Hello listeners. Today we are releasing another episode in our series entitled Menting Unicorns, Blockchain, AI, and Dubai, sponsored by the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism, or DET.

Dubai is the new global center of gravity, connecting the world in a way few places can, from flexible regulations to tax incentives, world-class infrastructure to access to global investors managing a trillion dollars in investment money, Dubai understands what businesses need to scale fast.

For today's episode, we are speaking with Mohamed al-Bulushi, CEO of the D-IFC Innovation Hub, a driving force behind Dubai's

innovation ecosystem, and a key player in empowering startups and scale-ups across the Mesa region.

Well, Muhammad, thank you for being on the show today. Thank you for being on Code Story.

Well, thank you for having me,

now. Absolutely. I'm excited to talk about the DIFC and all the things going on there, but before we

move into that topic, tell me in my audience a little bit about you. So, of course, currently I run

the DIFC's Innovation Hub. The IFC stands for Dubai International Financial Center, which is a really unique financial center

in the Middle East and North Africa markets, has its own legal and regulatory infrastructure.

It's based on English common law, has its own court system.

It kind of acts like a city within a city, and within that city, I am responsible for its innovation ecosystem,

which technically is the largest of its kind in the entire region.

But by background, I'm a banker.

So I did about the first eight years of my career. I was in banking. So I did

some corporate banking and some private banking. In about 2016, end of 2016, I moved to the government

and I joined the IFC and ever since I've been driving the innovation mandate at the IFC.

So for fun, these days, if I get some time off, I just try and watch some TV.

It really helps me, you know, take a break and shift my mind from everything else.

So, but apart from that, these days I hang with friends. And back in the day, of course, there was a lot more activity, but these days I don't have much time.

Well, cool. I appreciate that. Let's move into our topic then. So what is the DIFC Innovation Hub? And what role does it play in driving innovation in Dubai, which is, there's a lot of innovation going on. There's a lot of focus

on tech and building the next set of unicorns. I'm just curious where the DIFC comes into play.

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