KAPITA Joins Iraq Finance Exhibition (IFEX) As the Innovation Partner for This Year’s Conference.
On September 22nd and 23rd, the highly anticipated IFEX took place in Baghdad, Al-Rasheed hotel where over 300 influential local and international delegates were welcomed.
The participants involved people from the Iraqi Government, tech start-ups, banks, accelerators, investors, regulators, insurers, financial institutions, and more. Encompassing topics relating to the financial future of Iraq, the conference helped create a comprehensive road map that will aid Iraq in reaching its full economic potential.
The conference featured key speakers:
Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, H.E. Dr Ali Allawi.
The Governor of the Central Bank of Iraq, H.E. Mr. Mustafa Ghalib.
Iraq's Minister of Communication, H.E. Eng. Arkan Al-Shaibani.
KAPITA’s Founder, Mujahed Al-Waisi.
These keynote speakers layed out their plans for Iraq's next steps in reaching economic stability, innovation, and accelerating the county's digital transformation.
KAPITA held a role of supporting the conference with panel discussion about startups and innovation in the Iraqi market. The discussion was between KAPITA’s founder, Mujahed Al-Waisi, Baghdad Business School founder, Christine van den Toorn, General Manager at Careem, Hussein Al-Bayati and from the ICT project by GIZ, Johannes Poppele .
During the panel discussion, Mujahed Al-Waisi highlighted the important role KAPITA has been providing to the private sector and the not-so-small journey in supporting it. Through the Incubation/Acceleration programs. Research and investment services and the overall work of KAPITA.
Mr. Al-Waisi mentioned: “I think Iraq now is more attractive to the international clusters even the startups are trying to join the market. I think within the next 3 years we'll see more attention and care towards Iraq. It’s important for us to have success stories to present to the world, like for example, Miswag. In order to make a mind shift with the way Iraqis think in terms of finding jobs to move on with the “employment crisis” that we have now.”
He further explained: “Many companies now need to get more involved in supporting SMEs and startups with incubation and accelerations programs, even with angel investment. The main issue is that we can’t convince any investor or VC from the region to join the market yet unless we have anchor investment from the government or private sector to support them ahead. We in KAPITA succeeded in having a few deals within the Iraqi Angel Investment Network to support funds, grants and loans. This could be a game changer and help provide more success stories.
We need to invest in our true talented entrepreneurs with potential to establish big companies and promote it to the youth in order to get them on board with the line.”
Additionally to the panel, IFEX also featured a selection of exhibiting brands from the world of finance, fintech, banking, digital-banking, mobile-banking, E-governance and cyber security. KAPITA displayed a wide variety of the research work over the years in the booth exhibition. Where we got the chance to promote KAPITA’s work and explain the professional services available to the interested individuals and attendees.