ICT Fund Sponsors Ibtikari 2.0 an Initiative by Khalifa Fund

01/02/2014

ICT Fund, an initiative by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), sponsors Ibtikari 2.0. Ibtikari 2.0 is an initiative by Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development that helps cultivate an entrepreneurial culture among UAE Nationals and encourage innovation around specific themes. As a silver sponsor, ICT Fund will be supporting creative digital and mobile solutions in the form of mobile applications that can stimulate the UAE’s tourism industry.

The program is catered to support entrepreneurship in the UAE culture and among UAE nationals to boost creativity and improvement around specific themes. Ibtikari 2.0 helps innovators and creative people interested in the same field work together and come up with ideas to improve specific industries - this year the theme is tourism.

From this sponsorship, ICT Fund aims to digitalise the UAE tourism industry and create a practical start up to enhance the growth of the tourism industry, while supporting small innovative business ideas in terms of digital and mobile technologies. ICT Fund will sponsor the prototype phase which is directly linked to the fund’s main objectives. Furthermore, the project is aimed to develop a start-up idea and run it to the commercialization stage as ICT Fund will be an active contributor to the start-up’s ecosystem amongst UAE nationals.

ICT Fund’s sponsorship will cover the prototype and business development plan, the market research and idea validation costs as well as the product development and application development and other technical considerations. The amount will be spent across the different stages of idea-to-commercialisation, and start-ups will be evaluated at the end of each stage.

H.E. Dr. Abdulqader Al Khayat, ICT Fund Chairman said: “ICT Fund seeks to utilize the youth’s energetic and creative capabilities as it resembles one of the most important factors, in order to reach a highly creative society that is able to invest its education and experience in the practical field of work which reflects positively on all UAE sectors. We combine our efforts today in a mutual vision we share with Khalifa Fund which seeks to take the UAE to the next step as these ICT projects that we will fund not only enhance the ICT sector but also integrates to support other sectors and in this year’s theme it’s tourism. We hope that Ibtikari initiative integrates the Emirati youth and stimulates their creativity and ignite their spirit to become more integrated in taking the country to the next step in support to our wise government’s vision.”

H.E. Abdullah Saeed Al Darmaki, CEO of Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development stated that the ICT Fund's participation as a silver sponsor for the second edition of 'Ibtikari 2.0 Initiative' is a significant value to us. We are pleased to unify the efforts with ICT Fund that are required to build a creative and innovative Emirati community, reflecting the leadership's directions of making creativity a part of the local educational culture amongst the UAE students. Our strategic partnership with ICT Fund will have a positive echo that would encourage young people to engage in creative projects and enhance the competitiveness in all UAE economic sectors through creating efficient national cadres.