In a strategic move to improve Dubai’s transport infrastructure, the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), in collaboration with Majid Al Futtaim Properties, has opened a 300-metre single-lane bridge on Sheikh Zayed Road.

This new bridge is designed to handle up to 900 vehicles per hour and offers motorists traveling from Abu Dhabi and Jebel Ali direct access to the Mall of the Emirates car parks.

Read more-Dubai’s Sheikh Zayed Road expansion to handle 14,000 vehicles per hour

According to the Dubai Media Office, the development is part of a broader project that includes upgrades to the mall’s entrances, surrounding roads, intersections, pedestrian walkways, and cycling tracks.

Mattar Al Tayer, Director General and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of RTA, emphasized the importance of the initiative: “This project forms part of RTA’s efforts, in collaboration with real estate development partners, to enhance the infrastructure of the road network serving property developments and shopping centres. The objective is to improve traffic flow and facilitate the mobility of residents and visitors across various areas.”

Comprehensive infrastructure enhancements

The broader infrastructure work involved:

• Widening the southbound ramp at Umm Suqeim junction
• Upgrading the junction to improve access from Umm Suqeim Street to the existing bridge leading to the car parks
• Upgrading 2.5 km of at-grade roads around Mall of the Emirates
• Developing six signalised intersections
• Modifying the bus station at Mall of the Emirates Metro Station
• Converting the road adjacent to the Kempinski Hotel from one-way to two-way
• Enhancing pedestrian and cycling tracks
• Improvements to road paving, lighting, traffic signals, stormwater drainage, and landscaping

Al Tayer noted the operational impact of these changes: “The new bridge reduces the travel time for motorists coming from Abu Dhabi and Jebel Ali to Mall of the Emirates from 10 minutes to just one minute. It also enhances traffic efficiency and improves road safety on the roads surrounding the mall.”

Next up: Umm Suqeim Street overhaul

Looking ahead, the RTA is set to launch the Umm Suqeim Street Improvement Project later this year. Spanning 6 kilometre, this major upgrade extends from the junction with Jumeirah Street to Al Khail Road and is aimed at easing traffic congestion and supporting Dubai’s rapid urban growth.

The project includes:

• Upgrading six major junctions connecting Umm Suqeim Street to Jumeirah Street, Al Wasl Street, Sheikh Zayed Road, First Al Khail Street, Al Asayel Street, and Al Khail Road
• Construction of four bridges and two tunnels with a total length of 3,450 metres
• A tunnel at Umm Suqeim Street and Jumeirah Street with two lanes in each direction, in addition to a signalised surface-level junction
• Another tunnel at Umm Suqeim Street and Al Wasl Street to provide a direct flow from Sheikh Zayed Road to Jumeirah Street
• Two bridges at the intersection with Sheikh Zayed Road to remove overlapping traffic
• Surface-level improvements at First Al Khail Road junction

Capacity expansion and connectivity

To further accommodate growing traffic demands, a new lane will be added on Umm Suqeim Street between First Al Khail Road and Al Asayel Street, expanding it to four lanes in each direction. The project also includes the construction and widening of two key bridge crossings: one linking Al Khail Road to the Al Quoz Industrial Area, and another connecting Umm Suqeim Street to Al Khail Road in the direction of Deira.

“These efforts aim to not only enhance traffic flow and road safety, but also support commercial and residential developments in these fast-growing areas,” added Al Tayer.

With Dubai’s population and urban footprint continuing to expand, RTA’s transport upgrades, driven by strategic public-private partnerships, are expected to play a crucial role in sustaining mobility and accessibility for years to come.

The UAE’s Federal Tax Authority (FTA) said it has recorded a surge in corporate tax returns and payments for the first filing season, citing strong compliance and the effectiveness of its digital systems and awareness campaigns.

FTA director general Khalid Ali Al Bustani said more than 640,000 companies have registered for corporate tax, with “hundreds of thousands” of returns and annual declarations processed for entities whose financial year ended on December 31, 2024.

The filing and payment deadline for those entities was the end of September.

FTA credits digital systems that supports easy corporate tax filing

Al Bustani said the high level of voluntary compliance reflected “growing tax awareness among business sectors” and the efficiency of the authority’s EmaraTax digital platform, which allows taxpayers to file and pay taxes in minutes.

The authority said the strong response from businesses demonstrates confidence in the country’s tax framework and the success of its “Zero Bureaucracy” initiative, which has simplified processes and reduced administrative burdens.

FTA data shows that daily support requests during peak periods were handled through the authority’s call centre and digital channels.

To encourage compliance, the UAE cabinet earlier approved an initiative exempting companies from administrative penalties for late registration, provided they file their returns within seven months of the end of their first tax period.

The FTA has also extended filing deadlines for certain companies and introduced a grace period until March 31, 2025 for updating tax records without penalties.

Al Bustani said the authority’s outreach included 154 awareness sessions attended by about 48,000 participants, supported by guides, videos, and infographics published on the FTA’s website.

Established in 2016, the FTA manages the UAE’s tax collection and compliance framework, part of efforts to diversify the economy and align with international standards.

In the rapidly evolving world of digital retail, Trendyol has emerged as a name to watch. Founded in Türkiye in 2010, the company has since grown into a decacorn with a $16.5bn valuation in 2021 and a global customer base currently exceeding 40 million. Now, Trendyol is making waves in the Gulf, leveraging a decade of technological expertise, local partnerships and deep consumer insight to reshape e-commerce in the region.

As Trendyol debuts as a sponsor of GITEX Global 2025, taking the stage on October 15th to showcase its advanced use of AI, its presence signals a clear intent: to successfully transplant and scale its technological know-how across the MENA region.

Here, president Çağlayan Çetin talks to Gulf Business about Trendyol’s ambitious expansion, unwavering commitment to SMEs and the massive technological investments shaping its next decade.

Core proposition

Trendyol entered a competitive Gulf market with a proven model honed over a decade in Türkiye. “Our focus as an online marketplace lies in giving customers the right product at the right price and providing sellers with the tools and insights to scale at pace,” Çetin states. This strategy has resulted in a market-leading platform supporting over 250,000 merchants and serving more than 30 million domestic customers with a diverse, multi-category offering across fashion, beauty, homeware, accessories and electronics enhanced by an AI-supported shopping experience. It has also enabled the company’s international roll out into Germany, Azerbaijan, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Gulf, successfully acquiring over nine million more customers.

In the Gulf, Trendyol has secured more than 3.7 million customers, a figure underpinned by local teams, dedicated offices and regional warehouses. The marketplace model is the undeniable engine of this success, generating 85 per cent of regional revenues.

Çetin is emphatic about the role of local businesses: “We currently have 5,000 local sellers on board… That shows one thing very clearly, local businesses are at the heart of our strategy and we expect to grow that local seller number exponentially before the end of the year.”

With 35 per cent of all products on the platform being sold by fast growing local brands and SMEs, Trendyol is rapidly transforming into a truly indigenous platform.

Mastering hyper-localisation in the GCC

Trendyol’s aggressive expansion across the Gulf is built upon a hyper-localisation strategy driven by deep, market-specific insights from the region’s two largest digital leaders, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. President Çetin is clear on the fundamental rule for success: “You cannot operate from a distance.” This imperative has shaped the company’s approach, necessitating heavy investment in local infrastructure, local people and alliances.

Saudi Arabia quickly became the company’s vital launchpad, now standing as its largest international market and the source of 75 per cent of all regional orders. The team’s early experience revealed a key behavioural insight: online shopping in the kingdom is highly discovery-led. “People do not always open apps looking for one specific product. They want inspiration, they want to browse, they want to discover new brands,” Çetin explains. This understanding is crucial, directly informing Trendyol’s intense focus on curation, local content, and highly relevant collections. To serve this immense demand, the company has established local offices and fulfillment centers to reduce delivery times and expanded local teams to provide sellers with hands-on support for onboarding, inventory management, and scaling operations nationwide.

The UAE, by contrast, presents a broader, more diverse shopper base that primarily values variety and a seamless digital experience. The company responded swiftly by investing in a dedicated warehouse, office, and team, which has significantly cut delivery times and bolstered customer trust. Across both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the core strategy remains the same: investing deeply in local infrastructure, local teams, and strong local partnerships to ensure the experience is optimised for both shoppers and sellers. Trendyol’s vision extends beyond the GCC core as it prepares to establish a ‘Digital Silk Road’.

Leveraging Türkiye’s geographical proximity and its technological capabilities, the company is preparing to expand services to Iraq and is also exploring the possibility of extending its services to Syria, aiming to contribute constructively to those countries’ e-commerce ecosystems. This expansion also includes a significant logistical development: utilising a new transit land route through Iraq that will enhance delivery options for Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries. “This development marks a significant step in expanding our delivery options,” Çetin states, underlining their commitment to regional connectivity and scale. For Trendyol, localisation is foundational, not optional, and is continuously supported by technology and deep partnerships.

“Localisation is key to our success. It’s about how we present ourselves, it’s about how we communicate, it’s about the type of product we offer, as well as, of course, the type of companies that we partner with to best serve our customers,” Çetin states. This commitment manifests through the following approaches:

• Cultural and tech adaptation: The platform offers full Arabic support, local customer service, and relevant payment and delivery options. To empower cross-border sellers, Trendyol has armed them with Türkiye’s first large language model (LLM), enabling seamless translation of product details. The product mix includes Trendyol’s beloved own brand, Trendyol Collection plus curated seasonal capsules, modest wear collections and ranges from some of the biggest local and international brands, balancing cultural relevance with global trends.
• Social commerce: The company has cultivated one of the region’s largest influencer networks, partnering with over 15,000 creators across Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. Çetin notes that these experiences, “powered by digital storytelling and an intuitive app, drive acquisition and build emotional connections that keep customers coming back.”

SMEs are an “absolutely integral part of our platform,” Çetin emphasises. Trendyol helps them flourish by unlocking audiences and providing scale. The digital Seller Center gives merchants full autonomy over their operations, from inventory and pricing to campaigns and payments, while equipping them with real-time insights to make smarter business decisions.

Çetin uses a personal story to illustrate this impact: “I give the example of my local barber, who has one shop in Istanbul and is now selling his well-regarded hair lotion on Trendyol, across the world.”

This ambition is magnified through strategic collaborations, such as with Zid, which connects Trendyol directly with thousands of Saudi SMEs, and Monsha’at, the Saudi SME authority, for building trust and facilitating seller onboarding. “From female-led fashion startups to independent home décor businesses, we’ve seen thousands of entrepreneurs use Trendyol as their launchpad. For us, helping SMEs succeed is central to how we contribute to the region’s digital economy,” he adds.

Of technology and trust

With a dedicated tech team of more than 2,000 people, Trendyol’s identity as a tech-powered business ensures that innovation is not an add-on but rather is embedded in every customer and seller interaction. Çetin confirms this strategy: “As a tech-powered business, AI is embedded in everything we do, shaping both the customer experience and the seller journey.”

For customers, AI ensures shopping feels instinctively personal, offering curated product recommendations, powering smoother, native discovery in Arabic, and even generating culturally relevant items like their AI-designed modest wear collection. For sellers, the technology is an empowerment tool, providing crucial real-time insights for demand forecasting, competitive pricing, and efficient inventory management. Furthermore, AI simplifies the onboarding process for local SMEs with real-time translation tools, allowing them to list products quickly and accurately. The investment in technology directly correlates to customer trust and loyalty.

Logistical improvements have been dramatic: by establishing local warehouses in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and partnering with last-mile providers like Aramex, Starlink, and Saudi Post, Trendyol has reduced initial delivery times from up to nine days to approximately four days, significantly increasing reliability. This proximity ensures returns are managed efficiently, a crucial trust factor. Çetin stresses, “Trust absolutely drives loyalty so ensuring we have a great experience is vital,” a commitment upheld by the Trendyol Assistant, an AI-driven virtual agent that handles customer queries quickly and accurately in multiple languages.

Beyond operational efficiency, Trendyol is committing capital to build the foundational infrastructure for future dominance. The company is securing its digital ecosystem through three major strategic investments. First, a landmark partnership with Castle Investments is underway to build a $500m, 48MW data centre in Ankara, which will provide the necessary immense capacity and secure data management to ensure optimal performance and scalability for their 40 million-plus customers. Second, alongside partners ADQ, Ant International, and Baykar, Trendyol is actively developing a fintech platform in Türkiye to potentially offer AI-powered digital payments, loans, deposits, and insurance. Finally, they are evaluating developing their own cloud business with the crucial support of their strategic investor, Alibaba’s AliCloud, which will further support AI-driven product development plans.

Çetin shares that these wide-ranging investments prove their commitment is long-term: “Together, these initiatives show that we’re not just building for today’s needs; we’re laying the foundations for the next decade of digital commerce right across the broader region.”

Leading the digital frontier

The future of e-commerce in MENA is not a distant prospect, but a landscape actively being shaped by three pivotal trends: personalised shopping experiences, advanced technology integration, and influencer marketing. Recognising that the Gulf is an intensely mobile-first, socially-driven market, Trendyol has built its acquisition and retention strategy on authentic digital storytelling and cultural resonance. This approach is best exemplified by the company’s powerful social commerce engine, which leverages a vast network of over 15,000 creators across Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok.

By meeting customers “where they are on their phones, in their feeds, and in their cultural moments,” Trendyol drives organic engagement, acquisition, and the emotional connections that keep shoppers returning. This commitment to continually evolving the platform through AI-driven applications underscores their positioning to lead the market.

Trendyol’s major sponsorship at GITEX Global 2025 and Çetin’s dedicated session on the use of AI only serves to underscore this momentum and belief in the platform’s scalability. Ultimately, Çetin emphasises the long-term vision: “By focusing on customer satisfaction, technological advancement, and sustainable local investment, we’re confident Trendyol is well positioned to thrive in the fast-changing e-commerce landscape and continue supporting both sellers and shoppers across the Gulf.”

Trendyol is not just competing in the market; it’s actively working to lead its digital transformation.

Under the directives of Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, and Chairman of The Executive Council of Dubai, more than 200 educators across the emirate have been granted the prestigious UAE Golden Visa.

The move is part of a broader strategy to attract top global teaching talent and strengthen Dubai’s position as a world-class education hub.

Read more-UAE Golden Visa now more accessible to Indian applicants

The initiative, first announced by Sheikh Hamdan on World Teachers’ Day last year, recognises the significant role educators play in shaping Dubai’s future. It is closely aligned with the city’s long-term Education 33 (E33) Strategy, a WAM report said.

“Teachers and educators are the ones who light the way forward,” said Sheikh Hamdan. “They inspire, guide, and give our children the skills and confidence to succeed. On World Teachers’ Day, we recognise their dedication and affirm that supporting them is the best investment we can make in the future of Dubai.”

He emphasised that the decision to award Golden Visas reflects Dubai’s deep appreciation for educators’ knowledge, integrity, and service. “Our schools will always be places where the future is nurtured and where the next generation can thrive,” he added.

A competitive selection process

In the first round of the Golden Visa program, 435 applications were submitted. After a comprehensive evaluation, 223 educators, accounting for 51 per cent of applicants, were selected for the 10-year residency. The selection process was based on clear professional criteria, including qualifications, achievements, contributions to the education sector, and feedback from students, parents, and the wider community.

Of the successful applicants:

• 157 recipients were from schools

• 60 from universities

• 6 from early childhood centres

The roles represented a wide spectrum, from senior leadership to social workers and librarians.

To ensure fairness, evaluators intentionally excluded demographic factors such as nationality, gender, or years of experience. Special credit was given to those who had received national or international awards, published research in recognised journals, or made exceptional contributions within their institutions or communities.

A key pillar of the E33 strategy

The Golden Visa initiative forms a core component of Dubai’s E33 education strategy, which aims to position the city as a global magnet for top-tier educators.

“Teachers are at the heart of every successful education system,” said Aisha Miran, Director-General of the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA). “The Golden Visa initiative is part of our ongoing efforts to celebrate and elevate the teaching profession. These results reflect the incredible talent, passion, and commitment of Dubai’s educators, individuals who are making a real difference in students’ lives and contributing to the future of our city.”

She also noted that Dubai is committed to making teaching a more attractive and rewarding career path for the next generation of professionals.

Following the success of the first round, applications for the second phase of the Golden Visa initiative are now open. Educators working in private early childhood centres, schools, and international higher education institutions in Dubai are eligible to apply between October 15 and December 15, 2025.

The city’s leadership sees this as more than just a reward, it’s a long-term investment in human capital and educational excellence.

The UAE has become the region’s preeminent proving ground for artificial intelligence (AI). An Emirates NBD report predicts AI will contribute more than $96bn to the UAE’s GDP by 2031.

A large part of the growth is expected to be attributed to AI agents. Agents are different from other forms of AI in that they perform independently and make plans on their own. Their agility, powered by probabilistic reasoning, allows them to adapt while operating. While endowing agents with powerful capabilities, these differences make agentic AI more unpredictable than its predecessors, with the same inputs yielding different outputs between runs. But agents have real-world dirham investments behind them, so how do adopters calculate ROI, or indeed assess in any meaningful way a technology that is so non-deterministic?

An AI agent has the potential to not only fail in the performance of its assigned task but to take unnecessary actions, leak sensitive data, and a range of other undesirable slip-ups. Meaningful evaluation of agents must go beyond traditional pass/fail results and incorporate all possible points of error. The goal is to rate performance on a quality scale that encompasses reasoning, adaptation, and value delivery. To avoid distasteful user experiences, non-compliance, latency, and budget waste – all risks that are run by a business that does not evaluate individual agents – I recommend five metric categories for the assessment of AI agents.

01 Task outcomes

The success and quality of output of core tasks is as important a metric for agentic AI as it was for its predecessors. Evaluators must look for accuracy and reliability. Measure task completion rates of major workflows. Allow domain specialists to catalog the accuracy, precision, and compliance of outputs. Take note of the frequency of errors, retries, and escalations. Adopt industry-standard benchmarks and incorporate human reviews to uncover problems with business-critical tasks. All measurements must be continuous to give opportunities for improvement over time.

02 Business value

User satisfaction and other tangible business gains must be goals for AI as they are for any other business asset. Agents may be accurate; they may be precise to 20 decimal places. But if they do not add value for end users, then formal evaluations must reflect that. Calculate time saved per workflow and compare it with an established baseline. Look at adoption and repeat usage rates and use Net Promoter Score (NPS) or satisfaction surveys tailored to interactions with AI agents. A/B testing can be used between agentic and traditional workflows. Follow the user journey and encourage feedback to discover pain points.

03 Effectiveness

Assess the quality of reasoning of agents. Trace how they autonomously build workflows in real time. Do they make use of the right tools? Do they perform tasks in the optimal number of steps, and in the optimal order? By monitoring efficiency with this level of granularity, organisations also make systems more transparent. Additionally, assessors should note the frequency with which chains of reasoning are abandoned, so they must ensure they can trace these chains and visualise “agent trails”.

04 Governance

Trust is critical in an AI journey. Oversight ensures compliance; transparency, auditability, and safeguards enable oversight. Evaluation of an AI agent must include confirmation of its safe and ethical operation, as well as verification of its compliance and auditability. Instances of policy violation, bias, or undesirable outputs should be recorded. Organisations must also find ways of assessing the auditability of decision-making and tool usage, as well as the effectiveness of safeguards. Red-teaming, guardrails and moderation systems can help, but it is also important to run regular automated safety tests and keep comprehensive audit logs.

05 Live performance

Operational performance at scale must be evaluated if a full picture of the agent is to be seen. Agentic AI is powerful on paper, but does each agent fulfil enterprise-grade workload requirements? Measure latency, uptime rates, error frequencies, costs per interaction, and model drift. Always-on dashboards must be available and should flag anomalies as they emerge. Stress testing during peak usage is also crucial. Track costs at the user, team, and workflow levels to ensure they do not spiral out of control.

Not-so-secret agents

These metric categories form a framework for building trust — and hence, acceptance — of agentic AI over time. Throughout the course of the AI journey, agents will improve autonomously under the right conditions – careful monitoring across cycles of deployment coupled with expert-guided refinement. This approach is important because it helps ensure that metrics are aligned with business needs rather than arbitrarily defined AI benchmarks. IT, line-of-business, and compliance teams must collaborate on evaluation. Without subject-matter experts, the evaluation of agentic AI will be insufficient to identify all business risks and relevant success criteria.

Agents must be safe and useful. As the growth of the field unfolds across the UAE, we will see more enterprises experiment with AI agents. Successes will accrue to those that introduce the right evaluation practices early. Those enterprises will enjoy confidence in more than just the accuracy and precision of their agents. They will know that they are reliable, safe, scalable, and transparent.

The writer is the regional VP and GM for the Middle East, Turkey & Africa (META) region at Dataiku.