The Badir Program to help Hajj Hackathon participants to bring their business ideas to life
The entrepreneurs who attended the Hajj Hackathon have received a great news, as the Badir Program for Technology Incubators and Accelerators officially launched a business accelerator for them. The Badir Program, representing King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), will help these entrepreneurs bring their innovative ideas to life.
When the Hajj Hackathon ended, KACST launched the “Haramain Technology Accelerator” in collaboration with a number of strategic partners, organized by the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity. The Accelerator included renowned partners like Doyof Alrahman Program, and Monsha’at.
The accelerator program commenced in Jeddah this Sunday, and will continue for three months. The participants will receive advisory services like training, follow-up, workshops, investment and continuous guidance to develop ground breaking innovations. The program will also help the entrepreneurs to transform their ideas into existing projects within 90 working days.
Badir organized a training camp for the Hajj Hackathon participants at the early stage of the accelerator program. Almost 600 projects applied for the camp, and 250 were shortlisted. In total, 30 emerging tech projects from the Hajj and Umrah sector qualified for the program.
According to tahawultech.com, the final candidates were chosen based their maturity of ideas, products, probable future development and growth module and competitiveness.
Nawaf Al-Sahaf, the CEO of Badir Program, said, “The Badir Program seeks, through ‘Haramain Technology Accelerator’, to establish our commitment to support entrepreneurship, enhance innovation and implement solutions contributing to the achievement of the Saudi Vision 2030, in order to increase the number of the visitors to the two Holy Mosques to 30 million a year.”
“We launched the accelerator to encourage and enable Hajj Hackathon outputs, including innovations, ideas and smart applications, to ensure optimal success and sustainability of such projects in the future and achieve positive results that will contribute to the enhancement of national economy, improved productivity, and create job opportunities for Saudi youth,” he concluded.