How to Make a Business Plan in the UAE?

Business Plan is an important part of a company registration process. Although you may think that business plan is usually required, when you want to attract investments only, this is not the case. When you register a company or you open a bank account in the UAE, it is important for a party you approach to understand what is that exactly you plan to do and how exactly you plan to grow. For this reason, many authorities in the United Arab Emirates request from you a business plan, a business description or a company profile.

Not all registration authorities require submission of a business plan or a company profile. At the same time, those of them, who require, either request a very detailed plan or a very brief description half of the page long or even shorter.

Those commonly used for set-up free zones in Dubai, which require a detailed business plan, provide you with templates, that serve as guidelines on how to structure your business plan and what to include in the document. Most of the time you can find these templates right on the official web-sites of respective free zones.

Let’s discuss what a detailed business plan shall look like and what is recommended to include in the document to ensure that it is easy for registration authority to understand your plans and ensure that business activity you applied for is in line with what you intend to practice, once the company’s registration is completed.

Each business plan starts with an executive summary. This is a very succinct description of what you will be sharing in the rest of the document. Executive summary should be no longer than one page, however, it may be less than that. Here you mention what triggered company formation, which relevant experience shareholders have, which services company plans to provide or which goods it will be selling (just a brief summary of those). Also state why that particular registration authority was chosen for set up and why you see a potential in establishing and growing this business in the UAE. In general, once you read an executive summary you shall get a full picture of the business model and business in general.

Next comes “Business Section”. Here you shall talk about future business in more details. Do not go too far into describing services you are going to provide or goods you plan to sell, as there will be a specific section for this. Instead, focus on what this company was established for. For example, you decided to open a café, which will serve average-priced meals to businessmen and residents working and living in the community. You can mention, that in the past year you have been closely monitoring demand with respect to food outlets in the area. It was noted that while some of the parts of the area provide for a range of cafes and restaurants ranging from average-priced to those above average, you have noticed most of them are operational from 12 p.m. onwards and do not provide for lunch set menus. Additionally, one of the areas does not have sufficient number of food outlets at all and there is no, for example, home delivery option available. Understanding a demand from public and having obtained necessary experience working in F&B industry for the past 2 years, shareholders decided to open a food outlet that shall close all mentioned gaps. And then you can elaborate on this in a few more sentences, sharing how residents and businessmen will benefit from your newly opened food outlet.

After Business Section you will need to specify which strategic alliances you plan to establish. Even if you think there will be none, feel free to state this as well and then clarify, why no cooperation with partners will be required. Let’s say you will be opening a barber shop, so you do not see who you can partner with and how. Explain it in this section of business plan. Or, on the contrary, you want to partner with a coupon service, which will help to promote your business. You can mention this partnership in the Strategic Alliances section. You do not need to invent any names and partnerships. If you do not have them yet, just describe your plans, without reference to specific companies. For example, “company plans to promote it business online, therefore, strategic partnerships with coupon services and social media marketing agencies will be established.”

In the next paragraph you shall talk about services or products you will provide. Feel free to be be more specific and explain why your services or products may be required. Elaborate on the value your products or services may add.

Once you described that, move on to the next section, where you shall describe your suppliers. If you are providing certain products, you definitely buy them from someone or at least you produce goods from raw materials, that someone supplies to you. State your suppliers, their geographical location and which products you source from them. If there is any prospective collaboration, feel free to mention the same as well.

Staffing is the next topic to be covered in the business plan. Here you share your plans with respect to your team size at the start and in connection with further growth in the coming 1st or 2nd years. Very often start-up businessmen are afraid to make any projections, saying that they do not know, if their business will grow as planned. Registration authority understands that these are your plans only and just wants to know, how you see your business development moving forward. You can state that at the start it will be just you and a personal assistant. That by the end of year one you plan to have additional two full-time employees handling sales. And so on.

As a next segment comes a very broad section of business plan “the market”, where you talk about marketing strategy of a future company. First you can describe your market segment, then clarify what types of customers you are going to work with, after that enumerate who your major competitors are and which strengths over the competitors you have. You shall also include your brief marketing strategy: how you are going to advertise and spread the word about your business.

Another important piece of information registration authority wants to know is a professional background of business owners and management team, as well as whether there will be any board of advisors. Again, as mentioned before, if you are not going to have any advisors, state it and explain why. As far as management team and shareholders are concerned, you can include CVs of all of them in the last pages of your business plan. Additionally, you will mention, if your company shall require any additional professional support, be it accounting firms, lawyers or even companies providing stationary supplies.

And then every business plan shall be finalized with your financial projections. In simple words, how much you plan to earn in the 1^st year, year 2 and year 3. If you have a service business with no suppliers involved, it can be a simple table with gross profit, expenses and net profit in it for each of 3 years. If you are a business center, then you will need to mention a more detailed description. However, remember that the document shall be easily read and understood by anyone. The is the key.

These are generally things you need to cover in your business plan. If a registration authority requires a brief activity description from you, as opposed to a detailed business plan, then you do need to describe everything in that many details. Just share a brief concept of your future business and which services or products you will provide.

As we mentioned at the very beginning of this chapter, business plan and company description file can be very helpful, when you proceed with corporate account opening. Bank would require from you a brief business description with list of suppliers and customers along with some other information, that you will already have in your business plan. So no need to spend extra time on the profile, just use your business plan working with bank on account opening.

I am sure we helped to clarify how to work on business plan and what to mention in each section. To make your life even easier, we prepared a business plan template that you will find attached. Fee free to use it in preparation for your own company registration.

If you want to know more about Dubai freezone company formation, feel free to get in touch with our professional consultant team and we would be delighted to assist you and help you to compare Dubai freezone company setup costs and help you to find that free zone, which would suit your business needs the most.

Disclaimer: Business Boutique UAE-Consultants.com is not affiliated with any particular government or legal entity. Business Boutique does not give professional legal advice nor any other professional advice subject to a public office in the government. This article merely sets out a simple and basic idea as to the reasons of Dubai freezone company setup and Dubai free zone company formation cost. Business Boutique in no way holds nor imposes any official governmental or legal authority and the article herein is only to be taken as a guide. All further governmental or legal issues should be addressed to the corresponding authorities.

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