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January 22, 2017
Amazon.com: Should we follow our brain or heart?
Recently I unearthed two interesting but opposite views on Amazon: Amazon is a great company and is poised for more success as success begets success Amazon’s numbers are inflated, its over-valued and it’s time to jump ship. Since I am an eternal optimist let’s take the first “premise” Amazon is a great company it is poised for more success, as success begets success. Since its IPO in 1997 Amazon’s share price increased by an astounding 45,965% or a CAGR of...
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October 3, 2016
Are GCC businesses leveraging social media enough?
This increasing reach, twinned with the growing presence of young people on social media, has opened up new avenues for companies to interact with their customers of the industries that are currently active on social channels across the region, the retail industry leads engagement on Facebook in almost all of the GCC countries, with over seven million active followers. This is followed by the telecommunications industry at close to five million users. While the remaining top five industries in the...
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May 9, 2016
Can Robot Advisors Succeed in the GCC?
This new breed of investment advisory services currently has close to $100 Bn of Assets under Management (AUMs) in the US market which has a size of close to $30 Tn. At its current adoption rate, Deloitte predicts that robo-advisory services could be managing $5Tn - $7Tn by 2025. Big brands like Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch etc. have jumped in the race to offer such services to their clients which is expected to largely increase...
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May 8, 2016
From a slow start, innovative fintech could shake up finance in the GCC
In the West, governments play the role of facilitator in terms of policy and regulation, and in providing the right environment for innovation to flourish, leaving it to the private sector to come up with solutions. However, in the GCC, with regulations lagging in most sectors and the private sector wary of joining in, governments play a more central role in fostering innovation. Still, fintech has begun to bubble up across the region, in payment systems (CashU), peer-to-peer lending (Beehive),...
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November 1, 2015
Bitcoins – What’s the story now?
Last year we had published a report (Disruptive Technology: Bitcoins) on the emerging technology of bitcoins. At the time of writing that report, the value of one bitcoin had reached an all-time high of $979 against the US dollar and was touted as an important tool in the future of finance. However, one year down the line, things are not looking bright for bitcoins. It started with the closure of Mt.Gox; one of the biggest bitcoin exchanges and was followed...
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July 15, 2015
Sectors with high E-commerce potential
Sectors with high E-commerce potential People in Dubai and Saudi Arabia love to shop in malls. Dubai has two shopping festivals in a year and the number of malls in GCC is growing, as more companies prefer brick and mortar stores. In the GCC, e-commerce is still at its nascent stage. According to BQ Doha, while 90% of global e-commerce sales come from Asia-Pacific, North America and Western Europe; while GCC accounts for a mere 2% of total retail sales....
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June 29, 2015
Crowdfunding in the GCC
KEY QUESTION 1: What is Crowd funding? How is it gaining at the global level? Officially, Crowdfunding stands for “Capital Raising Online While Deterring Fraud and Unethical Non-Disclosure”. Here, a venture is funded by a large number of people, via the Internet, and this concept has gained massive popularity world-over. According to a report by The Crowd Data Center, in 2014, each metric in crowdfunding is doubling every two months thanks to disruptive shifts in capital formation. This trend has...
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June 24, 2015
Impact of social media on GCC businesses
KEY QUESTION 1: How far have the GCC countries ventured into social media? The social media has offered the population in GCC countries an opportunity to express themselves and access more information. According to the Arab Social Media Report, 2012, the Gulf States are now more tolerant of different points of view and are more aware of events happening globally because of their growing presence in social media. They are taking to the new medium as a duck would take...
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April 27, 2015
GCC: Smartphones storm stock market – Way To Go
If you want to trade stocks while on the move, look no further than your smartphone for help. Yes, thanks to the advent of mobile trading, you can buy and sell stocks with your smartphone, without being chained to your desktop or your laptop. Nowadays, many brokerage firms offer mobile share trading service as a significant value addition to the client. Online stock trading removes the middleman and helps you to actively manage your portfolio. This means you have...
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March 18, 2015
Smart Cities in the GCC
An Emerging Trend Smart City is a hot and happening concept in the field of urban innovation right now. This concept assumes that a city operates as a system or a group of interlocked parts working together, where technology is used to maximize its efficiency and also unlock its potential, while its chief focus remaining on sustainability. What makes cities smart? There have been different perspectives about how a smart city should be or what it should have; however there...