I was honoured to be invited to Bahrain this week to give a talk at an event organised by Bahrain Development Bank’s Rowad Programme, a comprehensive platform providing multiple layers of support to Bahrain’s entrepreneurs and start-ups.

Rowad’s breadth and depth are far greater than anything else that I have seen in the region, and addresses multiple facets of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and startups. The programme comes as close to being a super-contained entrepreneurial ecosystem as I have seen. If you are an entrepreneur I urge you to seriously consider their offerings. If you are an investor you might consider looking at the entrepreneurs and start-ups that Rowad is supporting as when entrepreneurs have that breadth and depth of support then they should have a greater probability of success.

The Rowad Talk, moderated by the programme’s co-founder Areije Al Shaker, was a dynamic event that featured some good discussions with the audience. One point in particular, about the necessity for entrepreneurs to seek external feedback, deserves elaborating upon. Continue reading →

Entrepreneurs are facing pressure from multiple challenges with a major one continuing to be the cost structure of doing business in the UAE.

Sharjah appears to provide a solution.

This section of today’s column is co-written with Najla Al-Midfa, General Manager of Sheraa and one of the region’s thought leaders and active architects of entrepreneurship ecosystems in the UAE.

If you are a regular reader of my column you will know that I am a little bit exasperated at what I see as deep denial in the business community about current and future economic challenges. On a personal basis this has created a challenge for me in restructuring my family investment portfolio in response to those same economic challenges. This has led me to an interesting insight.

The part of the portfolio that I was looking at that led to this insight was the real estate sub-portfolio. The real estate sector does not have as much transparency in terms of price discovery as, say, the listed equity markets. An investor needs to be continuously in the market, working with real estate brokers, to truly know where the prices are for different types of real estate in different locations. The flight from high cost residential to middle and low cost residential is relatively well known and logically sound. It is a great defensive move and one that investors believe will protect their investments and their yield. What was surprising to me was finding out that prices for these types of residential properties was rising at quite a healthy rate in the Emirate of Ajman.

A little investigation made it clear why. We have all heard about people working in Dubai but living in Sharjah due to the latter’s more affordable cost structure. What anecdotal evidence suggested was that commercial prerogatives were following personal ones, ie some companies based in Dubai who need to manage their costs are moving part, if not all, of their work force to Sharjah. So some of those working in Sharjah simply decided to live in Ajman to free up even more of their income for savings or discretionary expenditure. Continue reading →