Following a challenging year of operation under the weight of coronavirus, 83.7 percent of UAE’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs) indicated they are optimistic about the future of their companies, a survey by Dubai-based mobile commerce platform for businesses Zbooni indicated.
Close to 91 percent of the 200 companies surveyed said they expect to grow in 2021, while nine out of ten SMEs believe the UAE is a good location to start a business.
Despite the pandemic, 89.5 percent of the businesses surveyed suggested they had grown their business in the past twelve months.
“We conducted this research to understand how SMEs are faring after a turbulent year. Whilst we have seen strong growth on our digital platform, it is encouraging to see that the SME community has also accelerated over the past 12 months, despite the difficulties of Covid-19,” said Ramy Assaf, CEO and co-founder of Zbooni.
“Entrepreneurs are the backbone of the economy, so to see such confidence and optimism in light of the circumstances is tremendously positive for the UAE and its future,” he added.
Zbooni surveyed a 50-50 split of physical retailers and online-only businesses, representing a broad cross-section of the SME community.
When it comes to growing online sales, Instagram was the top-ranked channel by the country’s SMEs, followed by WhatsApp, own-branded websites, then Facebook. Only 18 percent ranked e-commerce marketplaces as an important driver for their online sales.
“It would probably come as a surprise to the likes of Noon and Amazon, but they appear out of touch with more than 80 percent of the SME community. Many products and services just can’t be serviced with traditional e-commerce marketplaces,” said Assaf.
Ramy Assaf, CEO and co-founder of Zbooni.
“At Zbooni, we are pioneering an exciting path of conversational commerce. It allows businesses to speak in a straightforward manner with their customers via popular chat options like WhatsApp. Rather than offer the cookie-cutter, copy and paste approach as seen on marketplaces, we allow businesses to customise their products and services to suit the needs of their customers. It’s very clear that there is more to ecommerce than marketplaces,” he continued.
Dubai has continued its support of the emirate’s businesses with Dubai SME, the agency of Dubai Economy mandated to develop the SME sector, rolling out AED192 million ($52.2m) worth of incentives in 2020.
The initiatives and incentives last year took the net volume of support provided by Dubai SME to Emirati entrepreneurs and national companies since its inception to AED823.16m, Abdul Basit Al Janahi, CEO of Dubai SME said in May.
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