Dubai Holding, the global investment holding company, today entered into a partnership with Dubai SME, the agency of the Department of Economic Development (DED) in Dubai mandated to develop the growth of small and medium enterprise (SME) in the UAE.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will provide Dubai SME members with attractive incentives for operations within Dubai Holding companies such as TECOM Group, Jumeirah Group and Dubai Properties Group. Dubai Holding offers conducive business environments across several sectors such the hospitality, real estate, media, ICT, design, industrial, educational, life sciences, retail, and telecommunications among others.

The MoU was signed between Ahmad Bin Byat, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Dubai Holding and Abdul Basit Al Janahi, CEO, Dubai SME. Through this collaboration with Dubai SME, Dubai Holding aims to strengthen its commitment to sustainable development of Dubai’s economy and enhance Dubai’s position as the centre of entrepreneurship.

Ahmad Bin Byat, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Dubai Holding, said, "Dubai Holding has played a major role in the development and growth of strategic sectors to support Dubai’s economic diversification. This has led to a conducive business environment today where we are seeing more people turning to entrepreneurship than ever before. Our collaboration with Dubai SME will help us better support Emirati entrepreneurs and their start-ups as well as existing businesses in Dubai Holding’s business communities."

He added, "The SME sector is vital to Dubai Holding’s strategy of creating an innovation driven knowledge-based economy in line with Dubai’s long-term ambition to transform into the smartest and most productive city in the world."

Abdul Basit Al Janahi commented, "We look forward to working with Dubai Holding on bringing further benefits to the UAE national start-up community in Dubai. It is a pleasure to gain support of a partner that sees SMEs as drivers of innovation, employment and economic growth, and is focused on developing this sector further."

Al Janahi added, "Dubai SME has varied programmes and initiatives aimed to maintain an integrated support system for SMEs in the various stages of their growth, such as the Mohammed bin Rashid Fund, Dubai Entrepreneurship Academy, Hamdan Innovation Incubator, Mohammed bin Rashid Award for Young Business Leaders (YBL) as well as the Dubai SME100 programme to rank top performing SMEs and help them evolve into globally competent enterprises".

"Over the past few years, Dubai SME has supported more than 20,000 Emirati entrepreneurs and contributed to the launch of more than 3,300 national enterprises. Nearly AED 250 million have been disbursed by Dubai SME in incentives and facilities to entrepreneurs during the same period and in addition, we have helped them win government contracts worth more than AED 2.5 billion", added Al Janahi.

Dubai Holding has been a long-standing supporter of the SME sector. TECOM Group, one of Dubai Holding’s key businesses, was established to develop industry-specific infrastructure to attract not only global and regional players but to also encourage entrepreneurs to choose Dubai as their preferred business destination. TECOM Group is committed to the delivery of the ‘National Innovation Strategy’, which aims to develop the UAE into one of the most innovative countries in the world.

As such, it runs two business incubators - the innovation centre ‘in5’ in Dubai Internet City launched in May 2013 and a new incubator building for media start-ups launched at the end of 2015, ‘In5 Media’. in5 has engaged over 4,000 of the UAE's technopreneurs, given over 70 members access to a number of international and regional investors, helping them secure over AED 34 million in funding.

In 2015, the number of registered companies at TECOM Group’s business parks increased by 11% crossing 5,100 companies with more than 76,000 creative workers.

Dubai Holding also supports Endeavor, a not-for-profit US-based organisation that is leading high-impact entrepreneurship movement around the world. Endeavor provides rising entrepreneurs with coaching, mentorship and access to Venture Capital. As a Corporate Partner Dubai Holding supports Endeavor through mentors, guidance and commercial space for operations of their Dubai Chapter.

Source:WAM