(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Deepak John |
The Peninsula
Doha, Qatar: Web Summit Qatar 2024 has attracted the largest and most diverse cohort of startups to ever gather in the region, with more than 1,000 startups to connect with over 500 investors and partners from different countries.
Startup Grind Doha chapter organised recently an event entitled 'Getting ready for Web Summit Qatar' which discussed how the summit is a great opportunity for startups in Qatar to engage, showcase and learn.
The Web Summit Qatar will attract entrepreneurs, investors and technology sector leaders from around the world. Addressing the event, Casey Lau, Head of Asia - Web Summit said,“This Web Summit is really celebration of startups. We really do want to promote startups, create startups, and get startups funded. We want to give them spotlight like for the week in every country that we go to.”
Speaking about what is new in Web Summit Qatar 2024, Lau noted,“I think in Qatar it will be a perfect size (with more than 12,000 attendees) and the most important thing is the new region. People want to come here, start to connect and learn more about the ecosystem here. I think that's the main thing.”
Discussing about the predominant themes in the Web Summit, Casey said,“I think there's only one thing anybody's talking about in the world and that is artificial intelligence (AI). So seriously, every stage and talk has got AI in it. I would almost say that Web Summit is the biggest AI conference in the world right now, because it just touches every single stage out there.”
Also speaking at the event, Margarita David, Startups Teams Lead at Web Summit noted that Web Summit has a great environment and people really come there to do business, to be open, to learn from each other's experiences.
“We started recruiting startups for the event, thinking that we would get about 500, that was our initial target and we ended up with a 1100 startups registered for the event three weeks before the deadline.
The numbers just show the appetite that is in the region to network, bring value, and to take value from the Qatar,” she said.
Responding to a query regarding the statistics and success of the number of startups, Margarita said, "For the Web Summit Qatar, this year specifically we had 1,100 startups registering and about 50 percent of them from the MENA region, we do have 20 percent of startups coming from Africa as well, which is definitely the biggest representation we've had so far, in any of our events.”
“Since we have 30 percent of startups being women founded and again with a lot of work that the company is putting on to guarantee diversity at the event and then also 10 percent of the startups focusing on the sustainable development goals,” she added.
She further noted that AI is now integration for a solution that startups are using to scale even if their main business model is to be used within commerce, marketing, or Fintech. So apart from AI, definitely fintech is a really strong industry at the events, especially within the size of attendees and also clean tech and commerce. So those would be the top three ones represented at Web Summit Qatar.
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