Social entrepreneurs can help encourage local business in UAE

Dubai: Can social enterprise be twinned with entrepreneurship? The local offshoot of a venture capital fund hopes to make these seemingly polar opposites come together.

Last November DUBAI+acumen launched a programme to identify what it calls social entrepreneurs and then handpick two of them for funding support. The process culminated last week in the first two projects being identified.

One of the projects — conceived by UAE resident Tracy Fountain — was Back to Basics, which would deliver child injury prevention and paediatric first-aid training courses and materials.

The other was Buksha Social Enterprise, a sustainable rural tourism programme that would support low-income Emiratis throughout the country, launched by Nojoud Bastaki and Muna Hareb.

Dh30,000 grant

They would receive a grant of Dh30,000, sponsored by the Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development and Queen's Fuel, a one-year membership in The Hub Dubai, plus branding and marketing consultancy support from Xische & Co. for three months.

"Based on the positive response, we potentially can run the programme as an annual competition," Pauline Nguyen, a chapter leader at DUBAI+acumen, said.

"The criteria for the competition are that the applicant must be a UAE resident; the idea for the venture should address a social or environmental challenge through a product or service and that the project must be based in the UAE.

Since 2001, the Acumen Fund has invested more than $60 million (Dh220.39 million) in social enterprises.

More than the extent of actual funding support that the entity provides, industry observers believe it is the very presence of such privately-led initiatives that would make the local SME space interesting in the years to come.

Dearth of funding sources

"Whatever support that has emerged has come from semi-government initiatives or the big banks and private equity players," a business consultant said. "What was missing was the grassroots approach to identifying ventures that stood a chance of clicking as a business.

Shortlisting applicants

In November DUBAI+acumen launched the first Business Acumen for Good Competition, which included a workshop series for aspiring social entrepreneurs.

There were 40 applicants of 24 nationalities who attended the workshops. On March 3, more than 20 ideas were pitched to a panel of judges, with five projects being shortlisted and ultimately leading to the two winners.

The winner's purse of Dh30,000 needs to be used within one year from the date of disbursement. DUBAI+acumen will meet the winners each quarter to assess their progress with a paper describing the usage of their funds at the end of the year. However, being a volunteer group and not an investment vehicle, it will not take a stake in the start-up.