Your trusted service partner Company formation and PRO services in Qatar

You start a request by sending a message on WhatsApp describing what you need and attaching photographs or scans of the documents you already hold. We reply with what the process requires, what is missing from your file, and a written quote before any work begins. There is no form and no appointment. Once you accept the quote the file is opened and you are given a request number that identifies it in every message after that.

No. Sending documents, receiving the quote, approving the work, getting status updates and receiving the finished result are all handled over WhatsApp, so there is nothing you need to come in for. We do keep an office in Doha and you are welcome in it. Where a submission requires original documents, the handover is arranged with you directly.

The free consultation is a written review of your situation on WhatsApp. You describe what you need and send what you already have; we tell you which documents the process requires, which of them you are missing, the order the steps have to happen in, and what it will cost. It is written rather than a call, so you keep the answer and can act on it yourself or take it elsewhere. There is no charge and no obligation.

Digital Zone quotes each request individually after reviewing the documents, because the cost depends on the service, how many documents are involved and which government fees apply. Government fees are set and published by the issuing entity; our own fee is quoted separately so you can see the two apart. The quote is sent in writing before any work starts and does not change unless the scope does.

Digital Zone works in Arabic and English. Requests, documents and status updates can be handled in either language, and translation between the two is one of the services we provide. Government entities in Qatar conduct official business in Arabic, so documents submitted to them are prepared in Arabic. Hukoomi, Qatar's e-government portal, states that in written legal contracts the language used must be Arabic and that the Arabic version prevails.

The exact set depends on the legal structure and the business activity, but an application to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry generally turns on four groups: identification for every shareholder and manager, the company's constitutional documents, an address in Qatar for the registered office, and any approval required by the regulator that oversees the chosen activity. Documents issued outside Qatar must be attested first. Qatar's Single Window investor portal states that any formal document issued outside Qatar must be attested by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and by the embassy of Qatar in the issuing country.

A limited liability company is a separate Qatari legal entity whose shareholders are liable only up to their capital contribution. A branch office is not a separate entity: it operates under its foreign parent, which carries liability for it. A representative office is limited to non-commercial work such as market research, promotion and liaison, and cannot trade. Invest Qatar publishes all three structures under Commercial Companies Law No. 11 of 2015. Under Foreign Investment Law No. 1 of 2019 foreign investors may hold up to 100% of a company in most sectors subject to Ministry of Commerce and Industry approval, with banking, insurance, commercial agencies and the exploitation of natural resources among the exceptions.

A commercial registration must be renewed before the expiry date printed on it. Qatar's Single Window investor portal states that a CR can be renewed for a period of one to five years, and that renewal covers the whole organisation — the main CR and every branch CR at once, rather than separately. A commercial permit cannot be renewed for a longer period than the registration it sits under. The portal also publishes the renewal fees set by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry; confirm the current figures with the Ministry before budgeting.

A computer card, also called an establishment card, is the identification document the Ministry of Interior issues to a registered establishment in Qatar. It records the establishment's details and the people authorised to sign for it, and it is what allows a company to carry out immigration and labour transactions such as applying for residence permits. It is issued by the General Directorate of Passports, and the Ministry publishes establishment card services through the Metrash2 application, where the card's details can be updated and renewed.

Attestation is the chain of official confirmations that makes a document issued in one country usable in another. Qatar's Single Window investor portal states that any formal document issued outside Qatar must be attested by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and by the embassy of Qatar in the issuing country before it will be accepted. Qatar is not a contracting party to the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention and does not appear on the Hague Conference on Private International Law's status table for it, so an apostille on its own does not replace this chain. Degree certificates, powers of attorney, parent-company documents and civil records are the ones that most often need it.

A certified translation is one produced by a licensed translation office and issued under that office's stamp and the translator's signature, so the entity receiving it can see who is accountable for the wording. A plain translation, however accurate, carries none of that and is normally refused where a certified one has been asked for. What counts as acceptable is set by whoever receives the document — a court, a ministry, an embassy or a university — not by the translator.

Acceptance is decided by the entity receiving the document rather than by the translator, and the requirements differ between courts, ministries, embassies and universities. Before a translation is produced we confirm what the receiving entity asks for, because a translation prepared to the wrong standard has to be done again. If you tell us where the document is going, we will tell you what that entity requires.

Every request is given a request number, and you receive a WhatsApp message at each stage without having to ask for it: Received, Checked, Submitted, Cleared, Delivered. Each message says what has happened rather than what is expected to happen, so the thread is a record of the file and not a forecast. There is nothing to log into and no portal password to remember.

If something is missing we tell you before the file is submitted, which is the point of checking it first. If a submission is rejected after it has gone in, you are told what the rejecting entity said, what it needs instead and what the next step is, in the same thread and without having to ask. A rejection is usually an expired document, a name that does not match across two documents, or a translation or attestation the receiving entity will not accept.