The Dubai Airport Freezone Authority (DAFZA) officially launched a one-of-a-kind innovative start-up program called Scality, which is set to attract local, regional and global tech start-ups and enable them to establish and grow their businesses in the region.
Scality offers start-ups the opportunity to set up and operate their businesses with flexibility and convenience through a commercially effective way. It provides a subscription-based program that covers lease and licensing fees, as well as space that start-ups require for their operations. Scality enables start-ups to pay per employee per month through a pay as you grow model, which enables them to scale their teams flexibly and efficiently.
Amna Lootah, Assistant Director-General, DAFZA said: “Our role at DAFZA as a growth enabler for start-ups is to help them thrive and build strong strategic relationships with partners. DAFZA aims through Scality to provide entrepreneurs with integrated solutions and services to help ease some of the challenges they may face while establishing their businesses. These challenges include upfront costs and set-up funds, access to talent as well as the ability to scale up sales. We offer cost effective and flexible setup solutions, as well as access to a network ecosystem to allow them to showcase their cutting-edge services and explore potential partnerships.”
The program will be led by Chairman Hassan Waheed, Senior Investment Advisor at DAFZA. Since joining DAFZA in 2018, Waheed has played an influential role in establishing and managing relationships with various financial institutions and providing financial consultancy to various projects and investments within the free zone.
The start-up program sponsored the STEP conference, the leading tech festival for emerging markets entitled this year as STEP Anywhere 2021, which will take place virtually from 29 until 31 March 2021. The state-of-the-art solutions Scality provides to tech start-ups will be showcased at the conference through a series of speeches, panel discussions and one-on-one meetings.
Start-ups will also be able to interact and network with Scality’s team to learn more about the program, its benefits and how Scality can help them set up and scale their operations. Some benefits that Scality will provide include members’ access to a suite of best-in-class partnerships across key pillars such as tax, legal, talent, banking, cloud solutions, payment gateways amongst others.
