Services
Industries
Hephon is an AI agency in Dubai (Hephon L.L.C-FZ) that builds Arabic chatbots and WhatsApp assistants for UAE businesses: assistants that read Emirati and Gulf Arabic, Arabizi and English, answer from your own data, and pass the hard conversations to your team.
It has to read Gulf Arabic as Emiratis type it, English from a mostly expatriate customer base, and both mixed in one message. It should answer from your real catalogue, bookings or account data, run on WhatsApp first, store data under the UAE PDPL or your free zone’s law, and hand off to a person with context.
A chatbot in the UAE rarely gets textbook Arabic. Emirati customers write in Gulf dialect, with words that do not exist in Modern Standard Arabic: ابا for “I want”, باجر for “tomorrow”, حق for “for”. The same customers switch to English for brand names and numbers, and some write Arabic in Latin letters with digits standing in for sounds, which is Arabizi.
Most of your customers are likely to be expatriates, writing in English, in Egyptian or Levantine Arabic, or in an English shaped by South Asian languages. A bot tuned only for formal Arabic misses most of them; a bot tuned only for English misses the Emirati customer who expects to be answered in his own words. We build for the whole mix and test it on messages written the way your customers write.
هلا، ابا احجز موعد باجر العصر في فرع دبي مول
Hi, I want to book an appointment tomorrow afternoon at the Dubai Mall branch.
wain el order mali? 9arli yomain
Arabizi: Where is my order? It has been two days.
عندكم توصيل حق البرشا؟ need it today
Do you deliver to Al Barsha? Arabic and English in one message.
hi, refund status pls, invoice 4417
The short English most expatriate customers send.
Illustrative messages written the way customers write, not real customer messages.
Three sets of rules shape how we build a chatbot for a UAE business: which data law applies, what WhatsApp costs, and where the data lives.
Onshore, personal data falls under Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021, in force since 2 January 2022. Its executive regulations had not been published by late 2026, so we build to the law’s own principles: a clear purpose for every field the agent collects, data kept no longer than needed, and a person’s right to object to decisions made only by automated processing.
Source: Simmons & Simmons: UAE PDPL FAQsA business registered in the DIFC answers to DIFC Data Protection Law No. 5 of 2020, whose Regulation 10 covers personal data processed by autonomous and semi-autonomous systems such as AI agents. ADGM has its own Data Protection Regulations 2021. We confirm which regime applies before the first conversation is stored.
Source: Clyde & Co: DIFC Regulation 10Since 1 July 2025 Meta charges per template message, by category (marketing, utility, authentication), at rates set for the UAE, and it can bill in AED. Utility updates such as order confirmations cost far less than marketing messages, so we design flows that stay in the cheaper categories.
Source: Meta: WhatsApp Business Platform pricingGeneral information checked in November 2026, not legal advice.
Answers product, booking and order questions in Gulf Arabic and English on the WhatsApp Business Platform, using your verified business number.
One assistant behind every channel, so a customer who starts on the website and finishes on WhatsApp is not asked the same question twice.
Connected to your catalogue, stock, bookings or CRM. It looks things up instead of guessing, and says so when it does not know.
When a conversation needs a person, your team gets the whole thread and what the assistant already checked, in your existing inbox or helpdesk.
Our most-cited build is in Saudi Arabia, not the UAE: the conversational assistant inside the Panda app, one of the Kingdom’s largest grocery retailers. It reads Saudi dialect as written, turns a recipe into a basket and hands off to a human agent through Genesys Cloud CX when its confidence drops. Gulf dialects share most of the hard parts, which is why the same method carries to a UAE business.
Read the Panda case studyA focused first build usually lands between a few thousand and a few tens of thousands of dollars, depending on how many channels and systems it touches and how clean your data is. We scope a fixed price after a short discovery call, so you know the number before you commit. We invoice in AED or USD.
Panda’s assistant went live in eight weeks at national scale. A UAE business with one channel and one catalogue usually needs less than that; we agree the timeline with the fixed price, after we have seen your data.
Yes. We build for the words Emirati customers actually type, such as ابا, باجر and حق, and test against real messages before launch. The assistant replies in the customer’s own register: Gulf Arabic to a Gulf Arabic message, English to English.
Usually, yes, because the same assistant handles both. The English-speaking majority gets fast English answers, and the Arabic-speaking customers who are often your highest-value segment get answered in their own dialect instead of being pushed to English.
Onshore businesses fall under Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021, the UAE PDPL. Businesses registered in the DIFC or ADGM follow their own free-zone data protection law instead. We confirm which applies to you during discovery and design storage and retention to match. This is general information, not legal advice.
Yes, through the WhatsApp Business Platform on your own verified number, and on your website and app from the same assistant. Meta bills WhatsApp per template message at UAE rates, and can bill in AED.
It says so and hands the conversation to a person with the full thread, rather than guessing. We set that threshold with you and tune it on real conversations after launch.
Hephon (Hephon L.L.C-FZ) is an AI agency registered in Dubai’s Meydan Free Zone. We build Arabic chatbots, WhatsApp assistants and voice agents for businesses in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and stay on after launch to tune them.
Our product for retailers
Hephon Commerce
For supermarkets and online grocers in the UAE: Hephon Commerce, our AI shopping assistant, answers shoppers in Gulf Arabic and English in your app and on WhatsApp, and turns a list or a recipe into a basket from your catalogue.
Tell us what fills your team’s day and we will tell you honestly whether AI can take it, and at what fixed price.
