Tunisia Launches InnovaTech to High Growth Startups

Tunisia has announced the launch of its “InnovaTech,” initiative aimed at stimulating growth for innovative small businesses. The initiative involves a $43m investment fund for Tunisian startups.

The fund also intends to mobilize private savings, leveraging co-investment to promote the startup ecosystem in the country. Private-sector actors will be able to refine the financing schemes of the projects that will be presented to them through co-investment.

The funding process will consist of the identification of Innovative SMEs driving growth, and the ability to equip them with technologies allowing them to accelerate their development and prepare an investment to promote their growth.

The Fund will target education, health, financial, technology green, and renewable energy, Agritech, manufacturing, ICT, and electronics, big data and analytics, media and e-commerce, and all technologies that would enable digital transformation.

Caisse des Depots et des Consignations (CDC)- the Fund’s sponsor (ANCHOR INVESTOR), have been charged with the responsibility of implementing the project, while Smart Capital is the Fund’s manager.

Given that the Tunisian economic fabric is mainly made up of SMEs aspiring to evolve in the field of innovation and technology, the fund is expected objective of launching this fund is to intervene directly on the innovative and technological aspect of Tunisian SMEs to improve their competitiveness both nationally and internationally.