Market-entry plan for an Indian clinic-software company entering the UAE

Ledgerly Health sells cloud practice-management software (appointments, billing, patient records, pharmacy stock) to about 3,400 small and mid-size clinics in India. Annual recurring revenue is about ₹38 crore, and growth in India has slowed to 18% a year. Twenty of its customers are Indian-owned clinic groups that also run clinics in Dubai and Sharjah, and three of them have asked for the product there.

The founders want to know whether to enter the UAE, how, and what it will cost. A previous attempt to sell to a Dubai group failed after six months because the product could not produce VAT-compliant invoices in the required format and the group's IT team would not accept patient data stored in India.

You are the strategy associate. In eight weeks you will produce: - a bottom-up size of the UAE clinic software market by emirate and clinic type; - customer and competitor research, including a plan for 12 interviews and synthetic interview notes you analyse; - an entry requirements register: company setup options (free zone or mainland), VAT and corporate tax, health data rules, Arabic language, and integration with health authority systems, described in general terms with sources; - a team plan that accounts for Emiratisation rules as they apply to the company's size and sector; - a three-year P&L with go-to-market costs and a break-even point; - a board memo and deck with a clear go, no-go or wait recommendation.

Done means the board can see the market, the true cost of entry including compliance, the risks, and the conditions under which the founders should go ahead. Treat regulatory details as items to verify with the relevant authority and an adviser; your job is to find and frame them, not to give legal advice.