Bidaya : Overview Of A Moroccan Incubator

What is Bidaya?

Bidaya is a Social-Green-Tech incubator in Casablanca that invests in the creation of startups with social, environmental or cultural impact in Morocco. Since its creation in 2015, Bidaya has supported more than 400 startups and funded more than 140 projects across the kingdom on themes ranging from education, health and crafts to healthtech, gaming, renewable energies and waste recovery.

Bidaya & SOS Maroc

The group SOS Maroc is an association under Moroccan law which was created in 2015 in order to develop:

actions against exclusion in all its forms.
actions which allow job creation.
any action intended to promote social entrepreneurship.

SOS Maroc thus carries the activities of the Social-Green-Tech incubator Bidaya, which represents today the majority of the organization’s activities.

Pillars of activity

With the growing need to build innovative economic models which meet social and environmental challenges, Bidaya aims for high-impact entrepreneurship through 5 main hubs:

Incub : offers support for startups with social and/or environmental impact via workshops, training and coaching.
Funds : implements a program of support and acceleration towards financing through offering grants or honor loans.
Space : promotes social and environmental entrepreneurship through awareness-raising events and inclusion programs via entrepreneurship.
Lab : promotes Bidaya’s expertise through partnerships and the development of new projectsin addition to consulting assignments.
Deploy : the territorial deployment of support activities in the region.

Success story: Green WATECH

Green WATECH is one of many successful startups supported by Bidaya. It offers a new low cost, efficient and practical solution of sanitation. The technology is designed to be used to manage and reuse domestic wastewater in rural communities and decentralized sites. It consists of water filtration using available and low cost materials such as soil, gravel, sawdust and iron metal.

2021 in numbers

33 startups supported by Incub.
52 entrepreneurs mentored by Incub.
29 women.
97 hours of training.
141 hours of coaching.
86 hours of individual monitoring.

Operation during Covid

Globally, Covid impacted supported projects very differently depending on the sectors they were operating. Naturally, the social businesses which offer field-solution for the most vulnerable were quite impacted. Nevertheless, for some entrepreneurs (in Tech for instance), the sanitary crisis was a real opportunity to get momentum for their services and product and to rethink their business and impact models.

During Covid, Bidaya had to reshape the way the incubator conducted the activities. Since the lockdown was very strict in Morocco, it was a great opportunity to develop new animation formats and creative workshops.

2022 plans

As 2022 starts, there is a plethora of projects going on at Bidaya. For a start, Bidaya will be present in the Tangier region but also in Fès-Meknès and Souss-Massa with La Caravane Orange Corners and the Orange Corners Innovation Funds. They are also finalizing the Women Green’preneur initiative with their partners end of February with a wrap-up event to celebrate women entrepreneurship in the green sectors.

Bidaya will be implementing projects in the CCI and social impact sectors with the Safir and Lead’Art consortiums in order to enable innovative projects to keep growing and structure their approach towards impact and change in Morocco. Also, they will pursue building new high-impact programs with their network of partners to offer a quality support solution every change makers in Morocco!