Dubai's travel and tourism, trade and logistics sectors will see 30 unicorns by 2033

Dubai is confident that it will successfully create 30 unicorns by 2033 in some of the strong sectors such as travel and tourism, trade and logistics, a senior official said on Sunday.

Unicorn refers to a startup which is scaled to reach $1 billion in equity value. In 2023, Dubai announced a plan to create 30 unicorns as part of Dubai Economic Agenda ‘D33’. The emirate has already seen some startups scaling to reach unicorn status including ride-hailing app Careem, cloud kitchen platform Kitopi, Emerging Markets Property Group (EMPG), Swvl and others.

“There is a focus on (creating more) unicorns as Dubai announced that it wanted to grow 30 unicorns. It is a tall order. However, from the growth of startups witnessed with the likes of Careem and others, we believe we can do it. That is our mandate and we are working on it,” said Ahmad Bin Byat, vice chairman of the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy.

Bin Byat was speaking on the sidelines of the Expand North Star exhibition, which began in Dubai on Sunday as part of the Gitex Global – the world’s largest gathering of technology companies.

“Dubai is very strong in specific economic sectors and it is only logical that we see unicorns in those sectors. We have seen unicorns emerging in the property market because real estate is big in Dubai. Similarly, Careem emerged because the taxi and transport sector is strong. Amazon took over Souq because the e-commerce sector is growing exceptionally. We see unicorns emerging in all those sectors where Dubai is strong. We could see logistics, trade and travel and tourism in terms of new unicorns,” added Bin Byat.

In order to support the startup industry across different segments, the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy has different bodies under its umbrella that cater to AI, fintech, health tech and others.

“These groups interact with us and give recommendations in terms of law, policies and processes. We have 6-7 groups from the private sector working with us to meet each sector’s requirements,” said the vice-chairman of the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy.

“With more than 2,000 firms taking part, we are excited that this event has proved very successful and growing in the right direction in line with our strategy. We have seen very good growth this year in attracting new companies and country pavilions into this event,” Bin Byat said, adding that the Chamber will also strongly focus on the post-event issue of how to attract them to set up their bases in Dubai.