StartUpArabia

Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 4, 2010 | View Comments

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King Abdullah II Fund for Development (KAFD) in Jordan is planning to launch a new ICT seed capital fund in two months with the aim of solving the problem of innovative new startups in the country that need to secure some early stage funding.

The new fund will be called Oasis 500, and the goal is for it to provide an initial capital of between $50,000 and $100,000 to 500 startups.  It will be mainly focused on funding new ideas, especially in media, online, content, applications and the service industry.

At this point, it seems that it’s still undecided though whether the fund will be expanded and made accessible to startups from outside Jordan.

The structure of the fund has already been created, it is owned by KAFD, with Int@j (Information Technology Association of Jordan) as a member of this investment. The investors behind the fund are said to include three major technology names, but their names aren’t being disclosed at this point.
The fund also has plans to go public, hoping it will attract investors and lead to raising capital.

This move comes as Jordan continues to focus on boosting the ICT industry in the country, which account for at least 15% of the country’s GDP.

Jordan has been really active over the past years in the areas of outsourcing, content creation and online applications. One of the areas where there is currently growing focus is mobile applications.

KAFD was established by a Royal Decree in 2001 as a non-governmental organisation to provide all segments of the Jordanian community, particularly the underprivileged, with loans.