Qatar Development Bank Executive Director of Advisory & Incubation Ibrahim Al Mannai and UBI Global CEO and Co-Founder Ali Amin, with the winners of the World Benchmark Study 2019-2020, and participants of the World Incubation Summit 2019 at the Museum of
Doha: Six winners of the fifth World Benchmark Study by Stockholm-based UBI Global were awarded at the World Incubation Summit (WIS) 2019 which was hosted by the Qatar Development Bank (QDB) in Doha recently.
The prestigious UBI Awards, which identify the world’s best business incubators and accelerators for their innovation and best practices, were presented to the winners by UBI Global CEO and Co-Founder Ali Amin and QDB Executive Director of Advisory & Incubation Ibrahim Al Mannai at a gala dinner held at the Museum of Islamic Art.
This year, the ‘World’s Top University Business Incubator Award’ was presented to UK-based The SETsquared Partnership, which has supported over 4,000 UK high-tech startups since its inception in 2002, helping them raise more than £1.8bn of investment and creating £8.6bn of economic impact to date, a figure which is set to rise to nearly £27bn by 2030.
The ‘World’s Top Public Business Incubator Award’ was given to Italy-based I3P Incubatore delle Imprese Innovative del Politecnico di Torino, which has 20 years of activity, over 2,000 jobs created, and €48m worth of fund raised over the last five years.
US-based 1871 won the ‘World’s Top Private Business Incubator Award’ during the event. With 100 partner brands and seven partner universities, 1871 alumni has created over 11, 250 jobs, over 650 active alumni companies, and over $1.5bn capital raised by the 1871 alumni.
With graduates successfully attracting more than a billion roubles in investments and creating more than a thousand jobs, Russia-based HSE Business Accelerator was also awarded during the event as the winner for the ‘World’s Top University Business Accelerator Award’.
India-based Kerala Startup Mission, which is the central agency of the Kerala government for entrepreneurship development and incubation activities in Kerala, India, was also awarded as the winner for the ‘World’s Top Public Business Accelerator Award’.
During the event, the ‘World’s Top Private Business Accelerator Award’ was also presented to Russia-based GVA Accelerator Program, which has over 30 acceleration programs implemented in Russia, CIS, India, Israel, and USA where they unite more than 100 investors and over 1,000 startups and counting.
“By highlighting the performance of these top programmes, we’re not only helping the business incubators and accelerators to become more efficient, but we’re also assisting government officials in the development of their respective major agencies. UBI Global ranking also enables corporations to find partnerships on incubators themselves and startups that they intend to invest in,” said Amin while speaking at the event.
Earlier during a panel discussion held as part of the summit, 1871 CEO Elizabeth Ziegler who gave an advice to business organisations to be successful, said: “Understand what the problem is that they’re trying to solve, and have deep clarity about their own capabilities. We also need to have conviction that our corporate partners are actually really interested in doing something to solve real problems”.
Over 250 innovators from 40 countries attended the World Incubation Summit 2019, which was held in the Middle East for the first time in Qatar. With a network of over 700 incubators and accelerators from over 70 countries, UBI Global connects corporations and governments with innovative thinkers and doers globally.
