Women account for 60% of Dubai social media business licences – new data

The future of social media businesses in Dubai is female, if new statistics are anything to go by.

New data from Dubai’s Department of Economic Development (DED) shows that 3,333 licences have been issued to trade goods on social media since 2017. Of those, 60 per cent of the licences – or about 2,000 – have been issued to women.

UAE nationals also accounted for 2,420 of the total licences, or about 72 per cent, according to the DED data.

The data comes as the number of new business licences granted in Dubai in the first half of 2019 increased more than 33 per cent year-on-year.

READ: New Dubai business licences up more than a third in H1

Statistics released by the DED’s Business Registration and Licensing (BRL) sector showed that a total of 14,737 new business licences (a pace of about 81 per day) were issued from January to June this year, compared to 11,059 during the same period in 2018.

The statistics showed 12 per cent of the total licences granted were to women.

In terms of locations, more than half of the licences issued (7,584) were for businesses in the Bur Dubai area. Deira was in second (7,135), followed by Hatta (18).

There were also 73,404 business licence renewals in Dubai in the first half of 2019.