A group of cloud-driven Bahraini startups have pitched for European seed investment at an event in London.
Seven startups in total pitched for a combined potential pot of $10 million in funding. All the startups were related to cloud technology in some way – generally by utilising aspects of the cloud to better advance their company’s offerings.
For example, one of the scaling-up startups, Gulf CX, uses the cloud to store data on customer service interactions in order to develop a predictive analytics platform that can determine future customer behaviour and potentially help corporations provide better customer service.
The group of startups originated out of the Cloud 10 scalerator programme – a combined UK-Bahrain project based in the Gulf country with the aim of increasing the digital economy in the Gulf region.
It received support from the Bahrain government, which is invested in the scalerator as part of its Tamkeen programme to up-skill Bahraini nationals. The event was also supported by Amazon’s business cloud computing service company – Amazon Web Services which is the technological partner for the scalerator.
“This project is dear to my heart. It is a great pleasure to see it come to light and I have high hopes for it. We will do whatever we can to make it a success,” said Sheikh Fawaz Bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, Bahrain’s ambassador to the UK.
“We want to try things. We want to show companies around the world that IT [information technology] is an asset and you can use those assets to scale your business,” added Teresa Carlson, vice president for public service clients at Amazon Web Services (AWS).
London represented an important digital bridge between the UK and the Gulf region, Hadyah M. Fathalla, Cloud 10 executive director. Strengthening those links is important for Bahrain as it continues to try and move away from an energy based economy.
This will remain so even in the case of a British exit from the European Union, and could arguably even increase as the UK looks elsewhere for business opportunities, she added.
Meanwhile cloud-based services will become an increasingly important opportunity – both globally as well as in the Gulf region. For example, Saudi Arabia is currently looking at ways to digitalise its health services. Cloud computing startups could create excellent opportunities for themselves by playing a frontline role in developing solutions to this and other problems, she said.
The Middle East and Africa region (MEA) is still very much an emerging market – particularly for information and communications technology (ICT), said Daniel Freeman, chief investment officer at C5, a British investment fund that forms part of the partnership behind the Cloud 10 scalerator.
“These things don’t look like they’re making a difference to the big picture at the moment. But as they increase in pace these things can take a different scope. Look at Amazon Web Services – four years ago few people knew it existed,” he said.
This provides significant opportunity for technology investment funds. Local startups develop tradecraft unique to the business situation in an area. That is something difficult to replicate and quite precious, he added
“We’re looking for technologies in places where large players aren’t going, which can be difficult to execute,” Freeman said. “We want something that doesn’t look, smell or belong in the mainstream but will be there within a few years. We’re Not VC [venture capital]. We are looking at something that we can’t validate but is a real opportunity to solve some pain points.”
Investors in attendance at the event included: : Atkins Global, HSBC Private Bank, Standard Chartered Private Bank, C5 Family Offices and C5 Cloud Partners.
Cloud 10 continues to look for interested startups to join its three-month scaling-up programme. The company expects to take in between eight and twelve startups for each intake.
The seven companies pitching at the event in London represented the first-ever Cloud 10 class and the organisation will use the lessons learned from this initial group to feedback into future programmes.
“We too are a startup of sorts and are learning what works does and doesn’t,” said Fathalla.
Results of the pitching are expected in the next few months.
