Tech entrepreneurs ‘future of Jordan’ — King Abdullah

AMMAN — Their Majesties King Abdullah and Queen Rania on Sunday met with a group of Jordanian technology entrepreneurs and were introduced to their projects and experiments at Al Husseiniya Palace, according to a Royal Court statement. 

During the meeting, Their Majesties were briefed on the challenges faced by young entrepreneurs while they presented their start-ups and ideas.

The entrepreneurs explained that Jordanians who come up with start-ups tend to emigrate later on because of the lack of a suitable environment necessary to enable their projects to grow, whether regarding regulations or funding. 

King Abdullah stressed the importance of entrepreneurs  as role models for other young people, voicing his pride in their contributions and their role in building the Kingdom's future. 

His Majesty highlighted the importance of securing the positive environment needed by the technology sector, noting that entrepreneurship is a key element in the pursuit of economic growth and job creation.

"Challenges facing Jordan are not political or security-related, rather, they are the economic situation and unemployment," the King said. He directed concerned officials and the Royal Court to follow up on the recommendations of start-ups' owners and to work with them to turn recommendations into doable plans.

King Abdullah stated that he would regularly check on the progress of these plans and said: "Today we have is a chance to hear from you, focus on the future and how we are able to stimulate the different sectors to progress forward."

His Majesty later posted a tweet reading “Entrepreneurship & innovation are Jordan’s future avenues for prosperity and creation of fulfilling jobs. Proud of our youth pioneers #ABH”.

During the visit, each of the attendees delivered a brief presentation of their project development process from their first idea, to the registration of their start-ups, the statement said.

 Projects included innovative start-ups in the fields of programming, online content, video-game making and cloud computing. 

Among the entrepreneurs was Eman Hylooz, founder and CEO of Abjjad.com, a website designed for online Arabic content, which received Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Award for Young Business Leader, among other awards. 

Another project was the “Hello World Kids” organisation created by Hanan Khader, which is a specialised education programme that teaches programming to children.

Zaid Husban established his POS (Points of Sale) Rocket to facilitate accounting processes for small and medium enterprises. His company allows users to monitor every financial transaction and store financial data and their analysis through any smart device. 

“Tamatem” was presented as one of the projects established by CEO Hussam Hammo as a mobile-games publisher in the Middle East and North Africa market. 

Yousef Wadi established the Nestrom enterprise, which allows farmers to manage and monitor their farms from anywhere in the world. 

Zaid Farekh is the CTO of Semantic Intelligent Technologies, an enterprise concerned with developing online platforms and smart mobile applications.

CEO of Akhtaboot, Yousef Shamoun, established www.akhtaboot.com for job seekers to connect with potential employers.

The meeting was attended by Royal Court Chief Fayez Tarawneh, King’s Office Director Jaffar Hassan and Minister of ICT and Minister of Public Sector Development Majd Shweikeh.