Badir Program is one of the leading programs of King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology. The program was established in 2007 to improve and support technical entrepreneurship throughout the Kingdom by helping the strategic policy applied in entrepreneurship and incubators in collaboration with government agencies, universities and the private sector.
In line with Saudi Arabia’s biggest aim is to boost economy and build sustainable strategic partnerships to support and develop successful technology projects throughout the Kingdom, “Badir Accelerator” decided to finance Saudi start-up companies with a cap of 500,000 Riyals each in order to speed up the growth of Saudi start-ups technology companies and develop the spirit of initiative and innovation in the Technological field among Saudi's youth.
Badir Program is there to help motivated people to turn their creative ideas into promising technology projects that would contribute to accelerating the economic development.
Furthermore, Badir Program will offer a range of advisory services which include training, following up, guidance and workshops. It will also be as a link platform between investors and entrepreneurs in order to showcase promising investment opportunities.
According to Nawaf Al Sahhaf, the CEO of Badir Program for Technology Incubators, "There is a need for active investments in the early stages of a start-up, thus 'Badir Accelerator' is especially aiming at investing in start-up technology companies, financing them in the early stages of incorporation and supporting them by many advisory services and required innovation thoughts as well as close and direct cooperation with them through their incubation after the stage of acceleration in order to enhance the value of those companies."
Moreover, the program is taking every step to achieve its goals, as it recently organised a meeting for Saudi investors and entrepreneurs to study and examine the best opportunities for Badir start-up Technology companies and facilitate their funding.
Nawaf Al Sahhaf, added, “the organization of these meetings is part of Badir's efforts to enable entrepreneurs and individual investors to effectively communicate and build sustainable strategic partnerships in order to support and develop successful technology projects in the Kingdom, especially in view of the challenges and difficulties faced by entrepreneurs in obtaining the necessary funding to start or expand such projects."
The Saudi startups that were incubated by Badir Programs in the past three months alone, were able to obtain investments of about 8.6 million Dollars, led by Saudi finance companies and supported by Gulf and regional investment groups, among them being Foodics which obtained a 4 million Dollars investment, Matic a 3 million Dollar investment and Smart Control a 1.6 million Dollars investment.