Can Dubai’s Number Plate Market Become the Next Big Digital Investment?

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

It's the Morning Drive, here's a question for you. Can Dubai's number plate market become the next big digital investment? The premium number plate market is going digital.

Technology promises more transparent valuations, obviously secure payments and verified ownership as well. But can a market traditionally driven by brokers and private deals become a trusted digital investment space? And what does it mean for buyers, sellers and the future of what I guess are alternative assets in the UAE? Dr. Abdulla Ibrahim Al Meer is the founder and chairman of Mazal, joins us to discuss the opportunities, the challenges and the future of digital asset trading in Dubai. It's good to have you here. Good morning.

Dr. Abdulla Ibrahim Al Meer (0:46)

Thank you. Good morning.

SPEAKER_1 (0:47)

Nice to see you. It's a fascinating story, this Dubai premium number plate market. We all see the stories of these huge sums at auction.

But it's an interesting market because it's really relied traditionally on brokers, as I said, and kind of private deals, really, trading between people. What's changing in the market right now?

Dr. Abdulla Ibrahim Al Meer (1:12)

See, I will start with the Dubai plates. Dubai plates witnessed city evolution, and it is part of the city prestige and remarkable achievements. Starting like Dubai number started with the symbol of having Burj Al Arab, then it has Dubai commercial logo, then Expo 2020 logo on the number plate.

This number plate, as an asset, is very important within the city. It's become part of its prestige. It's part of the heritage, isn't it? Yes, the heritage. We came as Mazal to... We are not changing the market forces or changing the market wave, but we are digitalizing the practices in the market. Because today, there's so many brokers, and sometimes there is scammers, which they don't have the number with them, and a lot of people get, let's say, lost within buying a number. Some people don't know where to buy, where to sell. Okay, you have a premium number, where I should go and sell. You give it to a broker, and that broker give it to another broker, and that broker give it to their broker, and continue like this, and you will never reach to end. Mazal came to digitalize this practices, where buyer and seller come to a scroll system, and number plates will be parked in that scroll system, the money is gone to that system, then the transaction happened through Mazal.

Buyers' identity, seller's identity is hidden, because each one of them will have a unique Mazal ID, where they just buy and sell safely, secured within the system. You can display your number within the marketplace. You can auctionize your number if you want. You can do private deal, private deal because private deal, you can create a unique code that both traders can enter that unique code and they do private deal. We are basically a scroll system for number plates in Dubai.

SPEAKER_1 (3:32)

This is number plates in the blockchain now, isn't it?

Dr. Abdulla Ibrahim Al Meer (3:35)

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_1 (3:37)

That's how it is. Number plates can command extraordinary, and I mean extraordinary prices, certain number plates.

And I suppose this is an added way of people being able to see whether they're paying a fair value now as well.

Dr. Abdulla Ibrahim Al Meer (3:56)

See, there is no ABC in the market, but always there is a kind of historical transaction happen through the previous years.

Numbers, everything is number. People would like to be specialized when they have a unique number, putting in their cars and they drive in the city. Like, for example, you will have a luxury watch, and you'll sit a meeting, and people will see your brand identity, without mentioning any, let's say, any brand here.

SPEAKER_1 (4:35)

They see the stick.

Dr. Abdulla Ibrahim Al Meer (4:36)

For example, any brand, which is...

But Dubai plate number, when you put it in the car, you are special on the road. You are buying piece of Dubai, where this number was witnessed Dubai evolution. It is kind of remarkable, let's say, achievements of Dubai. All the, let's say, important milestones were being printed on the Dubai number plates, starting from... I remember Dubai number plates used to be white, then yellow, then the castle, which is Al-Fahedi Castle. And after that, Burj Al Arab came, Burj, the Arab came symbol on that number. Dubai commercial logo. Then we have Expo 2020 The numbers are associated with Dubai as a... It's a piece of Dubai legacy.

It is a part of culture.

SPEAKER_1 (5:34)

It's something I never thought about, but I bought a car in 2020 And they offered me at that point, do you want the Expo logo plate? Do you want the normal plate? What plate do you want? And I just kind of went, just the plate.