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Bahrain’s seedling start-up scene is branching out to form partnerships with top ecosystems around the world, including Turkey’s Istanbul ecosystem, which was ranked Number 17 globally in a recent research report, writes Naman Arora.
Last year, Bahrain’s Economic Development Board (EDB) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Istanbul Development Agency (IDA), aiming to deepen the collaboration between the two ecosystems.
Pakiza Abdulrahman, head of start-ups at the EDB, said: “Bahrain provides a gateway to the MENA region’s 55 million consumers and especially the $4.5 billion Saudi Arabia market. Bahrain has been a pioneer in many spheres in the Middle East, making the partnership with Turkey a mutually-beneficial one.”
Bahrain boasts 201 active start-ups, four accelerators and two incubators with 41 global start-ups moving their offices to the kingdom’s business friendly ecosystem.
Under the MoU, these start-ups can work with the IDA to tap into the European market and Istanbul’s start-ups have been setting up offices in the kingdom and meeting with stakeholders over the last year.
Pakiza noted in a webinar last week that Justmop, MentalUp, Finbrain, Pisano, VNGRS and Krontech from Turkey have been exploring Bahrain’s start-up ecosystem, with the first two already having started operations in the kingdom.
Turkish start-ups also attended Flat6Lab’s demo day and Istanbul’s Sabanci University – Sucool has sent a few of its start-ups to meet with Tenmou, Bahrain’s first business angels firm and attended the Amazon Web Services start-up day.
According to Mehmet Onur Partal, director at Invest in Istanbul, Istanbul’s start-up scene has seen 120 fledging businesses being bought out by larger tech companies in the last 20 years and 47,000 new firms established.
Istanbul’s Iyzico, a payment solutions FinTech start-up, has been its most significant exit, selling for $165million to online payment service provider PayU.
