NEW DELHI: New Saudi-Indian collaborations are going to be announced in the near future, Prince Fahad bin Mansour has told Arab News after a successful exhibition of the Kingdom’s projects and investment opportunities at the G20 young entrepreneurs’ summit in New Delhi.
Prince Fahad, the chair of the board of directors of Entrepreneurship Vision and president of the Saudi G20 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance, led Saudi Arabia’s delegation to the YEA Summit on July 13-15.
Hosted by Young Indians, a group of young businessmen from the Confederation of Indian Industry, the summit was held as part of the program of India’s presidency of the world’s largest economies.
Its strategic partners were the Kingdom’s investment brand Invest Saudi and the smart city megaproject NEOM.
“I think that it was a huge success today what India did with the G20 YEA Summit,” Prince Fahad told Arab News in an exclusive interview as the summit wrapped up on Saturday. “It’s my third time here in India in one month, so every time I come, they exceed the expectations.”
Only two weeks earlier, he represented Saudi Arabia at the meetings and summit of Startup20 — one of 11 official engagement groups of G20.
“I think that I will probably (be) coming again very soon,” he said. “Today we signed three (memoranda of understanding) — two Saudi companies with two Indian companies, and one Saudi company with a Singaporean company. And that is just the beginning of what we are looking to have in the next coming days and months.”
Saudi-Indian collaborations were mostly in the technology sector — particularly health tech and fintech — and in the food and beverage sector.
“In health tech, we have some entities from the private sector as investors that are looking for opportunities over here, and we found a lot of investors from India that are planning to invest in Saudi (Arabia). So, I think what we have is a huge opportunity and we’re going to capitalize on that as we move forward,” Prince Fahad said.
“There are a lot of things that will be announced very soon.”
The Saudi delegation consisted of more than 40 leaders from both the public and private sectors, of whom a third were women involved in startups based on high-tech innovation in engineering and science.
“I’m very happy with our participation. I’m also happy how the Saudi delegation interacted with the G20 delegates and as well the other countries that were invited,” Prince Fahad said.
“I hope that we’ll always add great value to the entrepreneurship ecosystem, not only in Saudi (Arabia), but for the whole world.”
