Oman has opened registration for the second edition of its Itlaq startup accelerator, a six-month programme intended to help ten Omani businesses develop towards investment readiness and entry into new markets. The Research and Innovation Authority announced the opening on 2 November, working with Sultan Qaboos University.
The programme is designed for startups offering solutions with national or regional relevance. Its second cohort is planned to cover water, the environment, energy, food, biotechnology and health. The announcement describes a target of ten participants; it does not say that the cohort has already been selected or that applications will necessarily produce ten qualifying businesses.
Support from early development to market preparation
The stated support begins with ideas that the programme considers promising and is intended to continue through investment readiness and market development. Planned activities include entrepreneurship workshops and prototyping. The programme also offers strategic guidance on technological transformation and protecting intellectual property, alongside individual mentoring with local and international experts.
Participants are also expected to examine opportunities to expand through investment networks. Those elements describe the proposed structure of the accelerator, rather than a guarantee of investment, commercial success or access to a particular market. The public announcement does not specify selection criteria, application deadlines, the identities of the mentors, the amount of funding available to participants or the terms on which any investment might be made.
Six sectors, one cohort
The six areas named for the new edition span natural resources and essential services as well as technology and health. Water and environmental solutions may concern resource management, while energy and food are sectors central to Oman’s development priorities. Biotechnology and health add fields where research, technical validation and routes to adoption can be especially important. The programme notice does not describe individual projects or promise that each sector will receive an equal number of places.
Instead, the stated aim is to accelerate Omani startups whose solutions can have national or regional impact. Prototyping and technical guidance can help a team test whether a product or service works as intended. Mentoring and preparation for intellectual-property protection address different parts of building a venture. Investment readiness is another stage: it means preparing a business to engage with potential investors, not securing capital automatically.
First-edition figures provide a benchmark
The authority’s announcement says the first edition received 110 applications and selected ten Omani startups. Four of those companies later secured investment from local funds totalling 160,000 Omani rials. The four named examples were Tajeer, a car-rental management platform; AR Technology, focused on the Internet of Things; Darb, which works on delivery optimisation; and Ai Algo, a data-preparation business for artificial-intelligence applications.
Those figures describe the earlier cohort and should not be read as a forecast for the new one. They do, however, provide a concrete account of the first programme’s reported reach and of the kinds of ventures it included. The announcement does not give the size of each investment, the names of the local funds or further information about the companies’ performance after receiving funding.
Entrepreneurs seeking to assess the opportunity will need to consult the programme’s registration information for application conditions and practical details. The announcement identifies the programme website as the place to review those details. For now, the confirmed development is the opening of registration for a second six-month edition, with a stated ten-startup target, six focus sectors and a mix of workshops, prototyping, guidance and mentoring.
