Investing in Palestine

Cisco Corporate AffairsZika Abzuk, Senior Manager

Cisco’s Model

"Cisco Systems is investing $10 million to seed a model of job creation and economic development in the Palestinian Territories. The three year investment is being made in cooperation with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas… As we execute against this commitment over the coming years, our hope is also to create a catalyst of active engagement and a call to action for others across the public and private sector to contribute toward a diverse and sustainable economic model for the region"John Chambers,

Cisco Chairman and CEO

The commitment

A first advisory board meeting, May 2008Yoav Samet, Zika Abzuk, Ihab Jabri, Yuval Shahar, sabri Saidam

First Step: The Advisory Board

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco ConfidentialPresentation_ID 5

From Vision to Reality

MYTecC

GTAP

Connecting Schools

Capacity Building For SW

companies

OutsourcingVCDirect investments

Outsourcing;Incubation

program;Seed fund

First year Second year Third year

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco ConfidentialPresentation_ID 6

First two years - What did we do?Set an advisory boardFormed Strategic PartnershipsOutsourcingGTAPMYTecC

Outsourcing – the first meeting

R&D team & Exalt interviewing Palestinian companies for outsourcing work (Cisco, December 2008)

Outsourcing – Contract Signed

Contract Signed Michael Ben-Nun and Tareq Maayah (CEO – Exalt)

Entrepreneurial spirit Good universitiesVery low attrition rateHighly motivated engineersTop of the class graduatesLoyalty & good work ethics on both sides

What Made It Work?

- The 3 Cisco BU’s picked up cost and continue employing the teams with even more challenging projects

- 2 out of the 3 BU’s extended the teams – started with 24 engineers – 40 engineers

- HP, Intel, Microsoft are following our lead and have started outsourcing to Palestine ( with our support – using the cookbook we wrote)

- # of students applying for engineering and computer science schools in Palestine increased by 20%

Success Indicators

What’s next

A Venture Capital fund An incubation program Capacity building of Palestinian Software companies Connecting schools Capacity Building of Universities Women Empowerment Program

Thank You

Incubation Program

• Intensive Incubation program, run by PICTI (Palestinian ICT Incubator) for Palestinian Entrepreneurs

• The program focuses on local Palestinian professionals that would like to start their high-growth entrepreneurial ventures in Palestine

• The selected teams receive the mentorship, capital funding, infrastructure, and knowledge they require to build and operate their own start-ups.

• Upon completion of the program, teams will have the opportunity to meet with early stage “‘angel” and venture capital investors to present their ideas and demonstrate their products

Capacity Building of Palestinian Software development companies

• A training program, with holistic approach, to build the capacity of SW development companies and prepare them for competition in the global economy

• The program includes CEOs, Program Managers and Senior Engineering Managers of the companies

• Top in the field teachers run the training sessions, workshops and individual follow up and support sessions

• The participants will bring real-world issues for discussion and receive an individual and group coaching during the program period

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco ConfidentialPresentation_ID 15

Connecting Schools

• Connect youth clubs and schools to the network, providing good connectivity in a reasonable cost

• Cisco Brings a partner, Inveneo, who are expert in low cost, green technology for connectivity in challenging areas

• Inveneo design the network, using existing infrastructure

• Local companies will build the network with Inveneo supervision