Dr Tejinder Singh (third right), Chapter Director of Startup Grind Doha and Founder and Chairman of 360 Nautica; Haris Aghadi (fourth left), Founder of Meddy; and Agata Braja (fourth right), Innovation Consultant, and other participants during Startup Gri
Startup Grind Doha which officially launched its Qatar chapter recently, is set to be a platform for showcasing the success stories of local startups in the country, with an aim to mentor the younger generation of startup entrepreneurs in Qatar, said Dr Tejinder Singh, Chapter Director of Startup Grind Doha, who is also the Founder and Chairman of venture and growth capital platform 360 Nautica.
Known to be the world’s largest independent startup community, Startup Grind nurtures startup ecosystems in over 125 countries. The global platform, which is sponsored by Google for Startups, educates, inspires, and connects more than 2 million entrepreneurs in over 600 chapters.
In Qatar, Startup Grind is partnered with 360 Nautica, which owns a number of popular startup brands including Q Tickets and BPO Plus, and is sponsored by Qatar Sports Tech.
“We’re planning to do 12 events a year and bring local startup success stories to let people know how the success stories have converted themselves from ideation to being commercial, negotiating with investors, manoeuvering in the ecosystem, and validating the product among other topics,” said Singh in an interview with The Peninsula on the sidelines of the Startup Grind’s ‘Journey to Series A’ talk which was held at the Alfardan Centre on Sunday.
Singh said his team at 360 Nautica will also work on mentoring and coaching the new startups, and will support the young entrepreneurs in every way, such as providing them with the investment funds needed, extending co-working spaces and the back office support system for the startups to grow.
He added: “This will be the first of its kind where we would be looking at the startups as a private sector incubator in Qatar. We’ll incubate, accelerate them, and expose them to Startup Grind’s global platforms where it has a huge community of venture capitals and fundings.”
Singh added that the group also plans to create a fund in the future. “First, we’re trying to create an ecosystem, and 360 Nautica will also create a fund which will actually invite investors not just across Qatar but from other parts of the world. We will adopt various ways of angel funding, crowd funding, and we will even scale it to VC in times to come,” he added.
Describing Qatar’s startup ecosystem, Singh added: “When I first came to Qatar in 2006, there were virtually no startups here. It was just the entrepreneurs bootstrapping their own initiatives predominantly. There was no airwaves of startups. The whole stuff has changed in the last 12 years, particularly when the Qatar Business Incubation Centre, Digital Incubation Centre, and Qatar Science and Technology Park initiatives started. They started supporting the young generation to do the startups. It was overwhelmingly supported. We’re just extending that. We’re just adding our contribution to the whole initiative that the Qatar government has done”.
Haris Aghadi, Founder of Meddy, shared his experiences in building the largest doctor booking platform in Qatar, which now has over 150,000 monthly users. Meddy, which is a 500 Startups portfolio company, also plans to expand to the rest of the GCC in the near future.
The company, which ranked 10th in the Forbes Middle East’s 2017 ’50 Startups to Watch in the Arab World’, recently raised a $2.5 Series A round to expand further into GCC.
