Ammon News -

Endeavor Jordan announced that it is accepting applications for Scale-Up Roadmap for Growing Enterprises (SURGE), a three-year program co-funded by the European Union’s "Innovation for Enterprise Growth and Jobs" program "Innovate Jordan" with around €5M, covering 90% of the total budget.

In a statement on Tuesday, Endeavor Jordan, a global entrepreneurship movement to catalyze long-term economic growth, said that the deadline for accepting applications is January 10th, 2021.

SURGE, which will be implemented by a consortium led by Endeavor Jordan and includes Oasis500 and BeyondCapital, aims to foster the demand-driven growth and scaling of 45 High-Potential Growth Companies (HPGCs), 15 companies per year, throughout the three years. It will focus on strengthening their core business functions, and assisting them to identify and seize new market opportunities.

On the selection criteria, Endeavor mandates that entrepreneurs must be visionary, inspirational for their communities with good ethical standing, and have leadership potential. As for their businesses, they should be post-ideation stage with a minimum viable product (MVP), and have been operating for over two years in Jordan, with less than 100 employees.

The companies should be tech or tech-enabled businesses, with more than US $100,000 annual turnover, and have high potential for success, it added.

"The program could not have come at a better time for our companies because while many have been impacted negatively this year because of COVID, a good number were actually able to turn this crisis into a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and witness favorable growth levels. Through this program, we want to support firms to become more resilient, and at their core, able to take growth to the next level," said Reem Goussous, Managing Director of Endeavor Jordan.

Through Surge, the journey of an HPGC begins with a diagnostics analysis that informs a 9-12 month custom-tailored growth roadmap. A multitude of business challenges will be addressed through a variety of mentorship, coaching, training, advisory and in-house consulting delivered by seasoned international experts, the statement said.

By supporting the scale-up journey of the HPGCs, SURGE will leverage Endeavor’s network and connections around the world to support market expansion efforts through partner and commercial introduction activities.

SURGE will also provide entrepreneurs with support to access capital opportunities by prepping them and their companies for prime investment opportunities leading to introductions to prominent international investors.

Services and activities conducted through SURGE will spread across all departments of a selected HPGC, to engage relevant key personnel aiming to maximize the growth potential with a shared vision in a company.

"Innovate Jordan" aims to create an ‘SME Growth Factory’ that helps existing innovative high growth potential enterprises to scale and grow, to support the development of sector Centres of Excellence that boost the competitiveness of high growth and innovation potential sectors and to support the establishment of an Innovation Hub that promotes and strengthens the innovation culture and facilitates innovation demand and supply matchmaking.