Published: 22 September 2010 | Close Date: 15 October 2010
infoDev invites suitable organizations to implement a business incubator in Cambodia and provide a business incubation program catering on early-stage to high growth enterprises in Cambodia with a special focus on women entrepreneurs.
Should you have any questions, please post these on the dedicated wikispace to get an answer: http://cambodianincubator.wikispaces.com/
infoDev, a donor-funded agency hosted by the World Bank, has formed a public-private partnership with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and Nokia to undertake a joint program on Creating Sustainable Businesses for the Knowledge Economy, worth some €13 million, that will run from 2010 – 2012.
This request for proposals concerns the implementation of a business incubator in Cambodia and the provision of an incubation program enabling women entrepreneurship in the Mekong. As the implementating agency for the program, infoDev is looking to hire a consultant firm to award one grant - up to US$ 430,000 - to:
1. Create a sustainable, locally operated, business incubator that accelerates the growth of early-stage small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs);
2. Create a targeted set of activities to support women entrepreneurship;
3. Identify gaps and inefficiencies of initiatives supporting entrepreneurship and innovation at national level.
|
The main aim of the incubator will be to enable the start-up and growth of technology, service and small-scale agri-business enterprises through the provision of business incubation and other services to entrepreneurs in Phnom Penh. The components of the incubator will be as follows:
- Technology Innovation and Opportunity Entrepreneurship Awareness: Developing ideas and motivation through a workshop and seminar program delivered by universities.
- Pre-Incubation: This will focus primarily on market research and preliminary business planning to help potential entrepreneurs (including recent graduates, researchers, inventors, corporate and public sector employees) to test the feasibility of their ideas and to develop a preliminary business plan. This will be done in partnership with the National
- Business Incubation: The main focus of the incubator will be on establishing the business, with intensive counseling, mentoring, financial and networking support. Throughout incubation the incubator will assist entrepreneurs to execute their business growth strategy.
- Post-Incubation: Helping clients locate to science and technology parks, industrial estates and as required to help support future growth.
It is expected that the project will contribute:
- to create a sustainable, locally operated, business incubator that accelerates the growth of early-stage SMEs in Cambodia;
- to foster women’s entrepreneurship in the Mekong;
- to improve the business environment for innovative early-stage entrepreneurs through the engagement of key stakeholders in the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem to identify strengths and weaknesses of the policy framework, and to propose ways to improve them further. | NEW! You can ask as many questions as you want on the dedicated wikispace to get those answered: http://cambodianincubator.wikispaces.com/ |
Please download the documents referenced below and respond to this RFP by email to jbrethenoux@worldbank.org with a copy to info@infodev.org, no later than 11.59 pm EST on October 15, 2010.