RIYADH — Badir Program for Technology Incubators – one of King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology projects – declared its support and sponsorship of BEBAN forum, which will be organized by SMEA on Sept. 17 at Riyadh International Convention & Exhibition Center.

The 4-day event aims to raise the awareness of the society and SME sector players about the importance of innovation, creation, and entrepreneurship, and to ensure an incubating environment and the supporting technical infrastructure for the survival and competitiveness of the enterprises, while endeavoring to achieve the Kingdom’s vision for the year 2030, and increase SME’s contribution to the GDP from 20 to 35%.

Through its sponsorship and participation in this forum, Badir program seeks to shed light on its role and main services in terms of developing the spirit of initiative and innovation in the technical field among Saudi young people, and offering support and care to creative people, innovators, and entrepreneurs so as to help them turn their ideas into promising technical projects that would boost the economic development journey, while also exhibiting the technical projects – 127 approximately - incubated by the program currently.

Nawwaf AlSahhaf, CEO of Badir program, said BEBAN Forum is an important platform that helps spread the culture of entrepreneurship at local level, and an ideal opportunity for startups, SMEs, and entrepreneurs to introduce and share ideas and visions about developing the competitiveness of startups and launching promising projects in the Saudi market.

He added: “Badir program prides itself on supporting this event, given the program’s endeavors to promote the innovation environment and convert the innovations into commercial projects of economic value, by offering support and care to entrepreneurship, innovations, technical incubators, and providing the adequate environment for the growth of technical startups, through the application of the risk mitigation principle while concentrating on business development and therefore build a knowledge-based society and economy”.

He further said Badir program is currently focusing on expanding the scope of innovation and entrepreneurship centers all over the Kingdom with a view to achieve the key performance indicators, namely the establishment of 600 startups and the creation of 3600 job opportunities by 2020, knowing that the program is also seeking to diversify its portfolio of startups and increase the capacities of local companies.

Badir Program for Technology Incubators is currently incubating about 127 technical projects, 34 out of which have a market value of 334 million riyals, while the incubated companies created about 786 job opportunities to Saudi young people. Besides, the incubated companies could attract local and international investments from individual investors and investment funds with a value exceeding SR75 million.

In the past 10 years, the program pursued its main role of offering the various facilities which help the male and female Saudi entrepreneurs turn their technical ideas into successful investment projects that contribute to the diversification of income sources and the creation of more job opportunities to young people. Badir program became as well a main destination for investors in startups. — SG