Software Business in the Middle East

Just after we started in Dubai I had spent pretty much time learning about how people make their business in UAE, where they get new contacts and partners. As you understand, one thing is what they write in nice glossy magazines about cool businessmen, and another thing is to meet real people, who are dealing with all the issues on daily basis.

Dubai is very good environment to meet people and learn new stuff. There is a number of Business Clubs and a number of different Networking Events each month where people from different business domains meet to talk to each other. Some countries have their own Business Councils – like American Business Council, Swedish Business Council, and many others.  

I plan to post about all different ways how I met people in Dubai - starting from Business Councils. 

Business Councils

Basically, I dealt mostly with Swedish Business Council (SBC), as we claimed to be a Swedish company. I think I met with Roland Sossi, who was in charge for SBC at that time, already couple days after I had arrived to Dubai. SBC became a very good source of information for us – for example, from Roland I knew that Arab Health, the largest Healthcare Exhibition in the region, was about to start in a few days. That was definitely a place for me to visit.

Later on, when I got the company license, our company became an official member in Swedish Business Council. Every second year they print a Member Directory, and that is really something that can promote you without spending any money at all. Time to time SBC organizes excellent events, like the next one will be a breakfast with a lawyer firm to learn more about corporate law in UAE.

They also organize social events for its members, Go-Cart, Pub Meetings and so on – just to make people meet together from time to time.

But the most advanced event was Swedish Conference, with over 100 people from Sweden, or from Swedish companies working in the region, or just people, who would like to work with Swedish companies. The conference got visitors form Swedish Embassies in all GCC countries – all of them made presentations about their country development and business opportunities.

During the conference they organized 20-30 minutes sessions with representatives from any Swedish Embassy in GCC countries - just to talk about your business and discuss how Swedish Embassy might help you to move forward. I had a meeting with folk from Swedish Embassy in UAE. I told them about our idea to develop Drug Database for UAE and they advised to contact them if I would fail with my efforts to get support and cooperation from official authorities like Ministry of Health in the country. It really sounded like a huge and promising support - I never even thought that Embassy of any country might actually help with your business if you work abroad. But now it seems logically for me - I believe one of the main roles of the Embassy is to promote their country business.

To be continued.