The Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) – which is the leading global financial centre in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia (MEASA) region – has launched the world’s first venture studio platform that is exclusively focused on “ubiquitous finance” and digital asset technologies.
DIFC’s dedicated unit, called Studio Launchpad, will attract and engage a consortium of leading startup and corporate venture studios.
Venture studios are innovative organisations that proactively build and invest in startups and help them actively achieve success with their own internal capabilities.
Studio Launchpad will build on the DIFC’s efforts to enable collaboration and co-creation between venture studios, corporations, entrepreneurs, investors, and academic partners from around the world.
With this initiative, Dubai will become the leading hub for venture building in Middle East, Africa, and South Asia (MEASA) region, and will join cities such as San Francisco, New York, Berlin, and Paris, which are recognised venture building hubs.
Impact of the Studio Launchpad platform
Over the next five years, more than 20 studios will setup in the DIFC, more than 200 new ventures are expected to be launched, of which more than 100 are likely to be scale-ups and 10 are expected to gain the unicorn status.
Together, they will create more than 8,000 innovation jobs in Dubai and attract more than $544.5 million (AED 2 billion) in venture capital.
The initiative is also a key part of the DIFC’s efforts to achieve the goals of its 2030 strategy by providing them with all the necessary support to develop, test, and launch new startups, scale-ups, and corporate ventures on an unprecedented scale and time to market and quality.
The governor of DIFC, Essa Kazim (above), said: “DIFC is already home to the largest financial and fintech ecosystems in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. Launching the first global Venture Studio Launchpad is a core pillar of our vision to put DIFC at the centre of the digital transformation of the financial sector in the UAE and globally, reflecting the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.”
He added: “We see great potential to leverage the venture studio model to accelerate creation of scale-ups and unicorns from Dubai that will contribute over-proportionally to new job creation and economic development.
“DIFC is building an ecosystem from the ground-up that will support studios and founders with everything they need to be successful and reimagine virtually every aspect of the financial services value chain to help realise Dubai’s ambitions for the digital era.”
Currently, there are more than 730 active venture studios around the world. More than 50 percent of them launched during the past five years. The rate of growth among corporate venture studios is even higher.
New ventures that launch from studios experience 30 percent higher company success rates, and approximately 5 percent of them make it to a unicorn status, according to research published by the Global Startup Studio Network.
Construction begins on facility that will house DIFC’s Studio Launchpad
DIFC has broken ground on a new 150,000-square feet purpose-built facility that will house the Studio Launchpad team who will work alongside corporate sponsors, investors, and the new ventures they co-create.
Every aspect of the design aims to encourage spontaneous interactions that build community, create partnerships, and drive innovation.
The “Ubiquitous Finance” innovation ecosystem and Studio Launchpad was developed by DIFC in partnership with Dubai-based venture studio Enhance Ventures and Silicon Foundry, a leading Silicon Valley-based innovation advisory group.
The studio model is a great fit for the Middle East due to its proactivity and ability to support founders in the early days of operations.
DIFC is the best place for the model to strive in the region as it is the largest cluster of leading financial institutions and fintech and Innovation companies. It also provides the perfect mix of talent, quality infrastructure, strong regulatory offering, and financing.
The Studio Launchpad streamlines the company-formation process and fast-tracks the development of new companies that will underpin DIFC’s quickly developing “Ubiquitous Finance” ecosystem.
The initiative also supports fundraising and scaling of new ventures by providing resident venture studio operators with access to a global network of potential customers, entrepreneurs, investors, and subject-matter experts, all underpinned by a progressive regulatory environment and world-class infrastructure.
Part of the Studio Launchpad offering will also be a first-of-its-kind Research Living Lab which will drive thought leadership and hands-on research in this fast-evolving space with the aim to open new opportunities and produce data and insights that can inform how to shape existing and future business models, laws, and regulations.
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