Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism has launched SME in a Box, a platform designed to reduce the time and cost involved in setting up and running a small business in the emirate.
The initiative consolidates access to services that founders typically have to source and negotiate independently: licencing, banking, digital payments, telecommunications, logistics, HR, and insurance. Rather than managing multiple onboarding processes separately, businesses on the platform work through a curated set of 18 pre-approved private sector partners, with dedicated support from the start.
Dubai SME, the agency behind the initiative, says the bundled partner packages could save businesses up to 80,000 dirhams, depending on which services they activate.
Founders who use both the banking and payment processing options are estimated to save around 200 hours in setup and onboarding time alone.
Speaking to Lana exclusively on the sidelines of the initiative’s launch, Ahmad Mohammed Salem AlRoom AlMeheiri, Chief Executive Officer of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Establishment for Small and Medium Enterprises Development (Dubai SME) said the decision to launch SME in a Box came after understanding “challenges faced by entrepreneurs and SMEs in the market.”
“Based on that, we started building an initiative to help them [SMEs and entrepreneurs] start and operate their business in the fastest way possible, with the least cost possible. We put different categories and brought strategic partners in each category, offering exclusive offers in terms of the onboarding fees, or the commission, or any fees – the idea is to lower the cost that the SMEs and entrepreneurs are facing, and to help save time for onboarding; having it in one platform, offering various offers – it’s going to make it more easy for SMEs to operating Dubai.
“We currently have 18 partners, and this number of partners will increase based on the challenges entrepreneurs will face in the future. This is the Dubai model – it’s built on the government and the private sector partnership. The government is always listening to SMEs and entrepreneurs,” he said.
Partners include DHL, ADIB, afs, Ziina, revent, Maison Cloud Technologies, ascentia, du, Bayzat, paymob, Qashio, Crossval, Emirates NBD, Aramex, Commercial Bank of Dubai, network, tabby and Mamo.
Dubai SME in a Box intiative to attract more businesses in Dubai
“The initiative is definitely going to ease the process of the process of doing business in Dubai. Plus it is going to lower the cost of doing business for entrepreneurs and SMEs, and for sure, by doing that, it is going to make more business operations here comfortable,” he added.
The initiative is positioned under the Dubai Economic Agenda D33, which targets a doubling of the emirate’s economy and is supported operationally by the Dubai Economic Development Corporation.
Beyond setup, SME in a Box is set to connect with the Dubai Foundation ecosystem, giving founders a pathway toward mentorship, funding, and strategic partnerships as their businesses grow.
