Dubai culture today is very different from what it used to be a decade or two ago.

The narrow widening creek divides

the city into two parts, the Southern part called Bur Dubai has a traditional culture in Dubai and the Northern area,
Deira has a busy and bustling culture. The Al Shindagha tunnel which runs under the creek connects the two halves
of the city.

The Dubai culture is a cosmopolitan one. With the influx of great number of foreign population which includes,
Persians, Indians,Baluchis etc ,the culture in Dubai has become a global one. With Islam as its official religion ,
Culture in Dubai is essentially a Muslim one but the presence of Hindus, Christians,Sikhs etc cannot be ignored and
their presence has left an undeniable mark on the Culture in Dubai.

Like religion, language Culture in Dubai is also diverse and although Arabic is declared to be the official language of
Dubai, other languages of the world co-exist with it. The schools are also not biased regarding language and many of
them teach foreign languages to the children.

Dubai culture is essentially very colorful and vibrant. The Dubai shopping festival and the Dubai International Film
Festival are an integral part of the culture in Dubai.

Dubai Population:

Dubai population includes more men than women. The ratio of men and women in Dubai is 3:1. According to the
survey carried out by the Statistical Center of Dubai, the population of Dubai was 1,422,000 as of 2006, among
which 1,073,000 were males and 349,000 were females. About 71% of Dubai population consists of foreigners and
expatriates and 3% is categorized as "western". Emigrates in Dubai mostly include Asians, mainly from India,
Bangladesh, Pakistan and Filipino. Besides, 16% of the population is not being identified either by ethnicity or by
nationality but believed to be chiefly Asians. They are not identified by nationals mainly because they live in combined
labor accommodation. The average age of total Dubai population is about 27 years.

The official language of Dubai is Arabic but due to massive number of emirates English, Urdu, Hindi, Malayalam and
Bengali are extensively spoken. The national religion of Dubai is Islam, certified by UAE's Provisional Constitution
Article number 7. About 95% of Sunni mosques in Dubai are sponsored by UAE government and provides
employment to Sunni imams. The rest of the mosques are privately owned and several of them have huge private
endowments.

The expatriate population in Dubai comprises of Hindu, Christians and Sikh communities. Although Dubai is an
Islamic city, the non-Muslim communities are permitted to practice their own religion freely. The non-
muslimpopulation of Dubai can also possess their own houses of worship by requesting a land grant from the
government. Non Muslim religious groups are allowed to advertise religious activities openly, however, distribution of
religious pamphlets and brochures are strictly banned.

The demography of Dubai comprises a varied mixture of different nationalities and cultures, best reflected in
Dubai's cuisine.

The vast majority are low income workers from the Indian subcontinent and the
Philippines, although there are a significant number of professionals from Europe and
Australasia.

Vada pav, a fried, spicy potato dumpling stuffed inside a sliced bread roll and slathered with hot sauce,
is an inexpensive delicacy served all over Mumbai. It is usually prepared and eaten at roadside kiosks
or at the pushcart eateries that are ubiquitous on the city's unruly streets.

It looks like something you must not ingest, and savouring its tantalising flavours requires that you
wilfully abandon all basic rules of gastronomy and hygiene.

It is perhaps the least likely item upon which to build India's very own fast food chain, a brand with the
potential to become as big and powerful as, say, McDonald's or Burger King. Yet two Mumbai
entrepreneurs with a background in corporate finance embarked on this quest seven years ago. The
competition was stiff, as building a brand for this home-grown version of the burger meant competing
with countless successful roadside rivals.

Goli Vada Pav, a chain founded in 2004 by Venkatesh Iyer and Shivdas Menon, changed the way this
popular snack is prepared - and consumed. It took the snack indoors into a more gentrified ambience
and made it a sterilised, upmarket version of its original self, all the while without tinkering one bit
with the alluring taste that sustains vada pav's mass appeal.

It all started off with a 200 square foot shop in a Mumbai suburb, marketed as an ethnic fast food joint.
It was a gamble that paid off, thanks to rising incomes and fast-changing dietary habits among Indians
in a buoyant economy.

"From day one, our business was rocking," Mr Iyer remembers. "We soon expanded to 10 outlets. We
had uniformed staff in red and white ties. We had large pictures of our product on the walls, just like
McDonald's and Burger King."

But Goli Vada Pav was nowhere close to reaching its present scale of operations, even two years after
launch. High footfalls at its outlets translated into high sales, but the operations were fraught with
unnecessary wastage of its raw ingredients, which escalated costs, and a lack of standardisation of
quality and taste.

To increase the shelf life of its product, the firm tried various technologies used by dairy and other
perishable-product manufacturers: ultra-violet rays, nitrogen gas chambers, and even blast-chill
refrigeration. But none of these methods produced satisfactory results.

Eventually, Goli Vada Pav went to Vista Processed Foods, a subsidiary of the US company OSI, one of
the world's largest food processing corporations, which prepares burgers for McDonald's. Goli Vada Pav
outsourced the manufacturing of the potato dumpling to OSI's fully automated plant near Mumbai. The
plant is certified for hazard analysis and critical control point, a global standard for food safety, and
can prepare 100,000 portions in five hours.

Every step - slicing, peeling, dicing, packing - was automated. The hygienic conditions under which
Vista made the potato dumplings increased their shelf life from one to 90 days, while at the same time
automation cut down on waste. Each finished dumpling now goes through metal detectors and is X-
rayed, ensuring greater standardisation of the product.

The gram flour-coated dumplings are packed, sealed in cartons, with manufacturing and expiry dates
clearly stated, and transported in refrigerated trucks to warehouses and thereafter to franchises,
where they are unpacked, deep-fried to order, and served scalding hot to customers. Each outlet has a
single-touch fryer, designed specially for the company by engineers at the Veermata Jijabai
Technological Institute in Mumbai.

These innovations have given Goli Vada Pav a significant leap over street vendors. A survey conducted
between December 2009 and February last year by Metropolis Healthcare, a multinational chain of
diagnostic centres, found that of 70 random street food samples it collected from Mumbai, nine out of
10 were contaminated with bacteria and unfit for human consumption.

Goli Vada Pav's franchise outlets have grown from 10 in 2004 to nearly 100 this month. Its turnover
rose from 3 million rupees (Dh242,500) in its first year of operation to 150 million rupees last year.

The chain is planning a massive expansion, to 500 franchise outlets, across India in the next five years,
with a more than tenfold jump in turnover to 1.8 billion rupees.

"Vada pav is the Amitabh Bachchan of food business," Mr Iyer says, likening the popularity of the
snack to the mass appeal of the Bollywood superstar. "Potato, wheat and spices have a universal
appeal. People crave ethnic food. India is a disorganised market but a large and fast-growing market
and a big opportunity."

Mr Iyer says he is keen to expand the company's footprint in Dubai, the UK and Singapore and is
scouting for franchise partners. The growing popularity of vada pav, which is native to Mumbai, across
India does not surprise him.

The success of the brand is a reflection of the surging growth of India's agricultural and food business,
which is expected to double to US$280bn (Dh1.02 trillion) by the next decade, according to ICICI, the
country's largest private bank.

India's food retail business, which accounts for 26 per cent of the country's GDP and is currently worth
$70bn, is expected to more than double to $150bn, according to the global audit and advisory firm
KPMG.

According to a report - Indian Fast Food Market Analysis - released in September by the market
researcher RNCOS, India's fast-food market is growing at an annual rate of 25 per cent to 30 per cent.

But analysts warn that high food-price inflation could impede growth.

Headline inflation was an annual 8.43 per cent last month, up from 7.5 per cent in November.
Vegetable prices rose by 22.9 per cent last month compared with November. Onions likewise became
more expensive by 34.86 per cent and potatoes by 16.29 per cent. These prices are "unacceptably
high", warned the finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, who acknowledged that high food-price inflation
could harm the broader economy.

The government raised key interest rates six times over the previous year, but its monetary policy has
so far been ineffective in curbing rising food prices.

Mr Iyer acknowledges that inflation is a very serious issue, but he says Goli Vada Pav's profit margins
are largely insulated by the economics of bulk purchasing and mass marketing.

"We buy potatoes for 100 stores, oil for 100 stores, wheat for 100 stores," he says. "Input prices have
certainly gone up, but not drastically because we do our operations in bulk."

But with onion prices showing a tendency to "shock every three years", the company decided in its
early years that it would avoid using onions, normally a key ingredient in potato dumplings.
"Our franchises have an option to source onions locally and use them as salad dressing," Mr Iyer says.
"Our customers are not complaining."