Dubai-it: She came to Dubai looking for a job. Four months later, she's built her own app

Dubai: “It’s kind of in the air.”

This is what Serbian resident Jana Savić has to say when asked if she’s felt the ‘Dubai-it’ spirit since she’s come to the city.

The 28-year-old resident landed in Dubai in July this year, after making a few short trips to the city with her friend over the past two years. The city always seemed to be one that matched their ambition, and after her friend found a job in the city last year, Savić decided to move this year, after completing her degree in international management in Serbia.

“In Serbia, degrees are structured differently. You study all of economics for the first couple of years and then in the final year, you focus on your specialisation, which for me was international management,” she said.

But her passion also lay in the world of marketing, having volunteered for a non-governmental organisation when she was just 18. Over the years, she taught herself the ropes of marketing, by taking courses, and getting hands-on experience.

So, when she landed in Dubai, she began looking for a job not just in her academic field of economics and international management, but also in marketing.

And while progress was slow, especially given the summer months, the city quietly began to grow on Savić. Her Dubai, she says, is quieter and feels closer than the city she would often see on social media.

“It’s the small things. The guy at my coffee spot already knows my order, the Metro that actually runs on time and the fact that I can get food from literally any country at 11pm within walking distance,” she said.

This ‘quieter’ Dubai, for her, pairs perfectly with the pace of the city, too, one that she says she has never experienced.

“I’ve seen big cities in Europe where, yes, people do always seem to be moving, but not quite like Dubai. It’s the kind of environment where everyone is pushing you to move forward. It’s in the plans we make – let’s go to the museum, let’s go to the art exhibition … and when you talk to people, they’re always talking about their side jobs,” she said.

That energy is contagious and has pushed Savić to get out of her comfort zone and, based on the advice she admittedly received from ChatGPT, “put herself out there”.

“I decided to go to a networking event, and then another, and soon I was like, ‘Okay, let’s do it weekly.’ It was liberating, to be honest, because it’s a different mindset altogether. Everyone is trying to be a better version of themselves and that is what I decided to do as well,” she said.

The tangible results she would get out of these networking events were also obvious – people would share lists of HR emails, offer tips on how to customise her CV, or suggest an opening they had just learnt about.

But as someone who was used to constantly staying busy, just looking for a job was not enough to keep Savić occupied.

“I am the kind of person who cannot sit tight. Back in Serbia, I had a full-time job, three additional clients and I helped my parents build a startup. So, 20 hours of work a day were pretty normal for me,” she said.

So, as she waited to find a job, she decided to ‘Dubai-it’ and achieve something extraordinary, with excellence, in record time.

Her Dubai-it project? Building an app called ‘Gluten Free Dubai’.

“I was diagnosed with Coeliac’s disease [ a chronic autoimmune condition in which the immune system reacts abnormally to gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye] years ago and after a lifetime of eating whatever I wanted, but then feeling weird about it, or working out without seeing any results, things finally made sense to me,” she said.

But with that clarity came many questions – was the dish she was ordering really gluten-free? What about cross-contact? And did the restaurant with amazing gluten-free options accept vouchers from apps like Entertainer?

These were questions she also realised her friends had, and those conversations led to the idea of ‘Gluten Free Dubai’, where app users would get clearly labelled recommendations for gluten-free options, while shopping or eating out.

Developing an app, though, wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. But like many other things in life, Savić decided to teach herself.

“I thought, let’s see how hard it is to learn a bit of programming for an economics person. So, I used AI to teach me coding and built the app,” she said.

The app is currently under the review process at the Apple Appstore and Google PlayStore, and while Savić hopes the app will take off, she’s also still trying to look for a job.

“I am very used to the stability of a corporate life. I have been in the corporate world for seven years and switching to working by myself is quite a big change. But I do plan to focus on the app and hopefully expand it to other emirates, as well,” she said.

The experience of moving to Dubai and pushing herself out of a comfort zone, has given her a critical lesson in life as well: the things she was avoiding were exactly the things that were slowing her down.

“Comfort is expensive, especially when you’re building something,” she said.

And between the ease of everyday life in a city that feels more and more like home, and the contagious ambition she can feel in the air, Savić says she’s found a version of Dubai that’s very much hers.