Today's Edition
A. SREENIVASA REDDY (ABU DHABI)
Jobs do not come easily to even qualified Emiratis despite the government’s single-minded focus on Emiratisation and programmes such as Nafis. Employers do not always get the right Emiratis for the jobs, not because of a dearth of talent but because of a lack of access to available talent.
Here is an app that seeks to bridge that gap. It is an app of Emiratis, by Emiratis and for Emiratis. Its founder is young Zakaria Rashid Doleh, who studied business management in the UK before returning to the job market in the UAE.
“As an Emirati myself, I experienced first-hand how fragmented and unclear the job search process could feel for UAE Nationals. Despite the country’s strong focus on Emiratisation, many talented Emiratis still struggled with visibility, feedback, and access to the right opportunities,” Doleh told Aletihad in an interview.
The app, called Dawlati — meaning “My Nation” — was born out of the founder’s own frustrations navigating the labour market. “There was a major disconnect between employers actively looking to hire Emiratis and Emiratis actively seeking meaningful opportunities,” Doleh said, explaining the rationale behind the platform.
For Doleh, the issue went beyond his personal experience. He said he reached a point where he “refused to accept that this cycle should continue” for the next generation of Emiratis entering the workforce. That frustration gradually evolved into what he now describes as a “national mission”. Rather than launching what he called “just another job platform”, Doleh said the aim was to build “the digital infrastructure for Emirati hiring” — a system purpose-built around the UAE’s long-term national vision.
Dawlati officially launched at the end of November 2025 during Tawdheef x Zaheb in Abu Dhabi and has since expanded rapidly. According to Doleh, the platform today has more than 15,000 verified Emirati users, with new users joining daily.
The verification process itself is central to the platform’s identity. Every profile is authenticated through UAE PASS, allowing employers to interact only with verified UAE National talent rather than anonymous or unverified databases. Doleh described this as an important layer of trust and transparency for both employers and jobseekers.
The scale of engagement has also grown quickly. Doleh said the platform has already facilitated more than one million AI-driven job matches between employers and Emirati talent. He added that hundreds of Emiratis had already progressed into interviews, job offers and employment opportunities across different sectors.
“What has been most encouraging is hearing directly from users who tell us Dawlati gave them visibility and opportunities they previously struggled to access,” he said.
On the employer side, the young entrepreneur said companies were able to reduce recruitment timelines significantly through the platform. “Some organisations are able to identify, shortlist and move forward with qualified Emirati candidates within minutes rather than months,” he said.
Doleh believes Dawlati differs fundamentally from global recruitment platforms and traditional hiring agencies because it was designed specifically around the realities of Emiratisation and the UAE labour market. “The major difference is speed and intelligence,” he said. While conventional recruitment can be highly manual and time-consuming, Dawlati uses AI-driven matching and ranking systems to instantly connect employers with the most relevant Emirati candidates based on skills, experience, industry and role requirements. “What traditionally took weeks now happens in seconds,” he said.
The platform’s AI system works in both directions. Employers receive ranked candidate matches, while jobseekers are shown match scores for opportunities most suited to their profiles and experience. According to Doleh, this creates a more efficient ecosystem in which candidates apply to roles genuinely suited to them and employers receive applicants more closely aligned with their requirements.
He added that Dawlati is also evolving continuously with newer AI-powered tools. Among the planned features is a Natural Language Processing search system allowing employers to interact with the platform in what he described as a “ChatGPT-style” experience by simply describing the type of candidate they need, with the system instantly generating relevant matches.
Beyond technology, however, Doleh repeatedly returned to the human and national dimensions of the project. “We believe the future of Emiratisation should not be driven purely by mandate, but by merit,” he said. “Emiratis are exceptionally talented when placed in the right roles and environments.”
That philosophy was also shaped by his father Rashid Doleh, who is a co-founder of the company. Doleh said his father brought decades of business and operational experience from the private sector, while he himself represented a younger generation navigating a rapidly changing labour market.
“That balance helped Dawlati become both mission-driven and commercially practical,” he said. “Building the company together has been a very meaningful experience for both of us because we genuinely believe the platform can contribute positively to the future of the nation, and our Emirati brothers and sisters.”
Doleh, who is of mixed heritage with an Emirati father and British mother, divides his time between the UAE and the UK. When asked about the business model of the app, he said Dawlati was free for Emirati jobseekers, while employers paid a subscription fee to access the platform.
Doleh studied Business Management in the United Kingdom and said he developed a strong interest there in entrepreneurship, operations and technology-driven business models. Over time, he became increasingly interested in workforce infrastructure and the role technology could play in supporting national development objectives. “Dawlati became the intersection of those interests,” he said. “It combined entrepreneurship, technology, and a genuine desire to contribute something meaningful to the UAE and its future workforce.”
