Eyes On Dubai: The Gulf Region As A Startup Haven?

18

October

2018

Can Dubai rise to be a 21st-century tech ecosystem?

5/5 (1)

While Silicon Valley may stand undefeated as the most prominent name for tech entrepreneurs and startup visionaries, other regions are worthy competitors. Dubai’s rulers see a startup economy as one of the keys to ensuring it will be a global player long after the region’s oil runs out. Can Dubai rise to be a 21st-century tech ecosystem?

Dubai has become the center of commerce and technology in the Middle East. The middle eastern headquarters for large Tech companies, such as Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, are located in Dubai . This development has attracted a great number of companies to come to Dubai. Similarly, it led to a growth in significance for Dubai’s position as the startup hub of the Middle East. Dubai is an attractive market for companies, and has a lot to offer to entrepreneurs. Although it is a relatively small market by itself, it has attracted outside talent as well as outside capital. Entrepreneurs launch a startup in Dubai to scale for the entire region and beyond. Furthermore, Dubai is politically and economically stable, safe and prosperous. The quality of life is high, enabling highly skilled and talented people to move to Dubai. The favourable tax conditions (Dubai introduced taxes in the beginning of 2018: 5% VAT) also attract capital, companies and people.

The startup scene effectively started in 2010 with a few startups, one co-working space and a few early stage investors. In recent years, this has grown into a massive scale: There are hundreds of startups, hundreds of million dollars in venture capital, many co-working spaces, incubators and accelerators. Even the government is support the ecosystem with capital as well as their flagship and prestiges accelerator: Dubai Future Accelerator (https://dubaifutureaccelerators.com/en/) Its vision is to pull the future forward faster.

Nonetheless, the market itself is still quite young and undeveloped. That means execution is more difficult, but it also means that competition is less fierce. It is challenging to create a successful business in Dubai, but if you do, it is worth it. In recent years, there have only been a few exits. The most famous one has been Amazon’s acquisition of Souq (http://souq.com/). Rumour has it that Uber has plans to acquire its local competitor Careem very soon for $2.3bn.

As more and more of these deals take place, there will be more attention and trust in the ecosystem. Consequently, there will be more experienced entrepreneurs as well as more capital in circulation. These are all indicators that the ecosystem is moving towards the right direction. I believe the peak of Dubai’s tech ecosystem is yet to come, what do you think?

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Autonomous revolution: What else is going Driverless?

17

September

2018

In the autonomous revolution that is underway, virtually every means of transportation will be self-driving.

5/5 (3)

In the autonomous revolution that is underway, virtually every means of transportation will be self-driving. The automotive industry might still need a few decades before the first driverless car is commercially available. But what about other industries? Be prepared to say good bye to your favourite cab driver, machinist,..and maybe even your human pilot.

Autonomous Ships – Riding the Wave of the Future
In 2016, freight shipping accounted for 90% of world’s trade, which amounts to around 10.3 billion tons of product. Besides freight shipping, industries such as wind farming, oil/gas, fishing and environmental research, have ships at sea. An over-crowded sea and the market size of freight shipping make and interesting case for startups and multinationals, such as Rolls Royce, to automate maritime vessels. The first vessels could become seaborne as soon as 2020. [1] [2] [3] [4] 

Fun fact: MIT is a frontrunner in the research on automated ships. The first major research project of autonomous boats in metropolitan areas is conducted in Amsterdam by MIT and the AMS  Institute [5]. Another interesting project in the Netherland is led by captainai.com, which is developing AI navigation software [6].

Autonomous Helicopters
The first successful heli projects already came to fruition. One of them is the AACUS using LiDAR, cameras, on-board computers and reinforcement learning algorithms. The AACUS has been developed by Aurora, acquired by Boeing. It already completed multiple flights and made first cargo deliveries in 2017. Through reinforcement learning, robotic helicopters teach themselves to fly difficult manoeuvres by observing other helicopters. After learning through observation, they can fly their own aerobatic stunt show. Autonomous helicopters are particularly interesting to the marine (think autonomous warfare), as well as for people and cargo transportation. Most research is currently conducted by the the marine, NASA and universities, such as Stanford. [7] [8]

And many more…
Other means of transportation expected to go autonomous include planes, trains, taxis, trucks and shuttles. In the past decades, major advances have been made, however, the autonomous revolution is still further ahead than some of us would like to think. Do you believe in the dawn of the autonomous revolution?

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