Online tendering takes off

Takes paper-heavy documentation process out of loop

A young internet company in Abu Dhabi has found success by putting online the paper-heavy process of filing property tenders. Submitting tender documents is often an arduous task involving stacks of documents that need approvals, often at a cost of thousands of dirhams and valuable time. The inefficiency of the process led Karim Helal, the managing partner of Monaqasat.com, to recognise that there was a niche segment of the property market that could be run much more efficiently on the web.

"We're trying to make tendering as simple as putting an ad on Dubizzle," said Mr Helal, a former telecoms executive. "For example, my brothers were developing a tower on Reem Island last year, and the printing costs alone for the tender were Dh100,000 [US$27,225]. That's just way too much work." Once they have signed up, users can issue tenders, publicise them and share documents online with consultants and co-workers.

The website generates revenue by charging users a Dh2,000 membership fee and 30 per cent of the document fees. The the tendering business has taken a hit as the number of property contracts in the UAE has declined because of the economic slowdown, but Monaqasat.com - Arabic for "tender" - has seen its revenue grow to more than Dh5 million on Dh1 billion worth of projects since it launched 14 months ago.

Mr Helal says tenders for about 400 projects have been submitted through his website, with about 95 finalised. Monaqasat.com owes its success to word-of-mouth publicity, he says. "It's been evolving at a really fast pace for us," Mr Helal said. "One of our initial partners was the Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, who used the site to issue tenders to their consultants, and those consultants began referring the site to other consultants and so forth."