On Friday, King Salman of Saudi Arabia issued a royal decree to establish a National Centre for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in KSA to drive innovation and the digital transformation of the country, as declared by Abdullah Al-Sawaha from the Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology.
In addition to the AI centre, Abdullah Al-Sawaha also declared that the decree would establish a National Data Management Office in the country, which will be closely linked with the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority.
Artificial intelligence is on the agenda for many countries around the world as it has the potential to improve security as well as business processes across sectors. As KSA aims to move away from its dependency on oil, it is taking a number of steps to ensure a more sustainable economic future. AI is part of that strategy and Vision 2030.
Al-Sawaha also revealed that the KSA Vision 2030 lays out objectives to improve and develop performance efficiency with the help of AI and big data. This move is in line with those objectives and indicates the country's determination to strengthen its digital capabilities through welcoming AI.
In addition to boosting productivity and better decision-making processes across sectors, Al-Sawaha also said that citizens would benefit from better AI-enabled services as well as drive entrepreneurship in the sector amongst the country's young population.
Furthermore, King Salman also issued other decrees to drive growth of the Kingdom, including the creation of a new Ministry for Industrly and Mineral Resources.
Saudi Arabia’s F&B and retail tech startup Foodics has launched Foodics Capital, its micro lending arm.
The company raised a $100m micro loan fund to support Saudi F&B merchants post Covid-19 through Shariah-compliant micro loans.
“With cash flow being a critical pain point for small business owners right now, we wanted to be able to offer them a one stop shop that also covers their finance needs and enables them to accelerate their growth rate,” said Ahmad Al-Zaini, co-founder and CEO.
Abdullah Tahboub, Foodics’ CFO, added: “This fund is set to revolutionise SME lending, as it will enable faster and more flexible lending than most of the lending facilities in the region.
Our application process is indeed straight forward, as all is completed online on our platform, with the initial approval to be granted within as little as 24 hours and final approval in seven days.
Foodics Capital is able to extend loans from $5,000 (SAR18,750), up to $133,000 (SAR500,000) as and when needed by small businesses.”
In order to launch the fund, Foodics Capital partnered with Saudi Arabia-based Maalem Finance.
The first phase will primarily benefit the company’s existing customers, who are pre-qualified, and will then be rolled out more widely across the kingdom before the end of the year.
“A finance offering was always part of our vision, in order to offer a true one stop platform for owners to manage their business. Foodics is indeed very proud to now allow merchants to finance their working capital by giving them access to Shariah-compliant micro loans through Foodics Capital,” the CEO added.
The company has so far serviced over five thousand customers and processed over a billion orders through the Foodics platform, totaling about $200m (SAR750m) monthly in GMV transactions in 2020 and catering to over 10,000 F&B outlets.
Having already established a strong presence in the kingdom and the UAE since its inception in 2014, Foodics entered Egypt last month, whilst also in the process of closing its series B funding round.
source: gulfbusiness
