Palestine Techno Park supports new technology startups

The Palestine Techno Park is implementing a Creative Cluster Campus (CCC) project funded by the Islamic Development Bank, managed by the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Deprived Families Economic Empowerment Programme (DEEP), and supervised by the Ministry of Social Affairs and in cooperation with Innovation and Entrepreneurship Unit at Birzeit University.

This project highlights the comparative advantage of Palestine’s entrepreneurs and supports Palestinian youth, who want to launch new technology startups in the creative cluster industry with innovative ideas and technical competency skills. 

As an output of this project, six upcoming startups – Wajbaat, Birhakaya, Bede Taxi, ATSM, Biometric car alarm security, Seerati – were provided with the technical and financial support needed to establish their operations. The Palestine Techno Park helps these projects with technical assistance in business modeling, financial modeling, marketing, product development, pitch deck and access to financial support,  in addition to providing seed funding. 

Wajbaat is a convenient way to order food from restaurants and home kitchens. You can use a friendly website and mobile app to order meals from any of the partner restaurants and home kitchens, where they take care of ordering and delivery to the customer’s doorstep. Wajbaat differentiates itself by rolling out home kitchen meals and providing women with the opportunity to increase their income through further promotion. Currently, Wajbaat has 14 home kitchens and contributes to financially supporting around 22 women. 

Birhakayais a virtual space for the Palestinian youth to share their thoughts, experiences, and creativity as means of breaking stereotypes about Palestinians and providding factual information. During the incubation period, BirHakaya started earning revenue and forged many cooperation agreements with various partners, including Birzeit University, Codeclub, UMake, and Al Iqtisadi. 

BirHakaya’s cooperation with Al Iqtisadi will include holding training courses on economic journalism and offering job opportunities to selected students, who will cover economic and business news. Furthermore, the team recently launched the Ambassador Program as a step toward expanding into all Palestinian universities.

Bede Taxi, the third upcoming startup to sign an incubation agreement with the Palestine Techno Park, is a full management system and cab-hailing app for taxis that has rolled out an online campaign and is in the process of closing deals with taxi offices. 

The Palestine Techno Park has linked Wajabaat with Bede Taxi to create a complete solution for food ordering and delivery logistics. These startups, as a result, have started reinforcing each other and developing joint offers.  This will be the first time that an incubation program provides such synergy between its incubated startups. 

The fourth upcoming startup that has signed an incubation agreement is a locally manufactured Automatic Tray Seeding Machine that will highly increase the efficiency and productivity of farmers. This machine produces 125,000 seedlings and has been garnering the interest of NGOs, the agriculture sector, and nurseries.

Seerati is the fifth upcoming startup to sign an incubation agreement with Palestine Techno Park. Yafa Abdelrahim and Yousef Shoman came up with the idea of integrating university students within the external labour market and developing their skills. Participating students can also earn supporting income. 

This will be implemented through a mobile app that provides college students with access to freelancing, temporary- and full-time jobs, and tasks. Additionally, the app provides various training opportunities, workshops, internships, competitions, events, and exhibitions.

Biometric car alarm security, the final upcoming startup to sign the incubation agreement, is located inHebron. It manufactures a small device that adds an extra level of security to cars by requiring fingerprint authentication in addition to car keys and security codes, if applicable. 

This device adds an extra security step toward preventing car theft in addition to the typical alarm that comes equipped with most cars. The device will also have a mobile app to support its features and customization.

So far, the incubation agreements signed with these six startups have contributed to creating at least 42 direct job opportunities in addition to indirect opportunities that facilitate their integration into the labour market. 

Palestine Techno Park encourages interestedorganizations and stakeholders to provide more financial and technical support to these growing startups.

We also invite you to check out our website at www.technopark.ps.