Meydan Free Zone: Empowering global entrepreneurs with digital accessibility

As entrepreneurship becomes increasingly accessible in the UAE, how is Meydan Free Zone redefining its role?

Meydan Free Zone is changing who gets to start a business in Dubai, and how far that business can go. The entrepreneur used to be someone with capital, connections and time to queue. Today it’s the consultant leaving corporate life, the mother building a brand after bedtime, or the founder in Lagos or Bangalore who has never visited Dubai. Meydan Free Zone is fully digital and open around the clock, so a company can be set up at midnight from anywhere in the world. Most of these founders aren’t building local businesses. They’re building for the region and beyond, and Dubai gives them the credibility and connectivity to do it. Our role is to remove the barriers to starting, so ambition is the only requirement left, and to make sure every company is ready for the world from day one.

Beyond AI and automation, what emerging forces will fundamentally disrupt marketing strategies and consumer relationships over the next five years?

Trust. Consumers are already flooded with content that costs nothing to produce, and the volume will only grow. That makes proof the scarce thing: evidence that a real person or a real company stands behind a claim. Brands that can show their work will win. Brands that can only generate it won’t.

The second force is regulation. Data, privacy and advertising rules are tightening everywhere. Marketers who built on cheap targeting will have to rebuild on reputation. Neither force is technical, and both reward the companies that were already honest.

What unconventional marketing decisions have delivered the greatest impact in your career, and how have they challenged traditional thinking about brand growth?

Putting our customer experience team on camera. In February 2026, Meydan Free Zone released The CX Files, a six-episode YouTube series about moments when a founder needed help. Every free zone promises fast, easy and affordable. Founders have heard it so often it no longer registers. What they really want to know is what happens when something goes wrong, and nobody shows them. So we did. Trust isn’t built on the good day. It’s built in the recovery. It changed us internally too: the people who answer the phone became the face of the brand. The other decision is less visible. I measure marketing by cost per qualified lead and conversion, not reach. Marketing stopped being the department that spends money.

As competition intensifies among the UAE’s business hubs, what new opportunities can Meydan Free Zone unlock to attract the next generation of global entrepreneurs?

The next generation of entrepreneurs isn’t comparing one UAE free zone with another. They’re comparing Dubai with Singapore, London and Delaware. That’s the real competition, and it’s one the UAE wins together. For Meydan Free Zone, the opportunity is to make Dubai the obvious answer for founders anywhere in the world, whether they’re starting alone or with a team. We’ve built the foundation: a fully digital setup and the partnerships that help a company open a bank account, find clients and keep growing. What comes next is about staying close enough to founders to see their needs before they ask. The free zones that listen best will attract the next generation.

If you could challenge one widely accepted rule of modern marketing and one conventional approach to entrepreneurship, what would you change and why?

In marketing, it’s the rule that more visibility is always better. Being seen is not the same as growing, and a lot of budget is spent proving otherwise. I’d rather be known well by fewer of the right people. In entrepreneurship, it’s the idea that you should perfect the product before you talk to the market. Talk first. The market will tell you what to build faster than any plan will, and it’s cheaper to learn that before launch than after.