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PayTabs Holds a Mentorship Session for Bahrain’s Startups on the Eve of its 5th Anniversary

Tag: bahrain

PayTabs Holds a Mentorship Session for Bahrain’s Startups on the Eve of its 5th Anniversary

PayTabs Holds a Mentorship Session for Bahrain’s Startups on the Eve of its 5th Anniversary

The road to glory is always tough. You get the roses at the end but initially the road is filled with thorns. The journey of PayTabs has been somewhat similar.  When we began in March 2014, we were confident that someday we would achieve our goals. Today, we stand here, all set to celebrate 5 years of operations in a few days.

Mentorship Program Begins

And to commemorate this special occasion, we, along with Flat6Labs, Bahrain’s leading Accelerator Program, organized an exclusive event for the budding startups of Bahrain. The motive of hosting a startup meet was to impart knowledge, advice, tips, and tricks under the aegis of mentors. To add a cherry on the cake, PayTabs’ success story was served as a live example for all the 60 startups that attended the event.

Here, at PayTabs, we know the importance of mentorship. When the foundation was laid in March 2014 with a corpus of $10,000, we were determined to make an impact in our industry. And we were able to do so because we received genuine guidance from experts. And today, after 5 glorious years, we have established our presence in 21 countries, with our dedicated offices in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Philippines and India.

Now we felt the need to do something for our startup community. So as a startup, we planned to host the startups over breakfast at the PayTabs’ headquarters. The event comprised of the following sessions – PayTabs’ journey from zero to hero, round table discussions, questions from the participants, and a brief mentorship program on the right and wrong startup practices. The participants gained knowledge necessary to operate a startup in the right manner.

Bahrain – The City of Startups

The startup meet was a landmark event held in the land of Bahrain. Bahrain has a thriving ecosystem of around 75 startups, striving to make a mark in the field of innovation and technology. These startups have the support of over 34 accelerators, incubators, co-working spaces, and other institutions.

PayTabs is a prodigy of Bahrain’s startup culture. Once, we had an idea and a strong will to succeed. Today, we have the skills, resources, ambition, and vision. But it’s not just about us, it’s about everyone who dreams of spearheading a revolution in the society. And there’s no better way to do it than to found a startup. Isn’t that so?

Bahrain: An Early Adopter of Fintech

Bahrain: An Early Adopter of Fintech

As wisdom suggests, regulations are useful when it works. Regulations should enable the economy and not prove to be a hindrance for economic development. Any country which is serious about letting a new industry mushroom and grow, it must create an environment that helps startups and entrepreneurship. Whether it is Silicon Valley or Singapore, favorable business regulations made both these places global hubs for technology startups.

The key ingredients for creating a positive environment for entrepreneurs is building ecosystems and friendly regulatory frameworks which makes is easy to do business in a country/region.

Talking of environment, Bahrain has clearly taken a lead when it comes to pushing forth the case for Fintech Startups. In the month of March 2017, The Bahrain Economic Development Board(EDB) signed a deal with Singapore’s Fintech Consortium and UAE’s Trucial Investment Partners to develop a Fintech ecosystem and a regulatory framework.

The kingdom of Bahrain has already established regulatory incubators where Fintech startups can test their business models and their products without any violation of existing financial regulations.

Bahrain is clearly ahead of the curve, when it comes to jumping the Fintech bandwagon earlier than some of its neighbors in the GCC region. Financial services have traditionally been Bahrain’s forte and pride, with many international and local banks having their presence in the island kingdom. However, much of that traditional advantage has been lost to Dubai in recent times. Hence, focusing on Fintech provides the much-needed momentum to Bahrain’s financial services industry.

As a testimony to the ease of doing business in Bahrain, we take pride in the fact that we have our operational head office in Bahrain. Not to mention, the favorable regulations and government support has enabled us to scale our operations.