Aiming to propel the development of a thriving startup ecosystem in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Unifonic and Sukna Ventures have announced the launch of their comprehensive entrepreneurship programme ‘Unifonic X’.
A 14-week hands-on learning programme, Unifonic X will mentor aspiring entrepreneurs, innovators, and early-stage ventures to further develop their business concepts and boost the enterprise cloud computing ecosystem from the kingdom.
Designed to enable ambitious entrepreneurs to transform their ideas into successful businesses, this unique programme structure provides a full spectrum of knowledge, skills and support to participants allowing them to learn, implement, and iterate proven company-building concepts. In addition to offering experiential learning, incorporating global best practices and peer-to-peer collaboration, Unifonic X will facilitate access to a strong network of experts and investors to help entrepreneurs bring their ideas to market and expedite market entry.
Set to be delivered in three phases, the programme will guide up to 30 aspiring entrepreneurs, and team them up, to focus on further developing and validating 10 venture ideas. At the end of the programme, the ventures will participate in the Demo Day, presenting their validated business concepts to prospective partners, angels and institutional investors, to lead the next phase of their growth.
Commenting on the announcement, Ahmed Hamdan, CEO at Unifonic, said: “At Unifonic, we are always seeking the best minds and talents. We also believe that we must give back to the community that helped us make such a positive impact. With our partners Sukna Ventures and the backing of our sponsors, we will take it to the next level by empowering an ecosystem that fosters innovation and drives a steady stream of ideas to attract investments and ensure sustainable development for a prosperous future.”
Fares Bardeesi, Founder and Managing Partner at Sukna Ventures, said: “Unifonic X is based on the GIC Innovation Execution (iX) program to empower founders with practical technical tools to co-create ventures in the largely unserved and fast-growing cloud marketspace. Unifonic and Sukna have put together an impressive consortium of partners to help the founders succeed and graduate successful investible ventures. Founders with or without ideas joining this programme will go through a structured venture building programme while having access to a network of market experts, mentor and advisors thus significantly improving their chances of success.”
Designed around the Global Innovation Catalyst (GIC) Innovation Execution (iX) programme, Unifonic X combines a unique set of resources that offers the candidates access to Silicon Valley experiences, world-class experiential education from one of the top universities in the world, a strong regional network and funding.
With the aim of empowering entrepreneurs to build impactful, successful, and sustainable ventures, the programme includes virtual live workshops by certified instructors, experienced global mentors, and guest lecturers.
Powered by Sukna Ventures and Unifonic, Unifonic X is supported by key partners including the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the General Authority for Small and Medium Enterprises (Monsha’at) and Amazon through its AWS Activate programme.
Waleed Al Ballaa, General Partner at Sukna Ventures, commented: “We are very excited to partner with Unifonic, a leading company in Mena’s cloud services market, to expand this market in a novel way where entrepreneurs can co-create with us and utilise our partnership’s strengths to solve large and tough problems within various sectors in the cloud market. Add to the mix the type of strategic sponsors we have on board, and it becomes apparent this could be a real game-changer for our ecosystem.”
Deputy minister for Future jobs & Digital Entrepreneurship, Dr Ahmed Altheneyan, says: “We are looking forward to witness the impact of our collaboration with Unifonic and Sukna Ventures, two leading entities that continue to pave the way for new entrepreneurs, as well as taking on challenges with innovation, and exploring new horizons in this ever-evolving digital climate. By launching “Unifonic X”, we connect this generation of entrepreneurship with the needed skills and resources to lead and excel. We are doubling down our investment in emerging technologies and entrepreneurship through various incentives and an integrated ecosystem. Because with technology and entrepreneurship, we do not only solve for today’s problems, but we go beyond that and invent tomorrow.”-- TradeArabia News Service
