registry status at the time of viewing prevails over any certificate, screenshot, or copy.

Certified enterprises receive a limited, revocable, non-transferable licence to display the NAIWA certification mark strictly in accordance with NAIWA's brand and certification-use rules and only while certification is valid. Misuse of the mark, misrepresentation of certification status, use after expiry or revocation, or use in a misleading manner is prohibited and may result in immediate revocation and other remedies.

Marketplace, listing, and introduction features are communication and discovery tools only. NAIWA does not provide investment advice or recommendations, does not act as a broker, dealer, arranger, adviser, or agent, does not operate a crowdfunding or securities platform, does not handle or hold any party's money, and does not perform diligence on behalf of any party.

An "Express Interest", message, introduction, or similar action is solely a communication/introduction workflow. It is not an offer, acceptance, commitment, or recommendation. Any term sheet, letter of intent, funding, investment, financing, sponsorship, acquisition, or commercial agreement is solely between the relevant parties and is outside NAIWA unless separately and lawfully agreed in a signed written agreement to which NAIWA is a party.

Investors and enterprises are each solely responsible for their own advisers, due diligence, KYC/KYB, AML and sanctions checks, suitability assessment, compliance, regulatory permissions, and negotiations. NAIWA listing information, registry status, reports, AI outputs, and introductions are not a substitute for independent due diligence.

AI-assisted features produce advisory, reviewable outputs only. AI outputs do not approve, reject, certify, revoke, charge, price, or finalize any status or decision. A successful technical response (including an HTTP 200) does not mean an AI output is valid, complete, or reliable. Outputs that are malformed, contradictory, incomplete, low-confidence, or inconsistent with source evidence are flagged for human review and must not be relied upon as final.

AI outputs do not constitute legal, tax, financial, valuation, or investment advice and are not a certification authority. AI summaries never overwrite or replace your source documents or submitted evidence. NAIWA's AI operating principles are described in its AI governance documentation; in the event of conflict between an AI output and human review, human review prevails.

Electronic communications. By creating an account or using the Services, you consent to receive communications from NAIWA in electronic form, including by email and through in-platform messages and notices. You agree that all agreements, notices, disclosures, and other communications that NAIWA provides to you electronically satisfy any legal requirement that such communications be in writing, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.

Service and transactional communications. Certain communications are necessary to operate the Services and maintain your account, and are not marketing. These include, without limitation, messages about your account, security and authentication, payments and receipts, assessment and certification status, the verification registry, listings, introductions and messaging, service changes, and updates to these Terms or other legal or policy documents. While you hold an account or use the Services, you may not opt out of these operational communications other than by closing your account, because they form part of providing the Services to you.

Marketing communications. Marketing and promotional communications are separate and optional. Where consent is required by applicable law, NAIWA will send you marketing communications only if you have chosen to receive them, and you may withdraw your consent or unsubscribe at any time, without charge, using the unsubscribe mechanism in the relevant message, your account preferences where available, or by contacting NAIWA. Withdrawing marketing consent will not affect your ability to use the Services and will not stop the service and transactional communications described above. Your consent to marketing is separate from, and is not a condition of, any transactional or result communication, such as the email that delivers the result of a free readiness check.

Your contact details. You are responsible for keeping the contact details associated with your account accurate and current, and for any communications sent to the address or number on file. NAIWA is not responsible for communications you do not receive because your details are out of date, or because messages are filtered, blocked, or delayed by systems outside NAIWA's control. How NAIWA handles communications data is described in the Privacy Policy.

You must not:

• provide false, forged, altered, or misleading information;
• attempt to manipulate, circumvent, or game any assessment, scoring, registry, or AI feature;
• misrepresent your certification status, listing, or relationship with NAIWA to any third party;
• use the Services to defraud, harm, harass, or infringe the rights of others;
• upload unlawful content or content you lack the right to submit;
• scrape, harvest, or reuse registry, listing, report, or platform data except as expressly permitted;
• use any robot, spider, scraper, or other automated means to access, monitor, copy, or extract the Services or their data without NAIWA's prior written permission;
• reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to derive the source code or underlying structure of the Services, except to the limited extent this restriction is prohibited by applicable law;
• interfere with, probe, overload, or disrupt the platform, its security, or its infrastructure, or attempt to gain unauthorized access to any account, system, or network;
• use NAIWA names, marks, certificates, registry entries, reports, screenshots, listings, summaries, or AI outputs without written permission except as expressly allowed by NAIWA's published rules.

NAIWA may suspend, restrict, or terminate your access, and may suspend, revoke, remove, correct, or restrict any certificate, listing, report, mark usage, partner reference, or registry entry, where it is inaccurate, misleading, expired, misused, unlawful, reputationally harmful, in breach of these Terms, or outside the permitted scope, or where required by law or to protect the platform or other users.

Fees already paid are non-refundable except as expressly stated on the Fees page or as required by mandatory law. Provisions that by their nature should survive termination (including liability, indemnity, intellectual property, and governing law) survive.

You retain ownership of the documents and content you submit. You grant NAIWA a limited licence to host, process, assess, store, and display such materials solely to provide and improve the Services, to maintain audit and evidence records, and as described in the Privacy Policy.

Content you contribute or publish through the Services must be accurate where it states facts, genuinely held where it states opinions, and lawful. It must not be false, misleading, defamatory, obscene, offensive, or otherwise objectionable, must not infringe the intellectual-property or other rights of any person, and must not misrepresent your identity or your relationship with NAIWA or any third party.

You are responsible for retaining your own copies. NAIWA may retain records, including audit and evidence records, for legitimate business, legal, and compliance purposes even after account closure, subject to applicable law.

The Services are provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. NAIWA does not warrant uninterrupted, error-free, or secure operation and may modify, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Services, including for maintenance, at any time without liability.

This Section applies to any third party that accesses, references, relies on, partners with, sponsors, integrates with, promotes, uses, or evaluates NAIWA, its certificates, registry, reports, listings, AI outputs, or platform data. Third parties include, without limitation, investors, lenders, banks, sponsors, partners, service providers, government or semi-government programmes, accelerators, incubators, media, ecosystem participants, consultants, advisers, acquirers, counterparties, and any commercial or institutional users.

Every third party must conduct its own independent due diligence, KYC, KYB, AML/sanctions checks, and legal, financial, tax, technical, commercial, and suitability assessment before making any decision. NAIWA certification, registry status, listing information, AI reports, marketplace data, introductions, sponsorship visibility, partnership references, and platform communications must not be treated as a substitute for that diligence.

Any partnership, sponsorship, collaboration, promotional placement, ecosystem relationship, integration, referral, or co-marketing arrangement with NAIWA does not constitute endorsement, guarantee, verification, recommendation, approval, supervision, or assumption of liability by NAIWA unless expressly stated in a separately signed written agreement. NAIWA is not responsible for any third party's funding, sponsorship, partnership, procurement, acquisition, investment, lending, onboarding, credit, or other commercial decision, and each third party remains responsible for its own regulatory permissions, internal approvals, risk assessments, legal obligations, data-protection obligations, conflicts checks, and compliance controls.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, NAIWA and its operators, owners, personnel, and contractors shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profit, revenue, funding, business, opportunity, goodwill, or data, arising from or related to the Services, certification, the registry, listings, introductions, AI outputs, or any reliance on any of them, whether based in contract, tort, or otherwise, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, NAIWA's total aggregate liability arising from or related to the Services shall not exceed the total fees actually paid by you to NAIWA for the specific service giving rise to the claim in the twelve (12) months preceding the event giving rise to the claim. Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot be excluded under applicable UAE law.

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless NAIWA and its operators, owners, personnel, and contractors from and against any claim, liability, loss, damage, cost, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from or related to your use of the Services, your submitted materials, your breach of these Terms, your misrepresentation of certification or status, your misuse of NAIWA marks, or your dealings with any other user or third party.

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the documents they incorporate by reference, constitute the entire agreement between you and NAIWA regarding the Services and supersede all prior or contemporaneous understandings, communications, and proposals, whether oral or written, on that subject.

Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable by a court or tribunal of competent jurisdiction, that provision will be limited or eliminated to the minimum extent necessary so that the remaining provisions remain in full force and effect.

No waiver. NAIWA's failure to enforce, or delay in enforcing, any right or provision of these Terms will not be a waiver of that right or provision. Any waiver must be in writing and signed by NAIWA to be effective, and a waiver in one instance does not waive any later breach.

Assignment. You may not assign, transfer, or delegate these Terms or any of your rights or obligations under them, in whole or in part, without NAIWA's prior written consent, and any attempted assignment in breach of this Section is void. NAIWA may assign or transfer these Terms, in whole or in part, without restriction, including to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganisation, or sale of assets.

No agency or partnership. Nothing in these Terms creates any partnership, joint venture, agency, franchise, employment, or fiduciary relationship between you and NAIWA. Neither party may bind the other or incur obligations on the other's behalf.

No third-party beneficiaries. Except for the persons and entities entitled to protection under the Limitation of Liability, Indemnity, and Third-Party Reliance Sections, these Terms do not confer any rights or remedies on any person other than you and NAIWA.

Force majeure. NAIWA will not be liable for any delay in or failure of performance caused by circumstances beyond its reasonable control, including acts of God, natural disasters, epidemics or pandemics, war, civil unrest, government action, labour disputes, utility or telecommunications failures, cyber-attacks, or failures of third-party service providers.

Notices. NAIWA may provide notices to you by email, by posting within the Services, or by posting on the NAIWA website. You may provide notices to NAIWA using the contact details set out in these Terms or on the Legal Notice page.

Language. These Terms may be made available in English and Arabic. NAIWA intends both versions to carry the same meaning; if there is any conflict or inconsistency in interpretation, the English version prevails to the extent permitted by applicable law, except where mandatory law requires the Arabic version to govern.

Additional terms. Some features (for example, application-programming-interface (API) access or other optional products) may be governed by additional terms presented to you when you enable them. Those additional terms supplement these Terms and, in the event of a conflict, control for the specific feature to which they apply.

Survival. Provisions of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination or expiry will survive, including the disclaimers of advice and outcome, provisions on submitted content and records, intellectual-property and mark-use restrictions, third-party reliance, limitation of liability, indemnity, governing law, and these general provisions. Section headings are for convenience only and do not affect interpretation.

NAIWA may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be indicated by a revised "Last updated" date and, where appropriate, additional notice. Your continued use of the Services after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the United Arab Emirates as applied in the Emirate of Dubai. The courts of Dubai have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising from or related to these Terms or the Services, without prejudice to any mandatory consumer-protection rights you may have.

These Terms operate together with the Privacy Policy, Legal Notice, and Fees pages. If there is a conflict, these Terms govern unless a specific page expressly states that it controls for its subject matter.