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UAE Business Activities: Find the Right Licence Route

The activity comes before the free zone. Two authorities can license similar work under different names, codes and approval rules. A code from one catalogue is not a UAE-wide activity.

Describe your business to Vi

From the business to the questions

1. 1

   What you sell

   Goods, software, a service, or advice.

2. 2

   The operating facts

   Customers, stock, payments, premises, people.

3. 3

   Categories to check

   Names and codes on the authority that will license you.

Reviewed categories

Selling goods splits in two. Physical import and wholesale is general trading. Selling through a website or a marketplace is e-commerce, and it may still need a product activity beside it.

• Selling online

  Own goods, a marketplace, dropshipping, stock, or digital products. These are not one licence.

• Software / SaaS

  Building a product is a different activity from advising on systems, hosting, or taking payments.

• IT consultancy

  Advice and implementation sit beside, and apart from, software development and hardware trading.

• Management consultancy

  Advice on how a business is run. Legal, audit, recruitment and regulated financial advice are other activities.

• General trading

  Importing and selling goods across categories. The product, the buyer and the warehouse still change the activity.

After the activity is clear, the jurisdiction choice is on company formation and free zone vs mainland.