IN THE LOOP Building a community Palestine early-stage VC firm Ibtikar Fund raises US$2.5 million from regional and global investors
investing in innovative palestinian startups
18
Entrepreneur august 2017
agree with our current investors in the potential of Palestinian startups and welcome them to our fund,” he added. As per Ibtikar Fund’s investment strategy, laid down on its website, the firm supports companies in two stages- seed and early-stage, and is looking to “invest in highly-skilled and complementary management teams that are willing to take risks and go out of their comfort zones.” At the seed level, the Fund looks for entrepreneurs through local accelerators, and it also remains open to make Series A investments in its portfolio companies. Managed by Hazzan and Ambar Amleh, the Fund benefits from the involvement of some of the country’s renowned business executives- its board is chaired by Hashim Shawa, Chairman and General Manager of the Bank of Palestine (the fund’s anchor investor), and includes Zahi Khouri, Chairman and CEO, National Beverage Company. While this marks the first investment in Palestinian venture capital and in MENA region overall by DGGF, this is IFC’s first investment in Palestine’s ecosystem and the second under its new Startup Catalyst initiative (the first was its support to Flat6Labs Cairo in Egypt). “We believe Ibtikar can play a pivotal role in strengthening the area’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, creating jobs, and attracting more investment,” Mouayed Makhlouf, IFC’s Regional Director in the MENA region, said in a statement.
Ahmed El Alfi, founder, Flat6Labs, H.E. Dr. Sahar Nasr, Minister of Investment and International Cooperation, and other officials at the MIIC signing event
Enabling Egypt’s ecosystem Flat6Labs Cairo announces first close of its EGP100 million fund
E
arly-stage startups in Egypt, the time is ripe to get your pitch decks ready, and present your venture to Flat6Labs Cairo. The accelerator program has announced the first close of its EGP100 million Cairo fund called Flat6Labs Accelerator Company, which, according to Flat6Labs, will help them “directly support over 100 Egyptian early stage-startups over the upcoming five years” with seed funding of up to EGP1 million per startup, training, mentorship and a host of other services. This in turn will help create “more than 1,000 high-impact jobs” in the Egyptian market, says Flat6Labs. The close of this round is supported by commitments from Egypt Ventures- a company of the Egyptian Ministry of Investment and International Cooperation (MIIC) managed by NI Capital, and the EgyptianAmerican Enterprise Fund (EAEF) with each party pooling in EGP10 million each. With this financial injection, Egypt Ventures and EAEF join the International Finance Corporation [that invested EGP50 million in November 2016] in the list of strategic institutional backers supporting Flat6Labs’ mission to help grow Egypt’s entrepreneurship community. “The fund will provide seed funding of EGP500,000 upon
joining the accelerator (250,000 in cash, and 250,000 non-cash investment), and up to EGP1 million per startup in follow-up investment, allowing Egyptian startups to reach their customer base and scale their operations locally and regionally,” says Willie Elamien, Managing Director, Flat6Labs Cairo. While MIIC says it aims to support entrepreneurs develop their skills by providing a conducive environment for growing their business, EAEF, on its part, has said that it identified a shortage of seed capital in Egypt, and decided to align with Flat6Labs to help address the gap. As an early-stage startup accelerator, Flat6labs supports startups at “idea, concept or prototype or early-revenue generation stages” and Elamien says “they are sector agnostic, [but] are particularly interested in [supporting] education, healthcare, fintech, digital content, consumer internet and ICT startups.” Flat6Labs Cairo’s ninth accelerator cycle is scheduled to start later this summer, and according to the organization, the cycle has already witnessed an “unprecedented” number of applications- with over 500 Egypt-based companies competing for a space in the program and to receive seed funding. www.flat6labs.com/location/cairo
www.ibtikarfund.com | flat6labs
F
inancial support, especially in the early stages of a business lifecycle is a missing link most startups in Palestine (and perhaps in many parts of the Middle East) suffer from. Helping make things better for Palestine’s entrepreneurs in this regard is Ibtikar Fund, an early-stage venture capital fund with a mission to “close a critical funding gap between acceleration and VC, and other later-stage investors” for Palestine startups. And now the VC firm has got a boost in achieving this objective, as it has announced raising an investment of US$2.5 million in July 2017 from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF), and Reach Holding (a Middle East-based global entity headquartered in Palestine) as investors. With this raise, Ibtikar increases its capital to $10.45 million, giving it the ability to invest in more Palestinian startups. “We look for ideas and startups that are scalable, and which serve the MENA region or global need,” declares the website of Ibtikar (meaning innovation in Arabic), which launched in May 2016, and has made 14 investments in Palestinian startups so far, and growing. “These new investments are a validation of our work over the last two years, and a vote of confidence in our management,” Habib Hazzan, Managing General Partner, Ibtikar, said in a statement. “We are glad that the IFC, DGGF and Reach Holding