Financial technology companies in the Dubai International Financial Centre have raised a combined $3.3 billion in venture funding, with growth in line with the onshore financial hub’s goal of doubling its contribution to the emirate’s economy, the DIFC governor has said.
FinTech was the fastest-growing sector for the DIFC last year, with Dubai's location allowing FinTech companies an “unparalleled access” to a market of more than three billion people with an aggregate GDP exceeding $12 trillion, Essa Kazim said on Monday at the Dubai FinTech Summit.
“We saw unprecedented growth in 2023 with FinTech and innovation as the fastest growing sector with 902 registered companies, a 31 per cent increase from the previous year,” Mr Kazim said.
The total number has since grown to more than 1,000 companies in the DIFC, one of the top financial centres in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia region.
“This accelerated growth trajectory is perfectly aligned with the goals of the Dubai Economic Agenda D33,” he said.
Launched in January, D33 aims to double the size of Dubai’s economy, with a target of reaching Dh32 trillion by 2033.
The economic agenda also aims to make Dubai a global digital economy leader, the fastest growing and most attractive global business centre, a hub for sustainability and economic diversification, as well as an incubator for talented citizens and unicorns.
The DIFC has been expanding five times faster than the emirate's average GDP growth over the past 10 years, contributing about 6 per cent to its GDP until the past year.
It aims to double its contribution to Dubai’s economy by 2030 and is banking on sectors including wealth and asset management as well as FinTech to help it achieve its end-of-the-decade goals.
Last year, 316 FinTech companies established a presence at DIFC, while its count for wealth and asset management companies grew to 350, pushing the number of total active companies to 5,523 that employ more than 41,500 people.
Dubai in recent years has undergone a surge in FinTech investment, with total FinTech funding reaching $2.3 billion in 2023 alone, according to Magnitt data.
Global investment in FinTech companies also surged past $100 billion mark in 2023, a 50 per cent annual increase, which underpins the “robust investor appetite for FinTech innovations”, Mr Kazim said, citing data from CB Insights.
The rapid growth of FinTech is also pushing wealth managers as well as global exchange operators to evolve their own technology products and offerings to stay relevant amid increasing competition from FinTech companies across the board.
“If we look at the growth trajectory of our business, already we generate more revenue on the elements of our business outside of our exchanges ... than we do in our exchange business,” said Adena Friedman, chief executive of Nasdaq.
“We are likely to be more of a FinTech provider over the next 10 years than an exchange operator, although both roles are equally critical to our strategy.”
Having the exchange businesses creates the foundation and allows Nasdaq to grow and expand and “everything we do is all interconnected”, she added.
For asset managers, it is also important to evolve along with how their clients consume information and make investments in a rapidly changing technological landscape.
“Our clients have been changing over decades and over the years and they will continue to change, and Julius Baer has to continue to be part of that change. In terms of our clients what we see these days [changing] is obviously information,” said Nic Dreckmann, chief executive of Swiss private bank Julius Baer.
“I think we always need to look to expand, we need to look at what is our value proposition.”
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Afghanistan fixtures
- v Australia, today
- v Sri Lanka, Tuesday
- v New Zealand, Saturday,
- v South Africa, June 15
- v England, June 18
- v India, June 22
- v Bangladesh, June 24
- v Pakistan, June 29
- v West Indies, July 4
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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Company Profile:
Name: The Protein Bakeshop
Date of start: 2013
Founders: Rashi Chowdhary and Saad Umerani
Based: Dubai
Size, number of employees: 12
Funding/investors: $400,000 (2018)
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