Ranime El Skaff did not set out to build a technology company. She set out to buy a property. As a McKinsey consultant in the Gulf, she wanted to invest in real estate but found it hard to judge whether a deal was sound. Data was scattered, valuations were inconsistent, and decisions rested on opinion rather than evidence. When a former colleague, Christian Kunz, described the same frustration, the two decided to fix it.
The result is Prop-AI, the Dubai-based company they co-founded in 2023, with El Skaff as CEO. After McKinsey she was a principal at a regional private equity firm, and she holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Prop-AI describes itself as an intelligence layer for real estate investing. Underneath sits proprietary market data, including millions of recorded sales across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and Makkah, rental contracts registered with the Dubai Land Department, and in-house valuation models refreshed daily. Machine learning turns that into usable answers: what a property is likely worth, what it could rent for, and how its price compares with recent deals.
Its most visible tool is the Dubai Deal Index, launched publicly in March 2026. Daily, it combines transaction volumes, price pressure, buyer demand and macroeconomic signals into one reading, from Wait to Strong Buy, alongside listings priced below recent market levels.
The practical gain is time and clarity. El Skaff has estimated that buyers spend around 300 hours researching a property before closing. Prop-AI condenses much of that into an evidence-based starting point. It does not replace judgment; it gives judgment better material.
The first proptech company to receive the Dubai AI Seal, Prop-AI is now expanding into Saudi Arabia. Its significance is clear: in an industry long run on instinct, property decisions are beginning to rest on shared, verifiable data.
