Dubai's successful home-grown technology startups will remain takeover targets for multinational giants, thanks to the strong ecosystem provided to them by the different free zones and the Dubai International Financial Centre, according to Ammar Al Malik, chief executive officer of Dubai Internet City.

"There are a lot of successful startups in Dubai Internet City because of the ecosystem that we have built over the years. This trend of global firms acquiring local firms will continue; there will be a pockets of technology where big corporates will be interested," Al Malik said in an interview recently.

Of late, Dubai has seen a wave of acquisitions by foreign multinational giants buying Dubai-based digital companies. For example, Uber Technologies acquired its Dubai-based peer Careem in March 2019 for $3.1 billion (Dh11.37 billion) while Amazon bought e-commerce platform Souq.com for $580 million (Dh2.12 billion).