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Bahrain Startup Weekend draws good response

Manama, November 13, 2011

Bahrain Startup Weekend, organised by Batelco in cooperation with Tenmou, is attracting much interest from Bahrain residents, with over 60 participants already signed up to participate in the event.

The event will take place at Batelco Staff Centre, Hamala, on November 17, 18 and 19.
 
The weekend event will form part of the Global Entrepreneurship Week with more than 40 StartUp Weekends taking place globally to mark the occasion.

The focus of the event is to discover entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs and assist them on the road to establishing successful ICT and e-business enterprises. Participants with marketing, public relations, business development, web design or application design skills are also required, as a wide range of skills are needed to form teams to develop the variety of business ideas, said a statement.

The teams will have the opportunity to win cash prizes, funding and technical support to put their business plans into action.

The winning team will receive a cash prize of BD4000, second prize is BD2000 and third prize is BD1000.

Additionally the first three teams will be given free enrollment into Bahrain Development Bank’s (BDB’s) Entrepreneurship Development Programme. Furthermore, all teams will have the opportunity to benefit from funding from Tenmou of up to BD20,000 and BDB will be evaluating the projects during the weekend to see if they qualify for the Pre-Seed Capital Support Scheme, that is jointly run with Tamkeen and which includes a grant of up to BD5000.

Bahrain Startup Weekend has attracted excellent support with speakers and mentors from leading companies including Mumtalakat, Microsoft, Ericsson, BDB, O2, Venture Coms, Dynavate Technologies, 4 Spots and Batelco, all volunteering their time to support the teams in developing their business ideas, said the statement.

A limited number of places are still available. Participants of all nationalities and ages are invited to visit the Startup Weekend Bahrain web page (bahrain.startupweekend.org) to learn more about how Startup works and register to attend and participate.

Entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if their business ideas are viable at the event.  On average, half of Startup Weekend attendees have technical backgrounds, the other half have business, marketing or non-technical backgrounds.

Beginning with brief pitches to outline their ideas on Thursday, attendees aim to inspire other participants to join their team. Over Friday and Saturday the teams will focus on customer development, validating their ideas and building a minimal viable product before presenting their prototypes and receiving valuable feedback from a panel of experts who will select the winning ideas.

Batelco Group general manager media relations Ahmed Al Janahi explained that it’s not necessary for participants to have a business idea or plan of their own in order to enter the event as everyone will be placed into teams on the first day of the event.

“Many skills such as marketing, public relations, business development, web design, and application design etc. are required to get an idea into plan; therefore a wide range of skills is needed as part of each team, which can have up to 10 members.”

Batelco has received an outstanding response from local companies who have pledged their sponsorship and support to ensure the success of the Bahrain Startup Weekend, he said.  – TradeArabia News Service




Tags: Bahrain | Batelco | entrepreneurs | startup wekkend |

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