UAE’s new entrepreneurs turn to social media to pursue dreams

Chef Ahmed Ali at Home Bakery, whose founder, Hind Al Mullah, moved the business from her home to a commercial outlet when photos of her products went viral on Instagram. Reem Mohammed / The National

UAE entrepreneurs are increasingly using social media to grow their businesses, taking home-based boutique industries to the public by reaching out directly to consumers.

Hind Al Mullah, the founder of Home Bakery in Dubai, said her initial success came through using social media.

By sending photos of her home-made baked goods via BlackBerry Messenger, they were then forwarded onwards by others.

“I was shy, wondering who would ever want to buy from me,” said the 28-year-old. “So I gave it a try. I got my first order that same week.”

According to a survey by the US-based Digital-Warriors Internet Marketing, social media applications are used by 76 per cent of businesses worldwide.

In the UAE alone, there are 3.6 million active Facebook users, and 363,000 Twitter accounts. Collectively they tweet as many as 2.5 million times each day, according to the website stats.ae. In addition, the majority of successful brands have a social-media page to widen their marketing coverage and to make their brand more accessible to internet users.

The rise of bakeries, events planning and fashion designing businesses, among others, in the UAE is a result of an increased social-media presence. Its advent has made it easier for entrepreneurs to showcase their products.

Ms Al Mullah, an Emirati from Dubai, moved from BlackBerry to Instagram, where she shared tempting photos of her Chewy Melts cookies – now her best-selling product.

“Instagram was the key to it all,” she said. “People eat with their eyes first, so Instagram was perfect.

“Before Instagram, I used to take a reasonable amount of orders, which I was able to manage, but after Instagram things started to go out of control.

“I had sleepless nights, got used to not eating and just was touring around like crazy.”

Ms Al Mullah decided then that she needed help to expand her business. “I couldn’t just hand over this job to anybody. I needed people with patience who understand the term ‘customers are always right’, because I believe in this term.”

The time had come, she found, to move away from a home-based operation and open her own bakery.

She also needed space for storage and a special staff to handle her loyal customers.

“I needed a location for my customers to pick up their orders any time they wanted,” she said.

Meera Al Dhaheri, a UAE University student, also uses Instagram to sell baked products.

She chose the application because it was “easy, fast and free”.

Once she started advertising on social media, she quickly gained thousands of followers in less than a month.

Nuha Al Dhaheri, an Abu Dhabi-based owner of the abaya shop Exotic Designs, started her business via a blog before opening her boutique. She found the phone application WhatsApp as a great way to reach out to international customers.

The 32-year-old said she had paid between Dh5,000 and Dh25,000 to advertise her company in magazines and other sites but found she did not get a good return for her investment. She then started to showcase her designs on Instagram and immediately experienced a 60 per cent increase in business.

Independent researcher Dr Saeed Al Dhaheri, an Emirati information, communication and technology expert, said the world needed to rely on social media as a “two-way interaction between the business itself and reaching out to the customers”.

Social media, he said, was an efficient way to receive instant feedback from consumers. As a result, a business could immediately improve its service.

“Social media is an effective tool to deliver information and products to the real world,” Dr Al Dhaheri said. “We are living in a phase called ‘digitalisation’, giving the companies a competitive advantage.”