Ann Viken, a Norwegian health care business professional, found that it can pay to be apprenticed with the government in Abu Dhabi before venturing out on one’s own.
Starting a business can seem like a Herculean task for those unfamiliar with the Middle East and its slower pace of business, where having connections and a grasp of the local language and ways of doing things always help.
Local laws also stipulate that entrepreneurs must have a local partner who has majority ownership, unless operating out of a free zone. (The country's foreign investment law is being updated to allow foreigners to own 100 per cent in certain sectors outside of the free zones.)
While the prospect of having to have a local partner may be discouraging to some, Ms Viken says it can help when it gets down to doing a lot of the practical things needed to start a business.
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“It looks daunting,” Ms Viken said in her office overlooking the Arabian Gulf. “If you have a local partner, the local partner knows all the nitty-gritty things.”
Today, Ms Viken has her finger in more than one pie, including the ownership of a small enterprise in Abu Dhabi that specialises in plastic surgery and dermatology. She also has the post of managing director at another business, Manzil Health Care Services, a home care company.
It started in 2010, when Ms Viken got a lucky break. At the time, along with her husband, she was employed in Australia at Aspen Medical, a Canberra-based health care company that specialises in helping rural and remote communities. Before that Ms Viken had done long stints at Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly, two of the world’s biggest health care product companies.
When Aspen won a government tender to help build National Ambulance Company in the UAE, Ms Viken became its chief administration officer while her husband became the chief executive. The National Ambulance Company, 80 per cent owned by the government and 20 per cent owned by Aspen Medical, is a health care company that serves both the government and private clients.
Ms Viken said she and her husband built the company from scratch and after a year had hired more than 1,000 people. After two-and-a-half years, she said the company was running smoothly, and given that the government had started to accelerate a programme of promoting local hires, she and her husband decided to hedge their bets.
“When a government company becomes very successful what they do is they Emiratise senior positions,” Ms Viken said. “That hadn’t happen yet. Since we were both in the same company, we said it might not be smart to be in the same company forever.”
An opportunity presented itself at Ms Viken’s local cosmetic skin clinic, where she got facials done.
She learnt from one of the co-owners, a dual-citizen Emirati, that the clinic, Bodyworx, was up for sale because it was not able to find a doctor, a requirement by the local authorities to stay open. The main Emirati owner had put the business up for sale, she said, but backed down when a big corporation offered a sum deemed to be too little for what was on offer.
“So I said, ‘why don’t we buy it?’” said Ms Viken. “Why don’t we put in a bid 50/50, because she was half Emirati, half British? Even if you bid Dh50,000 more than this big corporation, she might see it as a good thing. So we did it and we got it dead cheap.”
The duo put some more money in the boutique clinic, hired a doctor and got the show on the road again. Today, the clinic, which also offers plastic surgery, boasts three German doctors.
Ms Viken doesn't have much time to go in for facials these days, as a year ago she threw herself into yet another SME project, Manzil Health Care.
Manzil is a home care company that provides round-the-clock nurses and physicians for bedridden patients who have ailments including cancer, and some of whom need mechanical ventilation.
Almost all the patients are Emiratis because the health insurance programme for locals, Thiqa, covers most of the services that Manzil provides. The company is in talks with private insurers to get more coverage for expatriates who need similar services.
While the UAE is well-known as a place where people come and go all the time, Ms Viken says she is planning to stay for the foreseeable future.
“We have bought a villa, so we intend to stay,” she said.
mkassem@thenational.ae
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