Every adversity leads to opportunity. That’s the mantra embraced by some of the most powerful companies and leaders in the world, and one that’s even more apt today.
Dubai: The coronavirus pandemic has proven just how quickly the best laid plans can crumble. In mere weeks, a seismic shift in world economies and, in truth, every aspect of our lives have been forever changed by something that’s microscopically small in size. While the focus now is on resilience and recovery, there’s also much to be said about fueling growth through adversity. After all, many companies that are household names today, including the likes of WhatsApp, Uber and Airbnb, emerged after the 2008 economic crisis. Even closer to home, Yahoo famously bought out Arabic portal Maktoob in 2009, while 2010 saw the launch of Cobone.com and healthy food chain Kcal.
So, what companies will be borne of the great pandemic of 2020? Government-owned free zone KIKLABB is already witnessing the next wave of startup superstars, right on the shores of Dubai. Designed to take the hassle out of starting a business, the one-stop business platform does it all, from licensing to banking and insurance, to workspaces, networking and more.
“KIKLABB is a place to innovate and collaborate. Our ecosystem not only supports growth of the next big idea, but enables entrepreneurs and business owners to interact and inspire, often leading to even bigger ideas and greater strength in the community. It’s the butterfly effect, but for businesses,” explains Tasawar Ulhaq, KIKLABB Founder & CEO.
KIKLABB has been a source of inspiration and a partner for growth for new-age entrepreneurs, such as British businessman John Butterworth. With more than a decade of experience in the Middle East, he found himself out of a job during a massive restructuring. The experience, coupled with his observations of the region over the years, made him realize how companies in this part of the world often fast forward growth but compromise on a clear future strategy. With the help of KIKLABB, he set up GrowthHUB to give companies a smart support system.
“GrowthHUB is a platform for success – literally! We offer UAE entrepreneurs and small consultancy businesses the opportunity to build their own brand, but within the legal/billing/compliance infrastructure and technology platform of GrowthHUB. This helps startups mobilize quickly to take advantage of simple setup, lower costs, and minimal bureaucracy. Rather than selling licenses and office space, we keep things ultra-simple for aspiring entrepreneurs, allowing them to trade from a valid UAE mainland company in their formative stage, and participate in wider referral opportunities from within the GrowthHUB community,” explains Butterworth. “We also provide HR advisory and project management services to businesses – particularly SMEs who lack access to high level technical or professional expertise.
After seeing encouraging success with GrowthHUB and identifying consistent skills gaps in SMEs, Butterworth also set up HIRED!, a new concept in recruitment focused on helping SMEs punch above their weight.
“Finding candidates is rarely difficult in a downturn, but clients are left to make costly mistakes by making final hiring decisions in an unstructured way. This is disproportionately true in SMEs because they often lack the internal recruitment infrastructure to run structured hiring processes, and traditional agencies don’t really help in this area. We put every candidate through a focused video interview that is then evaluated against a behavioural or competency framework – in this way we’ve helped eliminate first interviews, reduce time to hire, showcase talents companies otherwise wouldn’t have recognized from a CV, and spot behavioural red flags that would have typically been missed. What’s more, we do all this for less than the cost of a traditional agency service.”
Emirati entrepreneur Hesham Al Hemeiri also leveraged a unique gap in the market, collaborating with KIKLABB for a brand new venture. Al Hemeiri was working for the Federal Tax Authority (FTA) as their IT Director for Business Alignment when Value Added Tax (VAT) was first introduced in the United Arab Emirates. Despite the FTA making the process as seamless as possible, he realized that some companies and entrepreneurs were stumbling. After all, many were dealing with VAT for the very first time and were struggling to find the time to juggle and figure out the tax system alongside decision-making, sales and other tasks involved with running a business. He decided it was time to help the community navigate the uncharted tax territory and set up Taxify.
“Taxify was created to simplify the tax obligations for companies in the UAE and let owners focus on growing their businesses,” explains Al Hemeiri. “Our online system helps users generate FTA complaint invoices, manage their expenses and at the end of every VAT period uses a smart ‘wizard’ to generate their VAT return.” Specific attention was given to the procedures and requirements set out by the UAE law. For instance, the system segregates sales by branches and emirate, manages voluntary discloses, reverse charges, and lets users know when they should file their next return to avoid being penalized.
“The market features multiple options to manage invoicing and VAT, but Taxify is a homegrown system which pays attention to details that are only true to this market. We have a real edge as many solutions in the market are from other parts of the world and have not been made with the UAE law in mind.” For a minimal monthly subscription, that starts from AED200, users are able to keep VAT-compliant records on Taxify and populate an audit file. Al Hemeiri adds that everyone can try Taxify for free at www.Taxify.ae and remains grateful to KIKLABB for making the entire setup process seamless and helping to leverage meaningful connections.
Another KIKLABB alumni is Yalman Khan, an experienced venture capital and private equity investor. He’s seen and done it all – agri-tech in Japan, budget hotels in South East Asia, healthcare in Dubai and medical technology in New Zealand. Khan has now teamed up with a leading UK specialist hedge fund to establish a London-regulated real estate exchange, which allows family groups to realise next day liquidity in full or in part. Many others have tried similar exchanges, but tier-1 banks are set to provide counterparty liquidity in this particular market.
Realizing that not many people were aware that real estate can be traded – not just in full, but that you can also purchase AED300 worth of a property – he decided to launch his latest venture, Mpactum Capital. It’s set to revolutionize the way we invest. The central piece of this new firm is its artificial intelligence (AI) engine. This machine learning centrepiece has a five-year track record of successfully trading commodities and, more recently, equities. The London-based team is set to move to the UAE and apply this world-class technology in the affordable real estate market.
“We are launching an online platform for trading real estate, where users can buy and sell with the help of an advanced AI system that recommends the best moves for the best gains possible,” Khan explains. “The banks dragged the City of London across the line in what was known as the Big Bang during the late 80s when equities trading became digital. The same happened in the commodity trading world in 2000. It is about time we corrected this in real estate.”
MPACTUM Capital has developed an AI-based asset allocation and liquidity exchange called Cube Black. This will be further developed to launch from the UAE in early 2021.
“KIKLABB has been instrumental in guiding, assisting, and helping us connect with the right lawyers, government agencies and professional service providers to enable us to settle in Dubai. 2020 has been a challenging year but KIKLABB has made it compelling for us”, adds Khan. “We wouldn’t have moved the team from London to Dubai if it weren’t for the leadership team’s problem-solving skills at KIKLABB. They are a true partner.”
These are just a few of examples of how the region’s business playbook is being rewritten this year, championing smart solutions for a brave new world. The best it seems, is yet to come. – abdulbasit@theuaenews.com
