VentureSouq launches $50 million FinTech Fund for MENA region

10x Industry

Mita Srinivasan
10x Industry
Published:

VentureSouq launches $50 million FinTech Fund for MENA region

The 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 regional entrepreneurs in these sectors.

GCC-based venture capital firm, VentureSouq, has launched its $50 million MENA FinTech Fund I, the first sector specific fund focused on FinTech across the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region and Pakistan. The 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 regional entrepreneurs in these sectors.

VentureSouq General Partner, Suneel Gokhale, commented, “We were early investors alongside some of the biggest global VCs in a number of FinTech companies. In 2020 we started to reflect on what FinTech adoption in the MENA region was going to look like and we dove right in. Based on what we have seen in other emerging markets that we have invested in, we believe it is still early days in terms of the FinTech ecosystem in the MENA region and we are really excited about the overall opportunity set.”

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 investments include Baraka, Flexxpay, FinTech infrastructure company, NymCard and digital bank Verity and in Pakistan, among others. 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.

VentureSouq has operations in the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and has invested in over 200 companies worldwide with over $100 million in assets under management.