Queen Rania visits Zain Innovation Campus

AMMAN — Her Majesty Queen Rania on Sunday visited the Zain Innovation Campus (ZINC) as part of her interest in and continuous support for Jordanian entrepreneurs.

During the visit, the Queen met with Zain Jordan CEO Ahmad Hanandeh and spoke with several groups of entrepreneurs about their start-ups, according to a statement from her office.

ZINC was launched during the MENA ICT Forum in November 2014 with the aim of incubating entrepreneurs and start-up owners in an environment that is equipped with the latest technologies.

Queen Rania was briefed about one of Zain’s partners in this project, Zoomaal, a crowd-funding platform that aims to support ambitious young talents in the Arab world, the statement said. Through its website, Zoomaal allows entrepreneurs to share their ideas with the world and attract the necessary funds to start them.

Her Majesty also spoke with representatives from Eureeca, an equity-based crowd- funding platform that provides the largest angel investor network in the Middle East.

Hanandeh talked about the partnership between Zain and Zoomaal, which resulted in the establishment of a dedicated corporate entrepreneurship responsibility division within the company, making it the first company in the Kingdom that includes within its organisational structure, an assigned section to support and develop start-up projects submitted by young entrepreneurs, the statement said.

“Through its social and entrepreneurial responsibility programmes, Zain aims to provide equal opportunities to beneficiaries across all governorates. That was the reason behind launching Zain Al Mubadara, which provides a monetary prize to one project from each governorate,” he said. 

“This is part of our belief that Jordanian minds are our true wealth and giving our youth equal opportunities will definitely unleash their creativity and develop their abilities to become successful business owners who, in return, provide work opportunities to their peers in their communities,” Hanandeh added.

Three entrepreneurs, including the winner of Zain Al Mubadara, spoke about their entrepreneurial ideas and their start-ups’ scope of work in their local areas. The companies cover digital education, marketing and printing services.

While at ZINC, Her Majesty listened to a number of success stories from young Jordanians from all governorates, and also spoke with employees of the Zain Call Centre in Tafileh, which provides technical support and services for Zain Internet services. 

All call centre employees have graduated from the Zain Mobile Maintenance Training Centre located in Tafileh Governorate, 180km southwest of Amman.

The Queen was also briefed on 3D MENA, a commerce platform for 3D printing, which aims at making high quality printing accessible to creators, designers and shoppers in the MENA region. ZINC hosted five sessions for 3D MENA with 100 participants.

While at the Games and Apps Publishing Corner, Her Majesty listened to a briefing about Zain’s partnership with Maysalward, a mobile games development company in the Middle East. 

Nour Khrais, founder and CEO of Maysalward, spoke about his company’s partnership with Zain, which aims to support and promote locally developed digital mobile games regionally and internationally.

Khrais also gave a detailed briefing about a number of digital games that are being developed by young Jordanians from several governorates and the plans to publish and market these games through Zain in the near future.

In addition, Queen Rania met with the winners of the Traxn programme, which is designed by Wamda in partnership with corporations, including Zain, to give traction to established start-ups by connecting them with the right resources at corporations.

She also met with representatives from several local start-ups, including, ifood.jo, Cash Basha, Feesheh, ShopGo and Yislamo.