Ranking initiative seeks to inspire small firms

Dubai: The Mohammad Bin Rashid Establishment for Young Business Leaders (SME), an agency of the Dubai Department of Economic Development (DED), announced the top 100 SME rankings at a cere-mony at the Dubai World Trade centre yesterday.

The top five SMEs are Dimensions Healthcare, Ecobility Energy solutions, propertyfinder.ae, Intercoil International and Mepco Gulf.

Shaikh Ahmad Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Economic Sector Committee in Dubai, President of Dubai Civil Aviation and Chairman and Chief Executive of Emirates airline and Group, presented the awards.

"The Government of Dubai has launched various initiatives to promote entrepreneurship and SME development under its SME five-year plan. This commitment to promote entrepreneurship and SMEs is in the DNA of Dubai, supported and led by our socio-economic stability, openness and visionary leadership.

"The Dubai SME 100 initiative will serve to inspire our emerging SMEs. It will encourage them to think outside accepted parameters, push their creativity and thus achieve their goals," said Sami Al Qamzi, director general of DED.

Opening several fronts

The Dubai SME 100 initiative was launched by Shaikh Ahmad on March 14 last year. The ranking aims to identify the best performing SMEs.

According to Abdul Baset Al Janahi, CEO of Dubai SME, the ranking will help market the capabilities of Dubai's SMEs to regional and global investors, provide opportunities for SMEs to raise capital, create a base of SMEs for a potential secondary listing of SMEs that can attract equity capital for growth and create a culture of transparency and corporate governance.

"By ranking and recognising the top SMEs, we are opening several fronts. These top 100 SMEs have persevered to achieve major triumphs for their business models, innovations and brands over the years. They have become successful in their own right.

Evaluation platform

"Dubai SME's role is to create a platform for evaluating these top SMEs. Investors in particular will be interested to know who these promising SMEs are and perhaps invest in them. Through Dubai SME 100, we hope to create an indirect pipeline of SMEs for a secondary SME listing market in Dubai. This will help SMEs gain additional external capital, new talents, markets and brand enhancements," Al Janahi said.

Links Group, a consultancy company which advises corporations and individuals on how best to establish legal commercial presence in the UAE and Qatar, ranked the 56th best performing SME in Dubai.

"This achievement is a testament to our efforts to create a robust company formation model that is helping to attract foreign investment interest to Dubai. We couldn't be more proud," said John Martin St Valery, chief executive of Links Group.

Out of the 100 companies selected, 15 per cent are micro enterprises, 52 per cent small enterprises and 33 per cent are medium enterprises.

Services sector companies form 62 per cent, while 13 per cent are in the industrial sector, and 25 per cent in the trading sector.

The returns of the 100 companies combined are an estimated Dh2.3 billion, with a total of Dh1.4 billion in assets, and employing 4,319 people. "The ... UAE is one of the world's leading trade hubs, all of which enables a promising future for businesses of all sizes," said Rana Al Emam, head of business banking, HSBC Bank Middle East.