THE three-day ArabNet 2016, the largest digital gathering in the Kingdom, concluded at Four Seasons Hotel in Riyadh on Wednesday. Omar Christidis, founder and CEO of ArabNet, said, "We have great initiatives for entrepreneurs, we have got our competitions in startup battles, in which three of the top winners will be picked up to fly to Dubai to compete in May against top three winners from other markets including Lebanon, the UAE, Kuwait, Egypt and Morocco. Then, we will bring 20 of the top companies to compete for the title of ‘Top Arab Startup'. So I deeply believe that it is a very important step for the participants of these competitions." Asked about the kinds of competitions for this year, Christidis said, "We have several competitions such as Ideathon, in which the participants only have two minutes to present their ideas. The ideas should be new and innovative but not built yet into working products. Another competition is ‘Startup Battle', which is for companies that have working products less than two years old. Speaking about Badir Program for Technology Incubators, which is under King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, its CEO Nawaf Alsahaf said: "It is a national program of the Kingdom. At the beginning, we started with just one incubator in 2008. Over the last eight years, we were able to expand from one incubator in the field on information technology to five incubators in three cities across the Kingdom: communication technology, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing and mixed technology. When asked about the services "Badir" provides, Alsahaf said, "We provide services to startup companies that have ready products and can enter the market. We help them with shared working spaces, private offices, infrastructure support, legal support, accounting and bookkeeping services. Additionally, we provide workshops, courses to develop the skills of the entrepreneurs. We also have an accelerated program that was launched in early 2015. We graduated seven companies in the fields of information communication technology, food and beverages and advanced manufacturing. Badir so far has around 100 companies incubated." About the criteria they follow in incubation, Alsahaf said, "We help companies that work in fields we incubate: communication technology, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing. As for the criteria, it has to be innovative, scalable and it has to generate job opportunities and it has the ability to successfully export it services abroad." Asked about participation in ArabNet 2016, Alsahaf said: "We have been hosting ArabNet for the last two years. The reason behind this is our active role in creating awareness about entrepreneurship and generating more and better job opportunities." Saudi Marketers is a company promoted by Saudi experts who have around 25 years of experience. When asked about the services the company provides, a representative said, "We have two kinds of services. The first one is for ready projects; our role here becomes only marketing. The second one is to serve individuals who just have ideas but don't know where to start. We train them and introduce them to many helpful initiatives. We also provide other services to individuals depending on their needs such as: consultations, social media marketing and website developing services — let us call it marketing platform." When asked about what makes the Saudi marketing company stand out he answered: "We provide marketing services, but in a Saudi way. That is we consider our Saudi culture to be a vital way in getting closer to both the market and consumers."
