Zoho Corp., a leading global technology company, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Saudi-based Falak Investment Hub to work together to digitally empower youth and startups in Saudi, and support them in their digital transformation journey.
As per the MoU, Zoho will provide startups associated with the Falak Investment Hub network wallet credit worth USD 2500, an initiative by the ‘Zoho for Startups’ program. The wallet credit can be used for accessing any of its 50+ products. In addition, members of the Falak Investment Hub will get access to learning resources and training workshops by Zoho’s team to help them digitize their business.
The MoU was signed by Adwa Al Dakheel, Founder and CEO at Falak Investment Hub and Hyther Nizam, President Middle East and Africa at Zoho Corp.
“With a booming ecosystem, a young and ambitious population, and a rising talent landscape, Saudi Arabia is on the forefront of innovation and startup ecosystems in the MENA – and such ecosystems are worthy of local and global partnerships to elevate benchmarks, cultivate entrepreneurial thinking, and inspire greatness from every existing founder and future founder. As long-term users of Zoho’s superior tools, we’re proud to formalize and scale this partnership for the betterment of Saudi Arabia’s local ecosystem.”
Falak and Zoho are also jointly conducting a series of bootcamp sessions, which will offer hands-on training on low-code, using the platform Zoho Creator, for university students in Saudi who aspire to test their ideas and hone their entrepreneurship skills. This comes as part of Falak’s Future Founders program.
The Falak’s Future Founders Program comes as a part of Falak’s initiatives to execute its mission of finding, enabling and growing the next unicorn startups of the MENA region. A five-day collaborative and educational event where students can develop and pitch new startup ideas. It’s a series of ideation, design thinking, business modeling, market validation, mentorship and pitching sessions.
The first bootcamp took place from 26-30 of June at the Falak Investment Hub which was attended by students from the Prince Sultan University. More than 30 students joined the first cohort with ambition, dedication, and commitment – and they left the 5th day with more than 50+ cumulative ideas and 7 final MVPs that were ideated and developed in the same 5-day period.
Hyther Nizam commented, “We are pleased to collaborate with Falak Investment Hub to provide an added-value to the developers, startup and the entrepreneurship community in Saudi through our unique business offerings. By coming together with a leading partner such as Falak, we aim to train and enable young talents and budding entrepreneurs with the tools needed to stay ahead of the curve. This partnership is part of Zoho’s continued efforts to expand operations in the kingdom and extend its 50+ digital offerings to the business community as well as embed digital literacy skills within the academic curriculum, in line with the nation’s digital transformation aspirations.”
Zoho uniquely offers the most comprehensive unified and centralized platform for users to run their entire business in the cloud, eliminating the need for multiple, asynchronous business management applications that do not seamlessly integrate with one another. This eliminates the problem of data silos, multi-vendor contracts and integration hassles. With a privacy-first approach, Zoho offers its users an unparalleled user experience, ensuring their information is securely stored and is not shared with any third-party software, as Zoho does not follow an ad-revenue model.
Founded in 2018 by Adwa Aldakheel, Falak is a unique hybrid of a business hub, an angel investors network and an investment-backed accelerator program for MENA-based tech startups with a focus on Saudi Arabia. So far, Falak has graduated 3 batches, 23 startups and invested 13 million SAR with a combined value of more than 700+ million SAR. Applications for Falak’s 4th Flagship Acceleration cohort is live via flagship.falak.sa, which will take place in Q3 of 2022 and all MENA tech-startups are welcome to apply.
Launched in 2017 in India, Zoho for Startups is a program that aids startups in their digital transformation journey and helps them set up, start off and scale their business. The program brings value to startups and founders by providing access to Zoho’s 50+ business management cloud-based software to help them manage every aspect of their daily operations in a unified, simple and seamless way. With more than 100 startup enablers, incubators, accelerators, government entities in its network, the program has supported more than 7000 startups globally, enabling more than 100,000 licenses of software apps from Zoho.
