Faten Aissi, business developer, Khaireddine Fredj, an entrepreneur, and Daniel Doppler, a French startup mentor, created 777, an incubator for early stage tech-based startups.

The official launch of the incubator is slated for coming December with a first batch of startups.

Applications for the nine-month program are open until the end of November, and five startups will be selected.

“We also offer for industrials and private companies a consulting service in an open innovation approach,” Aissi told Wamda. They will also provide a virtual incubation program for startups that can’t be incubated physically.

Depending on the product of the selected startup, 777 will offer them financial support that ranges between $8,000 and $40,000.

Though the launching budget was not disclosed, capital was secured through private funds, mainly via Satoripop, a startup from Sousse which develops games and apps for digital marketing.

“We wanted to open here because besides the governmental facilities such as the Technopole of Sousse or the incubator space at the local engineering school, there is no similar infrastructure [incubator] to support the entrepreneurial ecosystem here,” Aissi said.

For the founders, it made sense to open an incubator in Sousse rather than in Tunis, because of its blooming IT and IoT entrepreneurial ecosystem. The city has also a number of profitable startups such as Chifco an IoT startup, Enova Robotics, which manufactures robots and Proxym Group, an IT company that contributed to developing the ecosystem in the city. Sousse is also close to other regional hubs such as Sfax and Mahdia.

“Daniel and Khaireddine helped several Tunisian startups launch in France so we wanted to also help Tunisian startups to launch in their home country,” Aissi added.