Sharjah: The Sharjah Entrepreneurship Centre (Sheraa), in collaboration with the Dubai Future Foundation, hosted a delegation of founders representing Italy’s leading start-ups at its headquarters in Sharjah Research, Technology and Innovation Park (SRTI Park) last week, as part of its mission to develop the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the emirate.
During the visit, 11 start-up founders from diverse industries and sectors in Italy were offered an insight into the varied facilities, programmes and initiatives that Sheraa offers to support aspiring and established entrepreneurs in Sharjah, UAE, and across the MENA region.
As an enabling platform that fosters innovation and supports entrepreneurs with business fundamentals to build scalable solutions, Sheraa exchanged relevant information on the start-up ecosystem in Sharjah, highlighted its best practices, and offered key insights of its experience in the innovation and entrepreneurship sector. The visit also enabled Sheraa to explore investment and partnership opportunities with the Italian founders to expand their business operations in the emirate.
Sharjah Startup Studio
The Italian start-ups were also introduced to Sheraa’s recently launched “Sharjah Startup Studio (S3)” programme, the first government-backed start-up studio in the UAE which takes a more hands-on approach to venture building. S3, which aims to build enduring businesses to accelerate the region’s digital transformation, will leverage its extensive market access to support start-ups with customer acquisition and help them integrate into local and global supply chains.
Following the visit, Najla Al Midfa, CEO of Sheraa, said: “As part of Sheraa’s vision to build a strong and globally connected ecosystem, and reinforce Sharjah’s position as a vibrant start-up hub, we provided the 11 Italian founders with in-depth insights into our start-up boot camps, and seed and pre-seed programme offerings across the start-up life cycle.”
The Italian delegation were also given a presentation by the Sharjah Investors Services Center (Saeed), which operates under the Sharjah FDI Office (Invest in Sharjah), where Marwan Saleh Alichla, Director of Saeed, outlined the various services offered by the entity for all investors. He said: “Saeed is a world-class one-window service that helps investors set up their business in less than 60 minutes. Sharjah is home to 258 Italian companies, operating in diverse sectors within the mainland and across the emirate’s specialised freezones, and this visit, reflects Sharjah’s commitment to enable innovation and tech-based entrepreneurs from Italy to flourish and accelerate their growth in our region.”
