Bedaya Fund II, $150 million fund launched by UAE-based Shorooq Partners, to invest in North African early startups
Shorooq Partners, a MENAP-based early-stage venture capital firm, has announced the second edition of its seed-stage-focused fund, Bedaya Fund II, with a target fund size of $150 million to invest in the North African region.
Bedaya Fund II is a continuation of Shorooq Partners’ strategy, which has been in place since the business’s foundation, with a focus on the early phases of the startup founders’ journey. This is consistent with the firm’s primary premise of functioning as co-founders, business builders, and value investors.
Bedaya Fund II, like its predecessor, will largely invest in pre-seed, seed, pre-series A, and Series A stage fintech, software, platform verticals, and digital assets firms. With its Web 3.0 thesis, Shorooq Partners has lately made inroads as a first mover in the MENAP area. Shorooq Partners recently led the pre-seed round of Nuqtah, the first NFT start-up to emerge from Saudi Arabia, and will continue to focus on the expanding Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan area, where the majority of its firms are based.
Shane Shin, a founding partner at Shorooq Partners said, “We have always been early movers, be that robo-advisory, crowdfunding, SME lending, open banking, card issuer processing, and so forth. We believe Web 3.0 models like Defi, NFT, Metaverse are going to be the key players in the next iteration of online business.”
“Shorooq Partners has been preparing for this new wave of technology disruption, and we are well-positioned to back the upcoming category leaders of Web 3.0 in our region.” He added.
Bedaya Fund II has already begun investing, with the first investments set to be announced soon. The fund now has impressive names of investors, including top-tier sovereign wealth funds, corporations, institutions, and family offices from around the world. DisruptAD – ADQ’s venture platform, Dubai Future District Fund, Bupa Insurance, and others are among the new investment groups.
The company has made over 80 investments in over 50 firms, with a total value of $1.5 billion in gross equity. Pure Harvest Smart Farms, TruKKer, Capital, Lean Technologies, Sarwa, Lendo, NymCard, Breadfast, Airlift, Mozn, Aumet, and others are among the enterprises that have produced over 5,000 employments.
Over the last five years, Shorooq Partners has grown at a remarkable pace. The business is well-known, and its funds are backed by seven sovereign wealth funds. It also has a significant physical presence in six countries, with distinctive deal sourcing skills on the ground. Shorooq Partners launched Nahda Fund, the first Middle East-focused venture debt fund series, in 2021
and has been actively supporting some of the region’s premier startups, including Pure Harvest Smart Farms and Retailo Technologies.
“Merely a few years ago, Shane and I started Shorooq Partners from humble beginnings, bootstrapping our first investments with only our close friends and families committing to it. Now with six offices across our core markets and a large team, we are humbled and privileged to be a market maker in the region’s accelerating startup ecosystem. We are proud to take on this mission to support founders who deserve only the best kinds of investors that can provide them with inflection points.” Mahmoud Adi, a founding partner at Shorooq Partners noted.
The company has relied on its experienced investors and staff to provide portfolio companies with a strong on-the-ground presence, which is made possible by its physical office network.
The growing interest from regional and international institutional investors in exploring merger and acquisition opportunities in the region and tapping into emerging market startups as a source of differentiation and higher returns is creating a stronger exit market.