Dubai Founders HQ attracts 500 startups within six weeks of launch

New hub unites founders under D33 agenda, hitting 500 startups in six weeks

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Dubai Founders HQ, an initiative that aims to consolidate and strengthen Dubai’s startup and small and medium enterprise (SME) ecosystem.
Dubai Founders HQ, an initiative that aims to consolidate and strengthen Dubai’s startup and small and medium enterprise (SME) ecosystem.
Virendra Saklani/Gulf News

Dubai. Dubai Founders HQ, the new government-backed startup and SME hub, has onboarded 500 startups and 1,500 members in just six weeks since its official launch on October 6 by Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence. Situated in a 20,000 square foot campus at the 25Hours Hotel, this initiative by Dubai Economy and Tourism and the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy aims to consolidate the city’s startup ecosystem into one central ecosystem hub supporting founders, investors, corporates, universities, and government entities under the D33 strategic agenda.

A vibrant campus and curated ecosystem

The campus features a mix of co-working spaces, private offices, digitally enabled meeting rooms, and large event areas capable of hosting workshops, pitch sessions, and policy roundtables. With an occupancy hovering around 70% on a daily basis, startups use the space not only as their main office but also as a place to meet investors or collaborate with peers. The venue’s edgy design embraces Dubai’s creative spirit, incorporating art by local Emirati and expatriate artists to inspire innovation and community.

The HQ sets a high bar for onboarding startups to ensure value-driven connection building. Beyond physical space, the initiative offers a digital platform encompassing licensing support, a learning hub with entrepreneurial content in Arabic and English, and a transparent ecosystem database to help founders, investors, and partners understand the Dubai startup landscape comprehensively.

Driving Dubai’s D33 agenda

Dubai Founders HQ contributes directly to the broader government goal to double the economy by 2033, with a specific target of cultivating 30 unicorn companies within the next decade. The hub’s accelerated growth and ecosystem integration are core to this vision, spotlighting Dubai’s ambition to be a global innovation powerhouse.

Nivetha Dayanand is Assistant Business Editor at Gulf News, covering aviation, financial markets and commodities. A business and financial journalist with a strong interest in multimedia storytelling, she regularly takes complex financial and economic subjects beyond the written word, producing explainer videos that make them easier for a wider audience to understand. Nivetha has interviewed senior policymakers, business leaders and global financial figures both on and off camera. Her past guests include UAE Minister of Economy and Tourism Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, Khaled bin Alwaleed Al Saud, a member of the House of Saud and the founder and CEO of KBW Ventures, Jihad Azour, Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund and Indian ministers Hardeep Singh Puri and N. Chandrababu Naidu. She has also hosted and moderated panels, conferences and awards shows, bringing her newsroom experience to live conversations on business, finance and the economy. An Erasmus Mundus journalism alum, Nivetha is drawn to stories that affect people directly and to reporting that gives a platform to voices that might otherwise go unheard. She was among the first journalists to speak to Petrofac employees in the UAE about unpaid salaries, broke the news of the planned demolition of Dubai’s well-known “Toyota Building”, and helped set the record straight on widely circulated claims that a giant replica of the Moon was coming to Dubai. More recently, her exclusive interview with EDGE Group CEO Hamad Al Marar revealed how the UAE-based defence group deployed its systems along the country’s shore border and established a geofence around the UAE within 48 hours of the February 28 escalation. Prior to joining Gulf News, Nivetha worked at ITP Media, where she helped launch Finance Middle East, a new publication covering the region’s financial sector. Her role spanned reporting and editing, video production, interviews and events. Across print, digital, and video, she focuses on finding the people behind business stories and explaining why those stories matter to the audience reading or watching them.

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