Software Business in the Middle East

We started our company in Dubai Internet City (DIC) back in January 2006. Since then we’ve been waiting for a proper office to rent. Even with the hyper increase in the office space rent we were still promised to get an office inside Dubai Internet City for about 140 dirham per sq. ft.. The office size we expected to get was about 700 sq. ft.

Normally, companies are not allowed to get office space outside such Free Zones like DIC. But in August 2008 we got a call from Dubai Internet City that we would get an office outside the Free Zone, because it would take another 3 years in the waiting list otherwise. For the office outside we would pay 300 dirham per sq. ft. having minimum 1,000 sq. ft. That’s kind of four times more expensive than promised. Oh, and having one nice condition - payment would be done one year upfront - 300,000 dirham as one payment before we sign lease agreement.

It’s nice business for the guys selling office space (well, it was nice business until the recession), but it was no way we would pay such huge amount of cash upfront. So the question was where to move the company to because otherwise we would not get our license renewed.

First we considered Ras Al Khaima Free Zone. It’s kind of 100 km from Dubai, but since they got a nice business center in Dubai, who cares where we got our license from.

RAK Free Zone has an excellent sales staff - they answered all our questions in details, they advised what to do in what order and how to make sure that company operations are moved smoothly. If you have no special reason to have your license issued by one of the Free Zones in Dubai, I would recommend to look at the option to get licensed in RAK Free Zone.

Then it just happened that I heard about Dubai Biotechnology and Research Park (Dubiotech). It’s another Free Zone in Dubai intended to hold companies working in medical and healthcare domains. They didn’t have any description if they could hold companies working with IT healthcare, but their sales team said it’s OK. So we decided to go for Dubiotech instead of RAK FZ.

Dubiotech has simply amazing team. Many things were solved by phone, or simply sending them e-mails stating that I agree to some points and they could go ahead with them. Even my visa was transfered from DIC to Dubiotech during 19 hours only - this is something I almost didn’t hope for thinking I got to postpone my trip.

Finally, now we hold a license issued by Dubiotech. They got plenty of brand new office spaces, and all of them have furniture. The facilities in their business center are excellent and I just hope they won’t increase their rent prices in the near future.