São Paulo – The Brazilian business owner Luana Ozemela has been living in Qatar for two years now. Five months ago, she started Development Impact Managers & Advisors (DIMA), a Qatari-based company. The holder of a doctorate degree in Economics, she visited the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce in São Paulo last Thursday (14), where she met with secretary-general Tamer Mansour. A day earlier, they’d both attended the Brazil Africa Forum, also in the city.
Ozemela’s company provides business facilitation services, including project structuring, research and analysis, development cooperation, impact investment, education and training, and creative industries.
DIMA operates out of the Qatar Financial Centre, in Doha. “Our company is considered by the Qatar Financial Centre board of executives as its only company led by a Brazilian woman. Our job is to render services both to Brazilian companies looking to do business with and in Qatar, and to Qatari investors seeking investment opportunities in Brazil,” Ozemela told ANBA.
“We’re here at the Arab Chamber to introduce ourselves, to explore synergies, to check whether there’s an interest in relying on an arm of Brazil’s private sector in Qatar,” said Ozemela. The executive said the Arab Chamber is a highly respected entity in the Gulf country. “We do a lot of work with the Qatar Chamber (of Commerce and Industry). They’ll often ask us if we work with the Arab Brazilian Chamber, and we hadn’t had the chance to be in direct contact up until now,” she said.
According to executive, DIMA is branching out into Latin America and the Gulf countries, since the demand is strong. “We’re able to meet that regional demand. With the embargo,
, it’s not as easy to travel to the countries that are imposing the blockade (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt), but there are a few other countries, like Oman and Kuwait, where we have our contacts,” she said.
Ozemela said expanding into Dubai, UAE is a possibility. “If a Brazilian enterprise gets in touch that intends to do business with Qatar, with Dubai, we have the means to create business intelligence in markets other than Qatar, in the Gulf countries. There are no limitations when it comes to that. Obviously we don’t have any clients in Dubai, but we do have Latin American clients that want to do business in the region, because Qatar enjoys a prime location in the heart of the Gulf. Within a 3,000 km radius there are 25 economies surrounding Qatar, so even despite the blockade, this is a world of opportunity, one that extends far beyond Qatar, geographically speaking, for Brazilian companies looking to do business in that region,” she said.
According to Ozemela, the company provides various types of export and investment promotion services, ranging from business intelligence to arranging meetings between investors and businesses.
DIMA has a six-strong staff in Doha working on a per-project basis. “If a demand comes up for an exhibition, for instance, like a Brazil Expo in Qatar, then we’ll expand the team, depending on the project at hand,” explained Ozemela.
Facilitation services include development cooperation, for Latin American governments looking to partner up with Qatar through knowledge transfer or bilateral projects. “When it comes to bilateral cooperation, we’ll roll out initiatives and structure out projects for impactful development in both economies involved, or a group of economies interested in doing business together,” she explained.
Background
The Porto Alegre, Brazil-born executive was working in Washington, USA when she met her husband, Ugo Ozemela of Nigeria. She worked for the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB), and he worked for a local oil company. He moved to Doha for work-related reasons four years ago, and she followed suit two years ago, while still working for the IDB.
“And we recently developed our business, five months ago. Starting the company was a challenge. I’ve owned businesses in Brazil before. I started an IT company at 18 years old, but things are different in Qatar. Qatari law requires that a Qatari national be the majority stakeholder. It took a while before I figured out how to start a business where I’d have the freedom to make decisions,” she said.
Ozemela found a solution through her contacts with the Qatar Financial Centre. “I met a board member of theirs who told me I could own 100% of my business through a free zone like the Qatar Financial Centre. The information was straight from the source. I believe it was about being in the right place at the right time. Of course, it wasn’t that easy, but ultimately it was a process where I learned a lot, and now we’re up and running, with a world of opportunity ahead of us,” she said.
Gender equality
Ozemela got a doctorate in discrimination economics, which covers gender and racial economics, in Scotland. “In Qatar, we have a university as our client and prepared a course on Women in Development and are focusing in gender public policies,” she told.
The executive told that Qatar has more women in the labor market than Brazil. “According to the women’s labor force participation index, the rate of women’s participation in Qatar’s labor market is higher than Brazil’s, as per the national average statistics. But it’s obvious that, when we separate migrant and Qatari women, it’s a very distinct rate, with migrant women having a much higher labor force participation rate – that’s the point of migration, but Qatari women participation rate is still higher than in other Gulf countries; in the region, it’s 25%, while in Qatar it’s 37%. So we see a difference in there,” she reported.
Arab Chamber
Ozemela said that the mission in Brazil has been very successful and she’s excited for a partnership with the Arab Chamber. “This visit to the Arab Chamber has really impressed us; its infrastructure, team size, the reputation that it has created and draws so many Brazilian companies wanting to do business with the Arab world as well as Arabs wanting to do business with Brazil. For us, it’s an honor being able to rely on the Arab Chamber’s partnership, it’ll be very promising, since we have a lot of thing we could implement together,” she finished.
The executive is in Brazil for a week to participate in a series of appointments and will also have bilateral meetings with clients and potential partners. Last Wednesday (13), Ozemela participated in Brazil Africa Forum.
The meeting featured Ugo Ozemela, Dima co-founder and chairman and Luana’s husband, the company’s financial consultant Antonio Santos and Arab Chamber institutional relations analyst Danielle Berini. Pictured above, from the left, Santos, Mansour, Luana and Ugo Ozemela.
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum & Guilherme Miranda
