The new VC Fund will have the headquarter based from Bahrain and it will also feature additional operative bases in Saudi Arabia, Egypt as well as the UAE. This Bahrain based new $60 Million Venture Capital Fund will be investing within 120 initial stage Start-ups within the Middle Eastern as well as North African territory (MENA) for over next three years in contention with the primary objective that is to unearth the potential generated by the Coronavirus-Fuelled tech flourishing.
Hasan Haider as well as Sharif El Badawi, who were previously the Managing partners at the venture capital firm 500 start-ups’ MENA wing, will be the leaders for this fund known as Plus Venture Capital (+VC).
The +VC headquarters will be based out in Bahrain, and the +VC fund will also have its operational offices out from Saudi Arabia, UAE and as well as the Egypt. The core focus of the firm will be based upon the tech-backed seeding stage start-ups that have been just recently launched and are in verge of gaining some ground. The firm’s major focus will be on the sectors like FinTech, HealthTech, EduTech as well as in addition to supply-chain as well as logistics, content as well as the E-Commerce arena.
Mr. Haider was prompt in stating that “the native homegrown start-ups have a huge potential for raising the required funding capital as the economy makes a reviving comeback from the initial slump at the closure of the first quarter. He also sums up that as according to their expertise with the previous two recessions, investment opportunity within the Technology arena specifically tech start-ups will surge intensely with the market showing grace of shifting towards pre-crisis level.”
Mr. Haider who’s also an entrepreneur himself as well as a former investment banker also stated further that “The MENA start-ups scene, which was rather touted as been crushed completely under weight of the Pandemic, has shown aggression and bounced back with transformed vigour… and that the +VC is already on track of closely inspecting market shift pattern and thereby have expectations for starting up due conscientiousness regard several opportunities that can be unearthed in the forthcoming time frame.”
He also stated that “the initial investments will have an estimated cheque worth of $200,000, with the other half of the capital being reserved for the follow-upon rounds of in excess of $2 Million for the most successful portfolio firms. This allocation will further surge to 70 percent which depends on the final fund size.”
The +VC will work in tandem alongside its restricted partners which will also include prominent family offices, higher net worth individuals as well as the institutional funds that will be initiated within a series of the closing events with the initial one anticipated to come on within this year’s end.
The remarkable fact is that despite the Pandemic scare and relative hurdles, MENA start-ups have secured a $659 Million funding during the first half of the year, which recorded a surge of 35 percent as comparatively to the previous year, as stated by the Data Platform Magnitt.
The Mena territory is emerging as the core start-up ecosystem, having witnessed a number of core exits, inclusive of the $3 billion acquisition of the Careem by Uber the previous year end and regarding local e-commerce website Souq by means of the US giant Amazon for $580 Million three years back during 2017.
The UAE has also obtained the largest portion of the savings raised, as was attributed according to various later-stage investment deals, while Egypt ranked first in regards to a wide variety of the deals, accounting for the 25 percent of the territories total.
Mr Badawi who has worked along with a quite few of the tech corporations in view since the mid-1990s in the Silicon Valley, consisting of Google, earlier than shifting according to the region to focus upon the start-up investing acknowledged that “With their group sounding positive as well as having invested within many start-ups on the years, we perform furnish the right stage regarding assist after the founders as we make investments in. Our founders may assume deep support from experienced practitioners as much properly so get entry to after a special network on operators, mentors then investors.”
Together, Mr Badawi then Mr Haider hold full extra than 200 transactions together, the statement added.
