Royal Science and Technology Park (RSTP) announces Business Incubator (BI)

Deadline: 28-Sep-20

The Royal Science and Technology Park (RSTP) has announced a call for proposals for the Business Incubator (BI) to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) developing innovative products and services (or ideas) in the Information Technology (IT) sector, including (but not limited to) software, computer hardware, telecommunications and the Internet.

The business incubation service offered by the Royal Science and Technology Park (RSTP) is a comprehensive and highly flexible combination of business development processes, infrastructure and people designed to nurture innovative start-ups so that they survive and grow through the difficult and vulnerable early stages of development. This service contributes towards investment (through local enterprises) by removing barriers to entrepreneurship, market access and innovation. The country as a whole benefits through job creation and value addition which boosts the gross domestic product.

Categories

Business Development: Business development services including advisory services, mentoring and training on business planning, market research, market access support, legal aspects of business, bookkeeping, intellectual property protection, etc.
Technical Support: Technical support for innovation development and validation.
Office Space: Office space for business administration, conference facilities, furniture, information technology equipment, internet and utilities.
Fundraising: Fundraising support including financial proposal writing and matching of ideas with potential financiers.

Benefits

Low Overheads: Low overheads at the early stage of the start-up cycle because of shared and subsidized facilities and services. This enables start-ups to direct resources to the development of the innovation and business.
Technical & Business Know how: Acquisition of technical and business know-how which prevents start-ups from making mistakes that can lead to technology and business failure.
Legitimacy: Legitimacy by associating with and being promoted by the RSTP which leads to market access for the start-ups. Legitimacy can also attract financiers and collaborators.

Priority Clusters

Information and communication technology
Electronics
Value added agriculture
Health and beauty
Renewable energy
Environmental management

Eligibility Criteria

Individuals, teams, and early-stage enterprises are invited to apply to join the community of innovators in Eswatini.
The applicant must be:
- An individual or team with each person aged 18 years or above.
- A start-up (incorporated or not) that is either at formation or market validation or scale-up phase. RSTP assists with company registration because the incubation services support start-ups (businesses) instead of individuals. If the inventor or innovator is not interested in being an entrepreneur, they advise them to register a company in order to separate the funds for the innovation process from personal funds and manage the technology transfer process in a transparent way. Therefore, RSTP provides company registration services to winners.
- Founder(s) and teams must have a long-term vision for the business, a strong work ethic, be teachable and willing to improve the technical and business know-how. They must provide evidence of skills to develop the solution or availability of finances or clear fundraising plan to hire experts. At least one of the founders must work for the start-up on a full-time basis.
The solution must be:
- Either at idea or prototype or mature stage which can be commercialized through any technology transfer method or entrepreneurship.
- Innovative and solve a significant problem that is faced by the population or businesses or both in Eswatini and/or globally.
- Between Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) 2 to 9. TRL 2 represents an idea that is supported with adequate technical research and a feasible methodology that will lead to an experimental proof of concept. TRL 9 represents a ‘qualified’ or ‘certified’ technology.
- New or unique or an improvement of an existing solution. Its development and preferred commercialization method should generate some kind of competitive advantage and intellectual property.
- Technically feasible to test and deploy or scale-up within 6 months of admission into the incubator. A longer period will be acceptable for deep technologies.
- Financially attractive.