Majed Abdulaziz Al Khulaifi, Head of Incubation at Qatar Business Incubation Centre
Doha: With Qatar’s startup ecosystem rapidly growing, the demand for more incubators, accelerators, as well as investment funds is currently taking centre stage in the country’s business sector.
To meet the needs of the growing number of startup entrepreneurs here, the Qatar Development Bank (QDB) is in the process of establishing two new industry-specific startup incubators which are expected to be launched in March, an official from QDB’s Qatar Business Incubation Centre (QBIC) has said.
“Looking at the current situation in the market, we see there’s a huge demand (for new incubators) for specific sectors. The QDB is in the process of establishing two specialised incubators which will be launched soon, likely in March. Both incubators will really serve the Qatar National Vision 2030,” Majed Abdulaziz Al Khulaifi, Head of Incubation at QBIC said, without specifying which industries the new incubators will be catering to, while talking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of Startup Grind’s forum in Doha recently.
He added that QBIC will also launch three new investment-related programmes in Qatar this year, to address the investment gap in the country’s startup ecosystem.
“There is a huge investment gap in the market. What we’ve done now, is we’re launching three investment-related programmes where we will try to encourage Qataris and non-Qataris in Doha to start investing on the startups. This will help the startups to grow faster, and this will also help in attracting international startups to work in Doha. All three programmes will be launched in Qatar this year,” added Al Khulaifi.
Known to be one of the largest mixed-use business incubators in the Mena region, the QBIC has supported over 500 lean startup graduates, and incubated as many as 180 startup companies since its establishment in 2014. The centre has witnessed countless success stories of its incubated startup companies, with several companies further expanding into foreign markets. According to QBIC website, QBIC has invested about QR4.7m into the startups which have generated around QR60m of revenue.
“We’re now trying to push towards investment opportunities to enhance the startup entrepreneurship in Qatar. We’re also developing a huge Angel investor network that we’re trying to support. We’re now seeing more Qatari investors and Angel investors in Qatar,” Al Khulaifi said earlier during the panel discussion.
He added that QBIC, which previously required a Qatari partner for every startup company, will now accept startups without a Qatari partner in its programme. “From the next wave of lean startup programme, it will no longer be mandatory for startups to have a Qatari partner. Expatriate entrepreneurs can just go and apply in the programme. The only difference is that we will take startup equity. QBIC will now be their partner, which will take between 3 percent and 6 percent of the startup equity,” he added.
The concept of entrepreneurship and incubation is still relatively new in Qatar despite the rapid growth in the startup ecosystem, which proves challenging, said Al Khulaifi. He added: “We learned that we also have to focus on the investors. At the beginning, we were focusing on the entrepreneurs themselves. But now, we have to let the entrepreneurs explore the market. There are still challenges, but you cannot be an entrepreneur without the challenges. And the regulations in Doha, compared to other countries, are much better (for the startups)”.
