Dubai transforms into freelance hub amid coronavirus pandemic
The number of freelancers working from Dubai has increased since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic last year as remote working has become more accepted and widespread in the region.
Initiatives such as the self-sponsored remote working visa announced in March and the freelancer permit – which has been an option in some of Dubai’s free-zones since 2018 – has also created the right environment for Dubai to become a “pioneer in the region for freelance work,” said Marwan Abdelaziz, CEO of Ureed.com, a digital marketplace for freelancers.
“The UAE is the first country in the region to take serious steps in regulating and providing additional perks for freelancers, and we will see the impact of this in two to three years once people realise the value they can get out of these initiatives and there are enough early adopters,” said Abdelaziz.
“The Ministry of Economy is taking on a lot of initiatives from making sure the licencing and regulatory process of applying for a freelance permit is smooth, simple and competitively priced to working with financial institutions on making sure it is easier for freelancers to open a bank account and apply for a loan or insurance,” he explained.
The pandemic helped Ureed.com onboard 6,000 corporate clients and 65,000 registered freelancers from June through the end of 2020. In mid-2020 Ureed.com acquired seed funding from Wamda, a grant-based fellowship programme for entrepreneurs, and focused on growth.
“More companies and public sector clients realised that they can work with freelancers, which was not the case a day before the pandemic hit. The blessing we saw coming out of the pandemic was that it familiarised those clients with the concept of productive remote working,” explained Marwan Abdelaziz, CEO of Ureed.com, a digital marketplace for freelancers.
The pandemic created an opportunity among companies who preferred to work with freelancers instead of hiring new employees as a means to better manage overhead in an economically challenging time. But it also caused some dip in demand from companies who chose to “slow down their productivity significantly to preserve their cash,” said Abdelaziz.
While freelancers from across the region can sign up to find projects on Ureed.com, it is mainly businesses from UAE and Saudi Arabia that pitch projects and contract freelancers (although the platform is open to employers from around the globe).
Alongside the seed funding from Wamda, the digital platform also acquired Nabbesh, a similar platform that had hosted more professions than Ureed.com.