Muscat – H H Sayyid Bilarab bin Haitham al Said, Honorary President of Rising Omani Startups Programme, presided over the Investment and Startup Summit, organised by the Authority for Small and Medium Enterprises (ASMED) on Monday.

The two-day event, held at Oman Convention and Exhibition Centre, has been organised in cooperation with several government departments.

The summit began with a session titled ‘Future of entrepreneurship and startups’ which focused on a number of issues, including a discussion on an ecosystem for emerging companies and covered a review of global, regional and local experiences in the field of building and managing startups.

A special session was dedicated to the topic ‘Investing in startups’ that focused on venture funds, crowdfunding and startup stock exchange. On Day 1, the summit reviewed experiences of successful startups in the global, regional and local arenas.

The activities of the second day include a session titled ‘Business incubators and accelerators’ and a workshop on incentivising the establishment of private investment funds.

The summit will include specialised workshops in which decision makers, investment specialists and representatives of new firms will debate the startups ecosystem in Oman, as well as discuss business accelerators for government and private companies, and the establishment of private investment funds with exclusive branches for startups.

Through the summit, ASMED seeks to spread the culture of startups in the fields of innovation and technology. The summit will provide opportunities to Omani startups to obtain financing and investment, develop their own systems and define appropriate guidelines and initiatives to support these.

H H Sayyid Bilarab toured an exhibition held on the sidelines of the summit in which 60 startups engaged in the fields of innovation and technology are taking part.