Kuwait National Fund Feasibility Study: Writing the Marketing Section

A National Fund application is not judged on the spreadsheet alone. According to the Fund’s own FAQ, a project is evaluated on its action plan, its feasibility study, a field visit to the site and a personal interview with the entrepreneur. The marketing part of the study is where those four things meet: the sales figures in the financial tables come from it, the field visit tests whether the location fits it, and the interview tests whether the founder actually believes it.

This guide covers that one part: how to write the market, competitor, pricing, channel and launch-budget content of a National Fund feasibility study so that every number can be traced to something a reviewer can check. It does not replace the Fund’s form. The Fund’s FAQ says there is an approved feasibility study form on its website, and that form, its headings and its order, always comes first. At the time of writing we could not find a public link to the form on the Fund’s English or Arabic pages, so this guide does not reproduce its headings: obtain the current form from the Fund (it may sit behind the e-services login) and place the material below under whichever headings it uses.

What the Fund’s terms mean for your marketing section

The figures below are taken from the National Fund’s English FAQ as published at the time of writing. Rules change, so confirm them on the Fund’s site before relying on them.

The FAQ also lists what is out of scope (real estate and stock trading projects), and notes that employing Kuwaitis is required. On timing, the FAQ gives two answers: one says a decision should not exceed 45 days, another says the period ranges from 45 days to three months, with a few projects taking longer. Plan for the longer figure when you set your launch dates.

Define the market you can actually reach

The most common weakness in small-project feasibility studies is a market size that is true but irrelevant: the size of Kuwait’s whole food-service sector, for example, presented as the market for one specialty café. A reviewer will read that as a sign the founder has not thought about who will buy.

Build the market from the customer outward, in three layers (our guide to researching a new market covers the method in more depth):

1. Who buys. Name the customer type precisely: households in a set of areas, offices within a delivery radius, contractors in a particular trade, clinics of a certain size. If you sell to businesses, say who inside the business decides.
2. How many of them there are. Use official counts where they exist. Kuwait’s Central Statistical Bureau publishes annual population estimates (the latest listed edition is as of 1 January 2025), a Household Income and Expenditure Survey (the latest listed edition covers 2019/2021), and an Annual Establishments Survey for wholesale and retail trade (the latest listed reference year is 2019).
3. How much of that you can serve in year one. This is a capacity and reach question, not a market-share percentage pulled from the air. How many customers can your premises, staff and opening hours serve? How many can your launch activity realistically reach?

State the age of every figure. A 2019 establishment survey or a 2019/2021 spending survey is still useful, but the study should say so plainly and explain how you adjusted for time, for example by checking current prices against the CSB’s consumer price indices, published monthly (the latest listed at the time of writing is July 2026). Hiding the date of a source is worse than using an older one.

A hypothetical example: a founder planning a specialised bakery would not quote total national food spending. They would count the households in the areas they can deliver to, use the household survey to estimate what such households typically spend on bakery products, and then show how many orders a day the kitchen can produce. The smallest of those numbers is the one the sales forecast should use.

Competitors: show the reviewer you have walked the street

The field visit means a Fund employee may stand at your proposed site. If there are three similar businesses within a short walk and the study says “limited competition”, that contradiction will surface. The competitor section should read like it was written by someone who has visited, ordered, called and compared.

A practical competitor table for a small project includes:

• Every direct competitor within the catchment you defined, plus the main online or delivery-app alternatives your customers would also consider.
• What each one sells, at what price, with what opening hours or service terms.
• Where each is stronger than you (location, recognition, range) and where you are genuinely different.
• How customers find them: storefront, Instagram, delivery apps, word of mouth, tenders.
• The date you collected the information.

Keep the comparison factual. Reviewers are not looking for a project with no competitors; a market with no competitors often means a market with no demand. They are looking for evidence that you understand why a customer would switch to you. If you sell to businesses, our guide to B2B competitor analysis covers the evidence layers in more depth.

Pricing that agrees with your own numbers

Pricing is where the marketing section and the financial section most often contradict each other. A study that positions the product as premium in the marketing text but uses mass-market volumes in the revenue table will not survive a careful read.

Check these five links before you submit:

1. Price against competitors. Your price list should sit where your competitor table says it can. If you are more expensive, the study must say what justifies it.
2. Price against cost. Unit cost, including materials, labour and delivery or platform commissions where relevant, must leave a margin that covers fixed costs at the volume you forecast.
3. Price against capacity. Revenue equals price times volume, and volume cannot exceed what your premises and staff can produce.
4. Price against the customer. If you rely on household spending data, the price should be plausible for the households you target.
5. Discounts and launch offers. If you plan opening offers, show them as reduced revenue in the first months, not as a marketing cost hidden elsewhere.

Channels and the launch budget: cost what you will actually do

A line that says “marketing: social media and advertising” with a single annual figure tells a reviewer nothing. Break the launch into activities you can describe in the interview, each with a cost, a timing and a purpose.

Two points reviewers tend to probe. First, separate one-off launch costs from recurring monthly marketing; mixing them distorts both the capital requirement and the operating forecast. Second, tie each channel to the sales forecast. If, say, 40% of year-one revenue is expected from a delivery app, the app’s commission must appear in your costs.

If you sell to companies or government entities, note that the Fund also runs a National Registry for SMEs that, according to its services page, gives registered businesses a price preference when applying for tenders and priority for purchasing by public entities. Registration has its own conditions, including Kuwaiti managers and partners and meeting the national employment percentage; check the current list with the Fund. If tenders are part of your plan, say so and explain how you will qualify, rather than counting on them silently.

Prepare to defend it in the interview

The interview is where a well-written section becomes a credible one. The Fund does not publish its interview questions, so the list below is not the Fund’s; it is a set of preparation questions that follow the chain from customer to revenue. If you can answer them briefly and specifically, you are likely ready for whatever is actually asked:

• Who exactly is your first customer, and how will they hear about you in the first month?
• Which competitor will you take customers from, and why will they switch?
• Where does your monthly sales figure come from? Walk through the calculation.
• What happens to the business if sales reach only half the forecast for six months?
• What will you personally do each week to sell, given that you will be running the project full time?

A short sensitivity table (base case, a weaker case, and the break-even volume) answers the “what if” questions before they are asked and shows the founder has looked at the downside they would be personally liable for.

After funding, the Fund lists marketing services for funded projects: an SME guide, an advertisement list and a magazine (the edition listed at the time of writing is dated 2022). Its services page says these require the project to update its marketing data on the e-services platform. These are useful extras for visibility; they are not a substitute for your own launch plan, and the study should not assume them as a sales channel.

A final check before you submit

• Does every market figure name its source and its year?
• Do the market, capacity and sales figures shrink in a logical order, with the smallest one used in the forecast?
• Does the competitor table match what a visitor would see at your proposed site?
• Do prices, costs and volumes agree between the marketing text and the financial tables?
• Are launch costs (one-off) and ongoing marketing (monthly) separated, and are platform commissions included?
• Can you explain every line in the interview without opening the file?
• Have you followed the Fund’s current approved form, in its order and with its headings?

Then rehearse the interview once with someone who has not read the study: give them the five preparation questions and the sales table, and answer without the file open. Any answer that needs the file is the line to rewrite before you submit. If you want independent help with the reasoning, our marketing strategy and research team can review it; the Fund does not require or endorse any consultant, and the study remains yours.