Industry Development

ITIDA supports local Egyptian businesses through entering new markets and increasing their exports, strengthening business ties with existing markets and enhancing the capacities of local startups. As part of its national development strategy, ITIDA created three core areas to enable it grow and nurture its local ICT industry. These focus on increasing awareness of available IT solutions, reimbursing product costs and supporting small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). To assist local companies in achieving this, ITIDA set-up a number of packages and incentives including:

Enterprise Capacity Building Program: "Grow IT (Expanding your IT Business)"

Developing and nurturing home grown talent is vital to the success of Egypt’s future as a world-leader in the ICT industry. As part of its commitment to the local scene, ITIDA launched its Enterprise Capacity Building Program "Grow IT" in cooperation with international IT service firm Atos Origin to increase the international competitiveness of 100 Egyptian IT companies that are existing exporters, or who have export potential. Grow IT seeks to empower these companies to successfully handle the development, production and business management processes of products/services that will suit their potential export markets.

Atos Origin leads an international consortium composed of Hewitt Associates, Arthur D. Little, the Indian QAI as well as Community and Institutional Development (CID) to offer consulting services to the selected 100 beneficiary companies.

The program lasts for three years and is organized in the three main phases:

• Inception phase: Selection, enrollment and engagement of beneficiary companies. The Inception phase is planned to be finished by the end of February 2009.
  
• Implementation phase: Lasts from March 2009 until end of June 2011. This phase is split in 2 parts:
  • Assessment phase: during this phase an assessment of each beneficiary company will be carried out, against international business management best practices. The assessment aims to evaluate beneficiary companies, to prepare a diagnostics report, to analyze and prioritize key improvement points and to deliver a Business Upgrade Plan (BUP) for each company.
  • Delivery phase: improvements agreed upon with enrolled companies will be implemented. The final objective is to deploy and implement an effective BUP based on suitable business management best practices for each company
• Closure phase: During the last two months of the program, information will be updated, the program evolution reviewed and beneficiary companies will enjoy a follow-up of implementation results.

To help encourage local companies to part-take in the program, ITIDA subsidizes 90% of costs for total cost of the best practices implementation phase. Companies are only due to pay 10% of total cost of best practices implementation.

• Eligibility Criteria: The eligible company for the program should be have the following criteria:
  • Egyptian-owned company with more than (50% Egyptian ownership or under control of Egyptian Board for public companies).
  • Headquartered in Egypt, at least 80% of company payroll is based in Egypt.
  • Have a least 10 registered full time employees.
• Selection Criteria: Among eligible applicants, companies as assigned objective scores of 11 parameters, weights are assigned to each parameter based on the program objectives, a final score will be calculated based on the weighted scores of the following parameters:
  • Total Revenue per Employee
  • Export Revenue per Employee
  • Revenue Growth over the last three years
  • Percent Egyptian Ownership
  • Profit last year
  • Patents owned
  • Certifications and Partnership with Multinational companies
  • Total Export Revenue
  • Total Revenue
  • Company experience (years since company started)

To encourage collaboration and connect local and international companies, ITIDA has designed a comprehensive database where local organizations can log in and edit their profiles, interact and network with partners, and join ITIDA’s objective in lifting Egypt to the primary location for outsourcing communications and technology to the world. The database will enable international organizations to learn more about Egyptian companies and how they can invest in the country’s ICT market and establish partnerships with this fast-growing and attractive location.

And join ITIDA's objective in lifting Egypt to the primary location for outsourcing communications and technology to the world. The database will enable international organizations to learn more about Egyptian companies and how they can invest in the country's ICT market and establish partnerships with this fast-growing and attractive location.

International Exhibitions / Events

To help it achieve its aim of promoting Egypt within the ICT sector, ITIDA has established a new event strategy that will see it exhibiting at some of the world’s leading industry events in 2009. The primary objective of this strategy is to raise awareness of what Egypt has to offer local and multinational organizations and to showcase it as a dynamic and world-class outsourcing location.

To support local companies at these events, ITIDA subsidizes 85% of international exhibitions to Egyptian companies participating collectively at the Egyptian Pavilion. This includes the travel and accommodation of one representative of the company, and the cost of the design, rental and full equipment for the space provided to the companies. ITIDA will also sponsor promotional material and giveaways.

Each company benefits from ITIDA’s financial support for three years, for a maximum participation of nine exhibitions throughout this period.

Single intervention

ITIDA also offers financial support to individual companies wishing to participate in ICT related exhibitions. The “single intervention” program is designed to encourage IT companies to apply for the financial support and gain access to an exhibition that might not witness an Egyptian stand.