Global investors are eyeing setting up offices in Qatar and are scouting for companies to invest as startups are exponentially growing and seeing an uptick in investments said an expert during the tech talk series.
The event was organised by Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) as part of its tech talk series entitled ‘Understanding the Venture Capital Investment Landscape in Qatar’ which covered recent and developing trends in the Middle East’s VC landscape focusing on Qatar.
Sara Daniel, CEO of Doha Tech Angels, discussed the venture capital market in the region and Qatar. She said, “We are seeing uptick in investments now as we are at a time when startups are growing exponentially. In 2021, we had registered 35 successful exits and in first two months of 2022 there are already 12 which brings a lot of confidence to investors and makes investors to put more money into startups. Therefore, now is the time to fix the challenges faced by startups so that we can benefit from this momentum.”
“We are finding global investors that have offices in the region and are actively looking for companies in the region to invest in. So, there are global investors from the US, Japan, China, South Africa have offices here and are scouting the market for companies which brings in confidence and so much more money is being drawn into this. It is an important time for startups because we are seeing cross-pollination between markets as we are seeing companies in Africa acquiring companies in Qatar. This is comforting for investors as they have more consolidated positions,” she added.
Addressing the event, Sara explained the different stages of the entrepreneurial ecosystem life cycle model. She noted, “The first stage is activation - when you are starting to create the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and this is where Doha stands today. Activation is when you are promoting startups and focus is to create and produce as many startups as possible to provide with early-stage funding. The second stage is globalisation - when the startups begin to develop abroad and grow outside of the market and the third stage is attraction, when founders are attracted to your cities to start their business.”
Speaking about venture markets she said, “When you look at startups, one of the easiest ways to size the market is to look at how much capital is being invested inside these companies. In Mena, we are looking at Turkey, Pakistan, Africa - these are emerging markets for venture market. We are seeing a steep increase in amount of funding that is going to early-stage technology businesses. It is an unprecedented surge of capital - $6.9bn invested in early-stage technology businesses across these markets and the leading industry is fintech. There is a huge uptick that happened in 2021 in the Mena market as after COVID-19 everything went online and digital was embraced by all different facets and there was increase in funding.”
There has been an increase in terms of money invested. The amount of the money invested in startups in Qatar represent less than 1 percent of what is invested in the rest of the region and the leading industry remains fintech which is the same across all other markets. We have the share of money that is coming from accelerators which are institutions that are government backed to promote startups which stands at 46 percent in Qatar which is huge.
Sara also highlighted the Doha Tech Angel study done on 10 startups and 2 incubators across several sectors including fintech, e-commerce, sportstech, transportation, health tech which evaluated the challenges of the startup ecosystem in Qatar based on five pillars that are enablers for startups to grow which includes infrastructure, Internet connection, capital, talent, markets, and regulation. Infrastructure relatively to the other sectors scored the highest. She said, “In Qatar we have good ICT infrastructure that is ready to propel companies forward and there are very rich and diverse accelerator programs that enable startups to launch which include incubators and accelerators – QSTP, QBIC etc.
The ‘QFC Tech Talk Series’ is designed to enable Fintech firms, experts and innovators from across Qatar’s technology ecosystem to share innovations, networks and discover opportunities across all verticals of fields.
