CNN Explores The Impact Of Covid-19 On Dubai’s Startup Sector

In a 30-minute special, CNN’s Follow That Startup revisits business owners in the startup capital of the Middle East – Dubai, to see how they are navigating their way through the coronavirus pandemic.

According to data firm Magnitt, 2019 was a record year for the Middle East with over $700 million invested in startups. Magnitt founder Philip Bahoshy speaks about this record investment, “You saw more investments than any previous year on record. And of course, the UAE with its strong history received the lion’s share of that investment. So it was very positive.”

As 2020 began, the startup landscape was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Bahoshy describes how business founders faced the crisis, “Was the startup world ready for COVID-19? I don’t think the world was ready for COVID-19, let alone the startup world. What I have to say is that, the startup world was probably better equipped than the SME and offline world to adapt. We’re told as founders to be flexible, to pivot our businesses.”

The show meets Nomad founder Helen Chen. Her business uses technology to change the way people are buying, selling and renting homes, “The goal of Nomad is to empower our customers through technology. And real estate is offline because it’s a physical asset, but what we’ve done we’ve brought the experience completely online. You could actually buy a house without leaving your couch.”

Chen says that while the pandemic has hit the property market hard, putting technology at the heart of her startup has helped deal with the crisis, “As a technology company, we are very fortunate to be in a position where it’s easy for us to transition. And a lot of that is due to the software tools that we use.”

Radio DJ Kris Fade launched his startup Fade Fit Kids to provide healthy snack alternatives for children. The business launched four new products as the coronavirus hit the region. Fade describes this experience, “You never want to launch a product as a pandemic’s going on. All our plans from our marketing plans to where we were going to distribute them, it all went out the window.”

Although it has impacted his expansion plans, Fade believes the pandemic has taught his business valuable lessons, “Has the pandemic affected our future plans? Yeah, definitely. We would be in more surrounding countries right now. What did it do though? It taught us how to work differently and I think that’s really important. We’ve learned a lot.”

While some sectors have been negatively impacted by the coronavirus crisis, e-commerce has seen vast growth. Food delivery service Farmbox has benefitted from this boom in online sales. Co-founder Romain Ollivier discusses taking advantage of this opportunity, “You could see the figures going through the roof, but you have to make it work. You have to make it successful because it’s one thing to get the sales, it’s another to deliver.”

Another business which saw huge gains during the economic disruption was farming company Pure Harvest. Founder Sky Kurtz tells CNN about the current re-examination of domestic food production, “COVID-19 was an awareness event to the importance of companies like ours that contribute to domestic production of food, I say as a priority, and not only here but in Saudi, in Kuwait, all of the countries in the GCC are announcing both initiatives and funding to support the deployment of technologies, to support their own domestic food production.”

While the COVID-19 pandemic has had differing impacts on startups across Dubai, Fade is confident that the resilience of entrepreneurs will help the industry survive, “Yes, we’ve lost some companies. Yes, some businesses aren’t going to survive it. But from that I guarantee we’re going to see new companies developing.”

‘Follow That Startup’ airs on Saturday 15th August at 1400 GST on CNN International
The show also airs at the following times:
Saturday 15th August at 2330 GST
Sunday 16th August at 0900 GST and 2000 GST
Monday 17th August at 0000 GST
Tuesday 18th August 0700 GST