GCC-based venture capital firm VentureSouq (VSQ) announced the launch of its MENA FinTech Fund I, the region’s first sector specific fund focused on FinTech across the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region and Pakistan.
The $50 million VentureSouq fund invests in early-stage FinTech and SaaS companies and focuses on key subsectors including payments infrastructure, alternative credit, digital banking, PropTech, InsurTech and personal financial management, working closely with innovative regional entrepreneurs that are disrupting financial services.
“Prior to the MENA FinTech fund, we were early investors alongside some of the biggest global VCs in a number of FinTech companies, including high-profile ones such as Jeeves, Khatabook, Belvo, FamPay, Vouch, Point, Atomic and Fondeadora,” VentureSouq General Partner Suneel Gokhale said.”In 2020 we started to reflect on what FinTech adoption in the MENA region was going to look like and we dived right in”.
VentureSouq MENA FinTech I is backed by regional powerhouses including Jada Fund of Funds program and Saudi Venture Capital Company (SVC), Bahrain’s Al Waha Fund of Funds, UAE’s DisruptAD, ADQ’s venture platform, and Mubadala Investment Company, as well as multinational conglomerates such as OFC, the Middle East investment arm of The Olayan Group.
The Fund has been actively deploying capital into startups across MENA and Pakistan, including regional ‘buy now pay later’ Tabby, Saudi-based B2B marketplace Sary and PropTech platform Huspy. UAE-based investments include Baraka, Flexxpay, FinTech infrastructure company NymCard and digital bank Verity and in Pakistan, digital ledger platform Creditbook, e-commerce financing platform PostEx and salary advance startup Abhi Finance.
The fund also invested into Egypt-based transportation platform Trella, gig economy financial platform Dayra and North Africa-based super-app Yassir, along with a number of other promising companies, which will be announced in the coming months.
Established in 2016, VentureSouq has operations in the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and has invested in over 200 companies worldwide.
VentureSouq Partners Suneel Gokhale, Maan Eshgi, Sonia Gokhale, Tammer Qaddumi and Sonia Weymuller all take an active value-add approach to investing.