Virtuzone partners with Dentsu Aegis to launch Stand Together, a free marketplace to support SMEs
As a CSR initiative, company formation specialist Virtuzone has launched standtogether.ae, a listings site to support the UAE’s SME community. Built with the pro-bono support of Dentsu Aegis brands Isobar and Merkle, the marketplace platform is designed to allow local businesses to offer unique, timesensitive deals, as well as providing information to business owners on how to navigate their companies through the current crisis.
Stand Together UAE seeks to help any UAE-based business raise immediate revenue, maintain its orderbook and thus keep supporting its workforce. Long-term it will provide free leads and, through collective data mining, leverage partnerships within the SME community. The free marketplace will provide unique offers to the consumer from a range of businesses from accounting and apparel to construction, entertainment, legal advice, website development and digital demand generation. To register their offers free of charge, SMEs need only provide a valid UAE trade licence number.
Geoff Rapp, co-founder of Virtuzone, said: “At Virtuzone, we set up and renew hundreds of businesses every month, so when we started to see the negative impact of coronavirus on our customers we really wanted to find ways to support them in every way possible. Initially, it was through reduced prices on our services, but we felt there were other ways we could support too. That’s when we came up with the idea of Stand Together UAE.
Virtuzone chairman and cofounder Neil Petch said: “Stand Together UAE echoes the words of Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum imploring the UAE to stand together. The government has announced a tremendous raft of support plans for SMEs, so we wish to add to the likes of mortage and credit card holidays, which buy invaluable time, by allowing immediate incremental revenue generation. It is this public-private partnership that will get the UAE through this and allow our country to come out positioned as global leaders in providing a supportive ecosystem to all startups, who, after all, fuel the green shoots of all economic recoveries.”