{"id":24647,"date":"2019-11-10T13:53:24","date_gmt":"2019-11-10T09:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.dubaicityguide.com\/site\/?p=24647"},"modified":"2019-11-10T13:53:24","modified_gmt":"2019-11-10T09:53:24","slug":"panel-discussion-organised-by-wamda-at-area-2071-marks-a-decade-of-entrepreneurship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.dubaicityguide.com\/site\/panel-discussion-organised-by-wamda-at-area-2071-marks-a-decade-of-entrepreneurship\/","title":{"rendered":"Panel Discussion Organised By Wamda At Area 2071 Marks A ‘Decade Of Entrepreneurship’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Wamda and Area 2071 hosted a panel discussion to discuss the growth of the startup ecosystem over the past decade, and investigate the challenges that remain to be addressed.<\/p>\n

The event opened with remarks by Khalfan Juma\u00a0Belhoul, CEO of\u00a0Dubai Future Foundation. Moderated by Wamda executive chairman Fadi Ghandour, the session featured Magnus Olsson, co-founder and managing director at Careem, Rabea Ataya, co-founder and CEO at\u00a0Bayt.com, and Ronaldo Mouchawar, co-founder of\u00a0Souq.com, vice-president of\u00a0Amazon\u00a0Middle East and North Africa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Khalfan\u00a0Belhoul: Dubai provides supportive infrastructure for entrepreneurship<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Khalfan Juma\u00a0Belhoul, CEO of\u00a0Dubai Future Foundation, said that Dubai supports entrepreneurs and brilliant minds from around the world and provides them with the infrastructure to develop their businesses, and turn their innovative ideas into reality, and as such contribute to building innovative solutions to current challenges.<\/p>\n

Belhoul pointed to the importance of providing global platforms for startups to scale their business and enhance their potential by having access to more support and financing opportunities. “Area 2071 represents on a global scale a successful model of an entrepreneurial and supportive community of innovators, founders, government entities, corporates and investors brought together to facilitate and accelerate collaboration,\u201d said Belhoul.<\/p>\n

Entrepreneurship as a vital engine of economic growth<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSince we started in 2000, we have seen an incredible amount of change in the region\u2019s entrepreneurship ecosystem,\u201d said Rabea Ataya, founder and CEO of\u00a0Bayt.com. \u201cOn the plus side, the role of entrepreneurship in addressing regional economic and unemployment woes is better recognised. The number of mentorship programmes is growing, as is venture capital and government interest,\u201d said Ataya.<\/p>\n

Entrepreneurship has since been recognised as a vital engine of economic growth and job creation, prompting most governments across the region to improve business conditions to enable founders to launch and grow healthy companies. Across the region, founders have witnessed a proliferation of startup communities, accelerators, incubators, and industry- or stage-specific programmes catering to startups of all stages.<\/p>\n

A change in Mena\u2019s investment landscape<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe entrepreneurial ecosystem has come a long way from when we first launched<\/p>\n

Souq in 2005. The e-commerce sector was in its early stages with many suppliers<\/p>\n

hesitant to have their products online and others unclear on how the internet worked.<\/p>\n

Our aspiration when we started the company was to create a local marketplace for the Arab world by leveraging technology. Today and after our acquisition, customers can choose from tens of millions of products available on amazon.ae from local and international sellers,\u201d said Ronaldo Mouchawar, co-founder of Souq and VP of<\/p>\n

Amazon MENA.<\/p>\n

There has seemingly been a shift in mindsets, noted the speakers, with an increasing number of individuals looking to launch their ventures as a means to become agents of their futures and those of their communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2000, when we were out looking to raise capital, there were no venture capital funds to begin with \u2013 only friends and family, and no other ways to raise money. Today, there are hundreds of millions of dollars\u2019 worth of venture funds across the region. Even from a human capital perspective, bright minds see startups as opportunities to learn and grow, whereas 20 years ago, most smart people were interested in joining big<\/p>\n

multinationals. It was a pretty crazy time to start an internet business,\u201d said Ataya.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s also been a shift in mindset with investors backing up startups with seed<\/p>\n

funding and the government launching initiatives to encourage budding entrepreneurs,\u201d<\/p>\n

said Mouchawar.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe journeys of\u00a0Bayt.com,\u00a0Souq.com\u00a0and Careem have boosted the ecosystem by<\/p>\n

creating role models, encouraging a more entrepreneurial mindset across the region,<\/p>\n

and proving that it is possible to launch, grow and exponentially scale a business across our region,\u201d said Wamda executive chairman Fadi Ghandour.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have seen the ecosystem mature and evolve, with governments and corporates launching initiatives to encourage founders and ease business challenges. We are also observing unprecedented startup activity in new sectors, such as food tech, blockchain, Software as a Service (SaaS), e-commerce enablers, as well as fintech. Our responsibility as ecosystem enablers is to continuously support, nurture, and invest in startups as well as help founders navigate the complexity of the Mena region,\u201d said Ghandour.<\/p>\n

Encouraging entrepreneurs<\/strong><\/p>\n

Magnus Olsson, co-founder and managing director of Careem, highlighted the importance of Dubai and the UAE’s support for entrepreneurs and startups as well as its innovative environment, which encourages work on modern solutions contributing to the development of new economic sectors.<\/p>\n

He pointed to the wide opportunities available to startups across the region which boasts local and international talent capable of supporting future sectors such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and blockchain among others.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wamda and Area 2071 hosted a panel discussion to discuss the growth of the startup ecosystem over the past decade, and investigate the challenges that remain to be addressed. The event opened with remarks by Khalfan Juma\u00a0Belhoul, CEO of\u00a0Dubai Future Foundation. Moderated by Wamda executive chairman Fadi Ghandour, the session featured Magnus Olsson, co-founder and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dubaicityguide.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dubaicityguide.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dubaicityguide.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dubaicityguide.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dubaicityguide.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24647"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dubaicityguide.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24649,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dubaicityguide.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24647\/revisions\/24649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dubaicityguide.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dubaicityguide.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dubaicityguide.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dubaicityguide.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}