Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 113 | Page 61

CASE STUDY

In most developed markets, the core business is declining. However, for du, which has been a challenger in the UAE telecom market, the situation is different.

“ Fortunately, in this market it is not the case,” says Al Hassawi.“ There is growth in this market and in the core business, because the population is increasing, the number of tourist visitors is increasing, and government spending is increasing. All of this makes the UAE market still a good market for the telecom core business.”

Targeting the core telecom business in UAE, du is a challenger player and not the incumbent, which offers room for du to gain market share of the core telecom business.

“ Our strategy has been to continue growing in the core business, to take our fair share and this is what we have been doing successfully in the last three years,” indicates Al Hassawi.“ And the core business usually is a business that comes with healthy margins,”

Driving its ICT business

For du, its entry into the ICT services business is an extension of its existing relationships with many UAE end user enterprises for whom it is providing connectivity services, either 5G connectivity or fibre network connectivity.

As a telecom player, du is also a technology company and understands technology better than other enterprises. And because of the nature of its business, du also has relationships with most if not all large technology vendors. du also has a wide experience base of implementing complex technology solutions for its own consumption.

“ I already have an existing business with them for my own consumption within du and I am already a consumer of their services,” indicates Al Hassawi.“ When you put all of this together, we end up becoming the preferred trusted partner for any large enterprise and government establishment in UAE.”

Other than the traditional core business, du has decided to diversify and expand into the ICT business.“ We decided we want to invest in an ICT business unit that will get us ICT revenue. From that point of view, we are diversifying, and we are starting to open new streams of revenue.”

Since the ICT business is different from du’ s traditional telecom business, another recent initiative has been to recruit people with the right background and the right experience. du is also building on its existing relationships with large enterprises and governmental organisations to support them with its ICT services. du is therefore leveraging and focussing on both streams of revenue and growth – the core, traditional, telecom business and its new ICT business.“ So, between the two we are having a very good balance. Do not forget about core business also get into the non-core business,” explains Al Hassawi.

As a local ICT services company based in UAE, du follows the court of law of UAE for its obligations with its customers. This is especially beneficial for governmental and large enterprise customers.“ For them we are the right partner, and we have the ability to invest,” points out Al Hassawi.

While 2024 was a historic year for du with its top line revenue of AED 14.6bn and 7 % growth, its bottomline performance with net profit of AED 2.5 billion and growth of 49.1 % was equally exceptional.

As du expands its relationships with its existing customers, playing the role of a trusted technology partner, it is witnessing a growth of its business.“ Business brings more business, because you get into

To achieve this, du has not only focussed on revenue growth but has also focussed on improvement of efficiency that is visible in its bottom-line margins and bottom-line growth.

“ We did not say this is only a growth market, and we will not focus on efficiency. We focused on efficiency, and this is why you see today our bottom-line growth is far, far bigger than our top line growth,” says Al Hassawi.

“ Everyone is appreciating how our focus on efficiency did not come from the expense of growth of revenue. Revenue is still growing but we are still able to extract efficiencies,” he adds.

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