Dubai Reality Check: An Indian VC's Year of Truth
35 comments
·June 28, 2025Simon_O_Rourke
ulfw
> offering something genuinely unique in a market where exclusivity matters
That's the biggest joke for everyone who has ever dealt a tiny bit with the tech market over there. If China is me-too of US tech companies, South East Asia is me-too of Chinese companies and the Middle East is me-too of South East Asian companies.
Think Uber -> Didi -> Grab -> Careem
there is nothing 'genuinely unique' or 'exclusive' by having the same product and business idea implemented four times over. Yes each one has added significant local touch and flavour to it but... unique? Exclusive?
SanjayMehta
They’re looking for partners in money laundering.
Ever heard of the term “hawala?” Originates from this region.
abdulhaq
Hawala is a traditional way of transferring money from one location to another, it can be used for good and bad like all functions around money. Governments don't like it now because they can't spy on it.
tolerance
This is a gross generalization of the practice. And apparently it started in India.
https://web.archive.org/web/20161228041941/https://www.treas...
abdulhaq
what has family values and uniqueness got to do with corruption?
ulfw
What do those have to do with running a successful tech company?
bigbacaloa
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pm90
> Here, the market demands you come dressed in a tuxedo, not the jeans and blazer that passed for formal back home. Your packaging, your experience, your digital presence – everything needs to exude a level of sophistication that would seem excessive in most Indian markets.
The gist of the article just seems to be that the business environment in Dubai is (shocking!) different from that of India, with people needing different things. I don't quite understand or agree with the "competing with the best in the world" though, it just seems like the money people in Dubai just expect you to be better dressed, more presentable, and form a personal relationship before business deals.
dyauspitr
No, what they’re looking for is fundamentally different. They don’t want better solutions or lower cost or greater efficiency. They want something that enhances clout.
jakelsaunders94
I find articles like this super interesting, but they remind me that I’m a deeply technical person and as such would never be able to thrive in the ‘business’ world.
The modern YC startup philosophy of ‘make something people want’ seems to be only partially true. There’s this whole world of coffee dates, relationship building and salesmanship which always feels slimy to me.
roncesvalles
This quote (or rather, "notion", since I no longer remember where I picked it up from) has stuck with me for over a decade: ultimately all business is based on trust; you can't encode everything in the contract.
sandeep1998
Same here. My career situation isn’t looking great, and I haven’t felt truly satisfied at any of the places I’ve worked. I do believe there’s a role out there that strikes a better balance between meaningful work and a sustainable lifestyle—but finding it feels almost as daunting as starting a business from scratch.
shash
You need to do those coffee dates and relationship building to figure out what (other) people want, so it's not even far removed from the philosophy you quote. Yeah, it's _ideal_ if you're your own customer and you have this intuitive knowledge of the product, but that's actually less common (and needn't be common either). As a tech person, I don't find it slimy (at least, anymore). On the pure tech front, it's a process of finding requirements, which flows into the this whole business conversation side of things.
For example, if you view building a business that people want as a challenge, those requirements will vary from place to place and time to time, so finding that out is super important!
Interestingly, I've always viewed the Indian business environment as one that requires a lot more relationship building than (say) a place like the valley, but this article seems to imply that the UAE probably views us the same way I view the US ecosystem...
nicbou
There is a gentler version of this that I, a technical person, deeply enjoy.
Trust removes friction. Having an informal network of trusted peers makes everything easier. You get access to expert knowledge, helpful connections and opportunities simply because you're a friend. They also come to you when your knowledge is relevant to their task.
I just see it as another community, except this one is centred around an industry. It's no slimier than introducing single friends to each other, borrowing tools from a friend, fixing a friend's computer or tipping them off when a flat frees up in your building.
In my case, it means that I can call upon the knowledge of an immigration lawyer or a financial advisor for free. It also means that they get dozens of clients from me because they're my go-to experts.
cornfieldlabs
Yep I'll never succeed in a world where I have to "dress the part".
Luckily this is an era where it doesn't matter much
sandeep1998
Do you run a business?
esperent
Yes. I never play fancy dress with suits. Formal for me means a nice, comfortable shirt and jeans or other clean trousers. On an average day I wear shorts and sandles because it's damn hot. I wear suits to funerals, and once to a wedding, but even most of the weddings I go to have a "smart casual" vibe them, no full suits required.
I rarely meet with investors or anything like that, but when I do, not dressing up is a test. If they judge me for what I wear, beyond basic cleanliness, we're not a good fit for working together.
cornfieldlabs
Not yet :)
kylehotchkiss
Super well articulated! I loved seeing the learning process
needSomeCoffee
Agree completely. Writing was brilliant. Kudos to the author.
alephnerd
Unsurprising.
Dubai investors (Khaleeji, Indian, or Russian) are looking for a "dhandha" - not a business.
Any story that can't be easily translated into an "arbitrage" or "commodity" play just isn't going to land with them.
Abu Dhabi has fairly good growth stage investors, but that's also because they tend to let the money managers and investors remain in London, SF, NYC, etc.
You're better off remaining in the Indian market, or if you want deal flow abroad, then building relationships in the US, ASEAN, UK, or Australia unless you're a "VC" who's trying to land a Dubai Golden Visa in order to evade taxes back in India (these kinds of personas tend to overlap with the kinds who run real estate or export/import "dhandhas" back in India).
dyauspitr
What is a dhandha? Like a way of life that is a business?
severnaya123
The literal translation is "business". But the contextual meaning here is closer to "arrangement/understanding". In India the word sometimes refers to underhanded/corrupt practices (there's a bollywood song where the lyrics go "sab ganda hai par dhandha hai ye", which can roughly be translated as "it's shady work, but that's business")
With that said, I don't really agree with the parent comment here, but I don't know enough about business practices in Dubai so I may be wrong.
SanjayMehta
Literally it means “trade,” but in reality it means hustling.
Real life example: a petty smuggler I knew had his younger brother run the shop, while he himself ran the “dhandha.” This was in the 80s when buying original CDs and Nike shoes needed you to know the right shop in South Delhi. The elder one knew all the Hong Kong and Singapore dealers, the right customs agents while the younger just sold the goods.
petesergeant
Interestingly I’ve seen what felt like almost a directionally identical article written about Dubai -> Saudi, eg it’s all about building the personal relationships first, but even more so
anovikov
Why doing so if they can do it in US where there's little to no bullshit of that sort, and way more investment dollars than in Dubai?
shash
Actually, there's a lot of investment dollars in the mid-east - maybe more than in much of the US, and it's actively looking for good ideas. Also, for certain types of business, the environment is probably more conducive there than in the US...
bigbacaloa
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Oras
The article is an example of someone who didn’t do their homework of research. How do you fly to a new country to establish a business without researching it, understand the culture, how business is done?
The other point of “networking”, I don’t know how you could even make a business without networking, why this is shocking to OP?!
alephnerd
To be brutally honest, FortyTwo VC is a low-mid tier early stage investor in the Indian market.
There are better angels and early stage funds in India, but these guys couldn't differentiate themselves in the now increasingly competitive Indian VC scene.
The cream of the crop of early stage startups in India tend to go to YC, Peak XV, some university alumni network programs, Antler, and a couple others.
gsky
All YC startups are crap these days
> what business partners want in a deal is enhancing prestige, aligning with family business values, and offering something genuinely unique in a market where exclusivity matters.
There must be some awfully corrupt shenanigans selling stuff out there so. No wonder the Chinese telcos run all Dubai's backbone infra, those guys are old hands at liberally distributing "incentives" to patriarchal organizations to get their way.