Today, ambitious entrepreneurs receive more than just support and funding through an integrated ecosystem designed to empower their growth, accelerate their projects' development, and enhance their chances of building competitive and sustainable companies.

Behind every successful startup are founders with the courage to reshape industries, overcome challenges, and build sustainable businesses. But even the most outstanding founders cannot scale alone. Ambition needs alliances, ideas need infrastructure, and early successes need the right partner to open doors that would otherwise take years to reach.

This type of investment opportunity is not easy, and it is precisely what stc Group has helped build over nearly fifteen years. Over time, this approach has evolved into a strategic extension of the group's role as a digital enabler, connecting Saudi startups with growth and expansion opportunities, while simultaneously giving stc Group early access to high-growth tech sectors and opening new horizons for value creation.

Pioneering

stc Group's journey outside its traditional telecom business began long before the concept of venture capital became widespread in the region.

In 2011, it launched stc Ventures, the group's independent investment fund, and became the first institutional investor to lead the seed round for Careem. The acquisition of Careem by Uber remains one of the most prominent success stories in the venture capital ecosystem in the Middle East and North Africa.

This early investment reflected the group's ability to identify promising tech opportunities in the region before they became obvious to everyone.

This early investment was not an isolated event; rather, it laid the foundation for a broader vision adopted by stc Group to build an integrated ecosystem supporting innovation at all stages.

The group developed an integrated model combining project building, startup enablement, and strategic investment, aligned with various stages of innovation and delivering sustainable value for startups, stc Group, and the Saudi digital economy, while enhancing the group's early access to emerging technologies, building strategic partnerships, and exploring new growth opportunities.

This ecosystem is integrated through three main pillars: project building, startup enablement and acceleration, and investment in companies most ready for expansion.

For its part, the specialized arm for building new projects, Collab, plays a different role: it establishes new companies from scratch in areas aligned with stc Group's strategy, transforming market gaps into scalable digital projects.

Through this model, the group takes the initiative to build new opportunities where it sees future demand, rather than waiting for them to emerge in the market. Collab works with Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIRs) programs and strategic partners to explore investment opportunities, test business models and emerging technologies, and develop new projects in areas expected to see sustained demand.

Next comes the role of InspireU, stc Group's startup enablement program, which is one of the main pillars of the ecosystem by discovering promising companies and accelerating their growth.

Through an integrated ecosystem combining mentoring, training, access to specialized expertise, connecting founders with the group's partners and enablers, and providing opportunities for collaboration with the stc ecosystem, the program helps companies develop their business models, enhance market readiness, expand their networks, and explore commercial opportunities, thereby boosting their ability to achieve sustainable growth, benefit from investment and expansion opportunities, and maximize their impact on the digital economy.

The program has also expanded regionally to include branches in Bahrain and Kuwait, forming a regional platform that supports entrepreneurs in the region. To date, it has successfully enabled more than 150 startups through its various programs, reflecting its broad impact and growing presence across the region.

Since its launch in 2015, the program has contributed to enabling a number of notable success stories, including Zid, Tuwaiq, and Mismar, which have achieved remarkable growth, reflecting the program's impact in connecting startups with real business opportunities.

Tali Ventures: Strategic Capital

Then comes the investment expansion stage, where the pivotal role of Tali Ventures, stc Group's institutional venture capital arm, comes to the fore.

Tali Ventures was founded in 2023 and focuses on investing in companies from early to growth stages across the Middle East and North Africa, with a focus on key digital economy sectors such as fintech, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and enterprise technologies.

Thanks to dedicated capital and a number of portfolio companies, Tali Ventures gives founders more than just funding, allowing them to benefit from the commercial strength of stc Group.

The investment philosophy is based on a clear idea: funding addresses only one side of the challenge, while combining funding with access to stc Group's corporate customer base, technical infrastructure, subsidiaries network, and regional relationships provides a more comprehensive path to growth and expansion.

Tali Ventures also serves as a platform that combines global innovation with regional presence by attracting global tech companies such as Nile, Coherent, and Celona, and connecting them with the Kingdom's digital economy ecosystem, in addition to supporting promising regional companies like North Ladder and Nearpay in expanding and reaching global markets. This model reflects the role Tali Ventures plays in building bridges between global innovation and the regional tech ecosystem.

Growth for Emerging Technologies and Consolidation of the Tech Ecosystem

This ecosystem confirms that real value is not achieved by capital alone, but through the integration of project building, startup enablement, and strategic investment. For entrepreneurs, this model shortens the distance from idea to building a scalable company. For stc Group, it provides early access to emerging technologies, strengthens its digital ecosystem, and opens new pathways for long-term sustainable value creation.

For Saudi Arabia, this model contributes to consolidating a national tech ecosystem where local startups grow with support from leading national platforms.

Today, through InspireU, Collab, and Tali Ventures, stc Group has succeeded in building one of the most integrated entrepreneurship ecosystems in the region, supporting entrepreneurs at various stages of their companies' growth, from idea, through project building, to investment and expansion.

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