How the UAE can become ‘the Silicon Valley of the Middle East’

However, he stressed the country and wider region must improve when it comes to corporate innovation and integrating start-ups with businesses and government entities, something that he believes is currently lacking from the regional ecosystem.

Powered by Abu Dhabi Investment Office, the global innovation platform, which is headquartered in Silicon Valley, opened its GCC base in Abu Dhabi in early 2018.

Ahmadzadeh told Arabian Business that over the last three years, Plug and Play Abu Dhabi has accelerated around 65 start-ups across three different accelerators – health care, financial services (FinTech) and travel and hospitality – with a new sector surrounding the fourth industrial revolution just recently launched. It has also helped introduce and scale over 100 start-ups into the market.

But Ahmadzadeh, an economist by background and former advisor to a number of UK Government entities, said: “We’re seeing a lot of companies move here and companies develop, which is promising. But if I’m honest I think there’s a great deal more that can be unlocked in terms of the start-up capabilities, in terms of attracting amazing talent from abroad and also helping home-grown talent.

“I think there’s exceptional leadership. I think a lot of it is being driven from the top in terms of federal level and government level and different sectors. But I think we’re only just getting to the tip-of-the-iceberg and I think much more can be done.”

At a global level, since Plug and Play was originally founded in 2006, start-ups from the company’s independent venture capital arm have raised over $9 billion in funding, with over a dozen successful unicorn portfolio exits including Dropbox, PayPal, Guardant Health, Honey and Lending Club. While locally, corporate partners include the Abu Dhabi Department of Health, Daman, Etisalat Digital, Philips, ADCB, FAB Bank and Riyad Bank.

Ahmadzadeh said: “We want to activate different ecosystems so we can see the best companies and start-ups grow. If we are able to make an investment before those guys scale and become unicorns or whatever, obviously hallelujah, good for us. But the key recipe that’s missing is you have these huge organisations that are ripe for innovation, we know that banks, hospitals, the energy sector, hydrogen, cyber security, these are huge areas where there’s huge return on investment at a private level and the community. There’s no doubt about that, it contributes to job creation, diversification.

“The issue is, these handful of major corporations, you can’t force an agenda onto anyone, tell them they have to innovate or work with a start-up.”

Ahmadzadeh insisted it was about much more than just providing grants or funding for start-ups, but also helping them develop or deploy their solution into the market.

He revealed that the company has accelerated hundreds of start-ups with organisations such as Daimler and Porsche, “because these engineers actually work with start-ups to build products, to do pilots. Start-ups make money, the corporates get huge return on investment and economic activity happens”, he said.

And he believed the potential for the UAE and wider Middle East was huge.

“As this huge bottleneck unlocks I think we’ll see all the different efforts really come together in the UAE. It’ll be the first in the world in its nature and it could be a real powerhouse at the other side of the world from Silicon Valley. It could be a real Silicon Valley of the Middle East,” he said.

“What these major entities, organisations and government bodies could do to support start-ups aside from grants or events, is actually help them to develop or deploy their solution into the market,” he added.