Zain Group successfully completed its two-week Silicon Valley Global Acceleration program, the most dynamic stage of its award-winning startup accelerator, Zain Great Idea (ZGI).
The program’s latest edition marked a major milestone as ZGI recently evolved from a Kuwait-centric initiative into a regional platform that brought together founders from across six Zain markets. The visit to Silicon Valley culminated with an immersive experience at the world’s leading hub for entrepreneurship and technology whereby founders gained valuable insights from global giants such as Apple, Google, Tesla, NVIDIA, Amazon, Stanford, and more.
This regional expansion is powered by Zain Ventures, the Group’s investment arm for emerging technologies, and ZainTECH, its regional digital solutions enterprise arm, reinforcing Zain’s ‘4WARD – Progress with Purpose’ strategy through meaningful innovation, inclusive growth, and AI-powered digital transformation with real societal impact.
The Global Acceleration phase brought together founders of 11 tech startups selected from Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, who took part in a highly curated program in Silicon Valley, California, designed to sharpen their business fundamentals, elevate their investment readiness, and expand their networks globally.
This dynamic phase of the program builds on ZGI’s proven track record of enabling founders to access mentorship, capital, and international exposure. It also reflects Zain’s long-term role as an ecosystem builder, creating pathways for entrepreneurs to scale sustainable business models and pursue new partnerships across the region and beyond.
Four interconnected tracks
Over two intensive weeks, the cohort followed a tightly curated program designed to combine learning, exposure, and real-world engagement. The journey unfolded across four interconnected tracks: structured masterclasses and bootcamps to accelerate core startup capabilities, field visits to leading tech companies and innovation hubs to translate theory into practice, curated panels, networking opportunities, and ecosystem learning moments focused on emerging trends, and a Demo Day pitching session that helped founders test their story, expand their connections, and build momentum within the Valley.
Masterclasses and bootcamps
Delivered in collaboration with Vibranium VC, a leading Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund specializing in startup investments, the program opened with a clear roadmap and expectations for the cohort, setting a high-performance tone from day one.
The founders then progressed through a packed sequence of masterclasses and bootcamps that tackled what it takes to compete in Silicon Valley and beyond, starting with a deep dive into how the ecosystem really works, and how founders can become confident relationship builders through networking-focused practicums.
Throughout the two weeks, founders accelerated core pillars of venture building through hands-on workshops and coaching. Sessions covered the venture mindset, value proposition and persona development, business model architecture, and go-to-market execution, alongside practical guidance on building products with modern approaches, including no-code and AI, and grounding product decisions in UI/UX fundamentals and customer-centric development.
To ensure founders could engage the investment landscape with confidence, the program placed strong emphasis on fundraising readiness and deal fluency, spanning fundraising, common legal pitfalls and how to avoid them, investor rights and priced rounds, financial modeling, and pitch deck mastery. The learning journey rounded out with strategic perspectives on scale, long-term value creation, and exit pathways through merger or acquisition, helping participants connect day-to-day execution with founder-level decision making that shapes outcomes over the long run.
Visits to tech giants & innovation hubs
To translate the classroom intensity into real-world insight, the cohort followed a curated itinerary across major technology landmarks and ecosystem institutions. At the NVIDIA Showroom and NVIDIA Inception Program for Startups, the founders strengthened their understanding of the infrastructure powering modern AI and how specialized startup programs can support credibility, technical enablement, and partnership pathways.
A visit to Stanford University’s Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center offered a window into advanced computing and AI innovation in a research environment, helping founders connect frontier work to real product possibilities and long-term differentiation. This was complemented by a Stanford Walkabout Tour, which highlighted how universities can function as startup engines through talent pipelines, research commercialization, and dense founder networks.
At Google HQ in Mountain View, founders observed how platform companies sustain innovation through experimentation, ecosystem thinking, and product iteration at pace. The stop at Apple Park reinforced the importance of product craft and user experience as a competitive advantage, with takeaways on focus, simplicity, and trust built through design.
The visit to Tesla, including a Cybertruck overview and test drive, offered a close-up view of how bold product vision can be paired with relentless execution, and how engineering, storytelling, and user excitement can amplify each other.
The cohort then experienced how global technology leaders build and operate at extraordinary scale. A visit to the Amazon Fulfillment Center showcased operational excellence in action, translating into lessons on process discipline, systems design, and customer experience built through execution.
The program also included a visit to InOrbit Robot Space, a robotics innovation environment focused on operating robots at scale, where founders explored what real-world deployment demands, from orchestration and monitoring to reliability and workflow integration.
At Carta, a private markets platform that supports equity and ownership management, founders gained practical perspective on how venture-backed companies structure cap tables and why ownership data becomes a strategic asset as startups raise, hire, and scale.
Alongside these flagship destinations, the program deepened founders’ understanding of the broader startup ecosystem and what it takes to grow investment-ready businesses. At Atlassian, a global software company whose products help teams collaborate and manage work, founders learned how the company’s Atlassian for Startups program helps founders build credibility and distribution through ecosystem-led growth, partnerships, and integrations with enterprise-grade platforms.
A visit to the Computer History Museum connected today’s AI wave to the arc of previous technology shifts, reinforcing lessons on adoption cycles, timing, and category-defining product thinking. At Five Star Bank, founders gained exposure to the financial backbone behind high-growth ventures, including the value of operational readiness and investor-grade discipline.
Networking and ecosystem engagement
Beyond the formal curriculum and site visits, the program created multiple touchpoints for founders to step into the Silicon Valley ecosystem through curated networking and learning moments. Across a range of discussions and ecosystem sessions, the cohort explored how emerging shifts, from agentic data infrastructure to AI-driven workflow transformation, are reshaping what investors and enterprise buyers prioritize.
These experiences helped founders build sharper market awareness, stress-test their assumptions in live conversations, and expand their networks with peers and ecosystem stakeholders in an environment built on high-velocity collaboration.
Pitching readiness & Demo Day
In parallel, the Global Acceleration experience sharpened founders’ pitching readiness through structured rehearsals, deck refinement, and multiple rounds of reworking their presentations to strengthen clarity, flow, and investor appeal. The journey culminated in Demo Day at Pillsbury Law in Palo Alto, where all founders delivered their pitches to a crowd of 80+ attendees, bringing together venture capitalists, angel investors, ecosystem leaders, and fellow founders. The format gave startups a high-signal environment to validate their story, demonstrate progress, and accelerate momentum toward partnerships and potential fundraising conversations.
Meet the founders
The Silicon Valley cohort brought together a standout group of founders representing Zain’s footprint, each tackling real market challenges with scalable, tech-enabled solutions. Representing Zain Kuwait, Nour Al-Fadhli leads VEHAB, a VR platform reshaping rehabilitation through immersive 360° simulations that support physical and cognitive recovery in realistic environments.
Also representing Zain Kuwait, Ahmad Al-Ebrahim co-founded theQA, Kuwait’s first research platform connecting brands with verified local participants for fast, high-quality insights, while Eid Al-Mujaibel founded Tenmeya, an Arabic-first platform enabling creators to monetize digital content and products simply in one place.
Hanan Al-Kulaib and Basma Al-Humaidhi, co-founders of Playbook Kuwait, are making it easier for parents to discover and book kids’ parties while helping vendors grow, and Rashed and Yousef Al-Otaibi co-founded Outing, a trusted Kuwaiti booking platform for verified chalets, villas, and holiday homes with secure payments and reliable listings. Completing Zain Kuwait’s representation, Abdulwahab Al-Tabtabaei co-founded Farah, a one-stop digital destination for planning weddings and streamlining the journey for couples.
Across the wider regional cohort, founders showcased how innovation is being built across different markets and sectors. Representing Zain KSA, Maha and Leen Al-Rossais co-founded WePay, an escrow-based fintech platform designed to elevate transaction security and trust between buyers and sellers, whether individuals or businesses.
Representing Zain Bahrain, Ghassan Esfahani co-founded Wajba, a platform that helps F&B businesses sell surplus food at discounted prices, cutting waste, recovering revenue, and making meals more affordable. From Zain Iraq, Khalid Al-Saady founded Jaamila.com, an online platform connecting buyers and sellers while enabling digital trade, inventory management, and more streamlined supply chain workflows.
From Zain Jordan, Ahmad Al-Saif founded Alefredo EdTech, a holistic education platform already serving 12,000+ students across 16 countries, focused on expanding quality learning access at scale. The cohort also included representation from ZainTECH in the UAE, where Kausar Tahir founded MeNOW Health, a femtech solution supporting marginalized women by bridging science, empathy, and innovation to create more informed and empowering women’s health experiences.
ZGI... A Corporate Rising Star
Recently, Zain Great Idea was recognized as one of the “Corporate Rising Stars” for 2025 at the Corporate Startup Stars Awards in Paris, a global acknowledgment presented at a gala hosted at the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) headquarters and co-organized with Mind the Bridge.
Now in its tenth edition, the Corporate Startup Stars Awards spotlighted corporations that embed open innovation into their strategy and build structured pipelines for startup collaboration, with the Corporate Rising Star category celebrating five high-potential organizations demonstrating outstanding commitment to working with startups and strengthening emerging innovation ecosystems.
Source: https://www.zain.com/en/press-release/zgi11techstartups
