Women-Led Startups in Bahrain Secure $75K Equity-Free Grants

By: Women Entrepreneurs Review Team | Saturday, 26 September 2026

The seventh cohort of Standard Chartered Foundation's Women in Tech Bahrain has successfully concluded in Manama, with grants worth USD 75,000 being provided to three women-led startups without any equity requirement.

Vivid Algorithms by Marwa Hesham, won the first prize amounting to USD 35,000, whereas Maraj, by Latifa Al Khayat, secured the second prize amounting to USD 25,000. The third prize of USD 15,000 went to the startup Jaras, by Walaa Aloraibi. The three-month-long incubation program included 13 female entrepreneurs and helped them in growth of their business development, technological innovation, and support for entrepreneurship.

Key Highlights:

• Bahrain backs women-led startups with equity-free grant funding
• Women founders gain support to prepare for future VC investment
• Program strengthens Bahrain’s pipeline of scalable women-led ventures

With the financial assistance, the program also signifies growing interest in increasing women's participation in the fields of technology and fintech, diversifying the digital economy of Gulf countries ensuring that women-led startups have adequate access to finance.

This program concluded with the selection of three startups receiving non-equity grant funding and another three months of incubation support. The assessment of the startups was conducted by a team of business, fintech, investment and development experts, such as Standard Chartered Bahrain, Bahrain FinTech Bay, Tamkeen, and UNIDO ITPO Bahrain.

At an extensive level, this program highlights the emergence of Bahrain’s tech environment, whereby women-led businesses are provided with financial and incubator assistance to facilitate their commercial growth.

Standard Chartered Foundation is an international charity organization with a mandate that focuses on economic inclusion and handling issues of inequalities. By implementing the Women in Tech initiative, the organization ensures growing economic empowerment of the female population in the tech industry. Shaikha Tareef, CEO of Standard Chartered Bank Bahrain, is leveraging her experience in the domain for successful implementation of such projects.

Bahrain FinTech Bay is among the top tech centers based in the Middle East region, creating an evolved ecosystem for financial technology innovation by means of its physical space, acceleration programs, and advisory services. Since the launch of this global initiative in Bahrain, it has supported over 60 female-led or co-founded startups with over $380,000 in grants.

This hub plays an important role digitalization in Bahrain as it brings together financial institutions, governmental bodies, technology companies, and startups in order to foster cooperation and create new innovations for women in business.

The cohort marks development and evolution of Bahrain’s entrepreneurial and fintech ecosystem, where the focus moving away from merely helping startups grow their ideas to helping them build a commercially viable startup with revenue-generating potential.

The gradual expansion of this program is also helping to build a strong pipeline of women-led and investment-ready companies in an environment where female founders still have funding access issues. The next challenge for the Gulf financial ecosystem would be securing enough follow-on investment and scale-up capital for the upcoming ventures.

Equity-free grant funding makes it possible for the founders to raise capital without diluting their shares via equity investments or repaying any debts. This enables entrepreneurs to build up their startups and make themselves ready for VC and institutional investment in the future.