The Main Challenge:

The entrepreneurial ecosystem in Iraq is new and is still taking its first steps toward development. With many actors working to create an environment in which the private sector and entrepreneurship can foster, international attention has been drawn to reinforce ongoing efforts seeking to create this enabling environment to support the growth of the private sector and the economic development in Iraq. Several advancements have been made and the foundations of the ecosystem have been set, however, the need still arises for a place in which these efforts exist in one place and that’s where Startups bus comes into play. The StartupsBus Platform is tackling the below three main challenges within the entrepreneurial ecosystem, mainly in the newly liberated areas in Iraq:   1- There is lack of coordination& marketing of eco-system enablers' activities & programs. 2- There is lack of data about the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Iraq, and Mosul specifically. Also, there is no use of data generated from entrepreneurs to design new activities & programs based on their needs that are not visible to the stakeholders. 3- It's  not easy for the entrepreneurs and SMEs to find local service providers that satisfy their business needs and finding channels to market their services.

The Solution, StartupsBus Platform:

Startups Bus is a digital platform developed in 2021 by Mosul Space Organization with support from UNDP Accelerator Lab Iraq and generous support from UNDP Recovery Solution and Human Mobility in Crisis Bureau to support the development of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in newly liberated areas through building a common channel between ecosystem enablers and youth to support the development of the business startups to achieve the following objectives: 1- Gather all the entrepreneurship ecosystem activities in one place that make it easier for entrepreneur all over Iraq to access to opportunities and get benefited from it at the same time support marketing activities of the entrepreneurship ecosystem enablers. 2- Visualize database of service providers in Nineveh that support the startup project in different business to business needs and create space to request untapped services in the ecosystem.  3- Bring different technical and business communities together in one place and make it easier for them to follow each other and share community-related posts and information.  4- Collect data from different sources in the platform and visualize it in both dashboard and public page that give insights for people in Iraq about the startups in Iraq. StartupsBus is offering different services and opportunities for connection through very user-friendly user interface design that put all the business and ecosystem stakeholders on the map to make it easy for users to access different types of StartupsBus services. The platform has different type of users between individuals and institutes described in the below sketch:

Different accounts in the platform have wide-range of services that aim to connect different players in the private sector and keep all organization updated about the opportunities and achievement of others that foster the investment and support the business development for the different business also individuals can benefit from the platform where business and especially startups companies will share its jobs in the platform.  The platform design is based on interactive map that give easy accessibility to all platform features as shown in the below figure:

StartupsBus Platform is a very ambitious and an innovative platform in the Iraqi spectrum with high local need and it’s very capable of creating a huge impact that’s only going to be accelerated even more with the support of the enablers of the enablers of the ecosystem. The StartupsBus vision is to be the leader in the Iraqi market in connecting different institutions and business interested in the economic development and providing data that will be used for learning and coordination all the effort to develop the eco-system. In long-term reports will be shared with government authorities to make it clear for them to understand the eco-system challenges that easily can be fixed by their contribution.

Link to the Platform:

https://startupsbus.com/home/jobs