In the past few years, UAE has emerged as one of the top consulting industry hubs globally. The UAE’s consulting sector is largely powered by huge demand from its public sector, which is striving hard for diversifying its otherwise oil-dependent economy. In fact, UAE has succeeded to support the diversification strategy and has opened its doors to creating a surplus pool of businesses and investment from the rest of the world, incentivizing them with free trade zones, 100% capital repatriation, and limited corporate taxation.
UAE’s strategic location, favorable trading options, and good connectivity to all major cities, and ports via Land, Maritime, and Air make it a pivotal gateway to GCC, the Middle East and Africa (MEA) regions, MENAT regions, European regions, Asia, and more. This makes it a hugely appealing base for multinational firms. UAE’s friendly business policy makes it the global SME hub, and SMEs account for 95% of the economy. They also serve diverse clients within an array of industries and geographies.
The UAE is also a hub for 25% of Fortune 500 firms, start-ups, and unicorns. The GCC consulting market has grown at a brisk pace in the past seven years breaching the 3 billion USD mark for the first time ever. Saudi Arabia leads the GCC consulting market with an overall growth of 18.8 percent taking revenues to 1.8bn USD followed by UAE garnering a 16.6 percent growth.
Boutique Consulting as an emerging Phenomenon
Boutique consulting firms are relatively smaller firms offering limited services for a local client base and only for a specific niche platform. These firms have just a single advisor or a senior consultant, subject matter experts have tons of expertise.
These consulting firms are rapidly building start-ups and unicorns that offer consultancy services at economical pricing as compared to large consulting firms. These consulting firms are largely having an informal culture, small and specific skillset-based expertise, adoption of entrepreneurial thinking in their operations, flexible strategies and procedures, and quick resolution on operating modules.
A smaller, yet efficient senior expert workforce offers efficiency in the case of Boutique Consulting firms saving time and cost involved. It aids in the faster accomplishment of projects and hence better productivity.
Boutique Consulting firms are good at inculcating rich Entrepreneurial Culture as they are run by expert founders having pure entrepreneurial instincts and tend to have a workforce with similar skillsets and instincts. Due to this entrepreneurial approach, a consulting firm’s culture moves ahead with boldness and courage.
Ever wondered why we are going in-depth on Boutique consulting, Management Consulting startups in UAE? Well, in this context we will be referring to the steep development of one such Boutique Consulting Firm, which is Várri Consultancy.
Várri Consultancy is UAE’s emerging, modern and independent consulting boutique. Established in 2020, this UAE-based Boutique consulting firm has a keen focus on developing core strategies and analyzing risk management and they specialize in offering precision client-centered Risk Management Advisory Services. Spearheading Várri Consultancy’s success journey is its founder Johnny Kollins, a Senior Banking, and FinTech expert having expertise in manning sovereigns, banks, non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs), supra-national entities, governments and entities owned by governments, and corporate entities in multiple industries across Europe, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region and the wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and his dedicated expert team.
The firm’s core purpose is offering its clients effective solutions and operating closely with clients for curbing potential downsides, identification of modern-day prospectives, and spacing out clear paths to the future via economic, societal, and environmental sustainability.
Backed by their vision for finding apt solutions to future challenges while considering stakeholders Várri consultancy has offered its services to UAE-based Renewable energy investment firm ThreeEightSix and solar power company, Sun in Motion LLC – both headquartered in Dubai.
Várri Consultancy also offered its customary Business localization, and contract review services to the investment firm Pripen AB before it commenced its initial Scandinavian F45 Training studio in Gothenburg, Sweden.
International Business Magazine, a Dubai-based business publication house has recently conferred two prestigious awards ‘Best Management Consulting Startup UAE 2022’ and ‘Best New Boutique Consulting Firm UAE 2022’ for their excellent business consulting services as they possess passion and a drive to achieve high-impact business results.
A lead B2B research, ratings, and reviews site recently conferred Várri Consultancy as One of the ‘Best-Performing B2B Companies in the UAE’. Várri Consultancy has also received an award from Singapore’s online and business publication, World Business Outlook, for its exceptional strategy and risk management advisory services. The titles credited by World Business are ‘Leading Strategy and Risk Management Consulting Boutique in the UAE 2022’ and ‘Leading FinTech Risk Management Boutique in the UAE 2022’.
The SMCFs (Small and Medium Consulting Firms) and Boutique Firms have a long role to play in the coming years in identifying the best opportunities, mitigating threats from larger consulting firms, improving risk management services, offering innovative technology and automated credit services, and more. They must also take a huge role in operating alongside government authorities, addressing some of the core policy and industry-level issues that lock them out from working with public sector clients, including project portfolios that tend to disproportionately favor large firms.
Blog By Medhaj Nair
