Bahrain ranks among top 10 performing MENA ecosystems

TDT | Manama        

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain ranked among the top ten performing ecosystems in MENA in the 2022 Global Startup Ecosystem Report (GSER), moving up from ranking among the top 15 in last year’s report.

The report is one of the world’s most comprehensive, data-driven research on startup ecosystems, and it is published annually by the world-leading policy advisory and research organisation Startup Genome in cooperation with the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN).

Bahrain’s ecosystem was evaluated resulting in its distinction across various indicators, a testament to the recent successes achieved by Bahrain-based startups and scaleups. It ranks among the top 10 MENA and emerging ecosystems in funding and experienced local talent, and was recently recognised for its strides in blockchain, in addition to its previous performance in fintech.

Bahrain was also positioned in the top 15 spots on the Bang for Buck ecosystems – which measures the average amount of venture capital of startups working in the technology sector.

This year, Bahrain made progressive jumps in its rankings despite having more ecosystems to compete against. Bahrain’s ecosystem is steadily moving towards maturity as its total valuation increased by four folds this year – from under $100 million (BD376,000) to $564 million (BD213 million) which marks 468% increase compared to the previous year.

In addition, the average follow-on funding a startup receives at least doubled from $0.9 million to $3.1 million which is an increase of 244% compared to 2021.