The Kuwaiti Information Technology (IT) market is set to post a rebound in 2021, after severe weaknesses in 2020 caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The situation led to a severe oil price collapse and the poor business environment that weighed on government investments, enterprise sentiment and household spending levels.

ICT sits at the heart of the government’s 2035 strategy, New Kuwait, launched in 2017, but Kuwait has already made great strides in the digital economy. In the “Global Information Technology Report 2016” by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the country was among the biggest risers, and regulatory reforms are being put in place to usher in an era where tech companies help speed up the evolution towards a diversified knowledge-based economy.

Given Kuwait’s cosmopolitan taste for fine dining from around the world, it is unsurprising that its most celebrated start-up story has a culinary flavour. It may be two years since the German company Rocket Internet paid $165m for Talabat, the Kuwaiti restaurant delivery app, but the story of its success has given a new generation of entrepreneurs a taste for e-commerce.