Sawari Ventures - Afrikan Heroes

North African Startups Attract Sawari Ventures and Algebra Ventures $150 Million Stake

April 9, 2021

Ahmed El Alfi, Hany Al-Sonbaty, and Wael Amin, Sawari Partners

An Egypt focused fund for North African based startups has attracted about one billion Egyptian pounds raised by Sawari Ventures with aim to ramp up investments in startups across the North Africa region which analysts described as a giant leap for the fund launched in 2018 as the Sawari Ventures Fund I. VCs that participated in the fund includes the CDC Group (which committed $12 million), European Investment Bank, Proparco, and the Dutch Good Growth Fund. The fund’s newer investors include Egyptian banks like the National Bank of Egypt, Banque Misr, Banque du Caire, and Suez Canal Bank. Misr Insurance Group, based in Cairo and Kuwaiti company Ekuity are also in the mix.

Sawari was founded by Ahmed El Alfi, Hany Al-Sonbaty, and Wael Amin in 2010. Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia are the firm’s focus countries. The firm’s portfolio includes Swvl (the bus-hailing startup that raised $42m in 2019), Instabug, Elves, and MoneyFellows, a rotational savings app that closed a $4m Series A last year.

In addition to these, Sawari is focused on fintech, health, and education. But the company also sees “unique opportunities in SaaS products, semiconductors and IoT,” according to a company spokesperson’s statement. A breakdown of Sawari’s investment in its new fund shows that 10% will be passed through Flat6Labs, Sawari’s seed-stage-focused firm. Through Flat6Labs’s offices in Cairo and Tunis, Sawari will provide seed capital to at least 140 startups in the region and follow-on investments in up to 60 companies.

The remaining 90% will go into 20 to 25 growth-stage companies across Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco. The median ticket size for these investments will be between two and three million dollars. Not to be outdone, another VC firm will also be offering ticket sizes of up to $2 million to startups within the North Africa region. Algebra Ventures, a firm based in Egypt plans to raise a $90 million fund. They plan to close the first round of that target by the third quarter of 2021.

According to a company statement, Algebra raised a $54 million fund in 2017 and deployed it in about 21 startups. The company says its 6 most established startups are valued at $350m. Their portfolio includes Eventtus, a digital event management startup, a trucking marketplace called Trella, and Goodsmart, a grocery shopping app.

With its new fund, the company will pursue fintech, agritech, edtech, logistics, and healthcare opportunities. The firm plans to establish itself among “exceptional” seed level founders “and “expand our participation on the Series B level, too,” according to Karim Hussein, who co-manages the firm with Tarek Assad, his co-founder.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Egyptian VC Sawari Ventures Closes $69 Million Fund To Invest In Egyptian Startups

April 5, 2021

Sawari Ventures, headquartered in Cairo, has reported today that it had closed its Egyptian fund with new commitments totaling $28 million (EGP 440 million) from Misr Insurance Company, Kuwait Investment Authority’s Ekuity, National Bank of Egypt, Banque Misr, Banque du Caire, and Suez Canal Bank. The fund previously raised $41 million (EGP 650 million) from the European Investment Bank and a number of development finance agencies, including the CDC in the United Kingdom, Proparco in France, and the Dutch Good Growth Fund. It brings the fund’s overall value to $69 million (EGP 1.09 billion). Only Egyptian startups will be considered for investment by this venture.

*Ahmed El Alfi, the founder and Chairman of Sawari Ventures*

“Ten percent of the fund is earmarked for seed-stage companies through investment in Flat6labs vehicles. Flat6Labs Cairo will seed 80–100 companies and offer follow-on investments to 30–40. Flat6Labs Tunisia will seed 60–70 companies and offer follow-on investments to 30–40,” Hany Al-Sonbaty, the co-founder and Managing Partner of Sawari Ventures said, in a statement.

Here Is What You Need To Know

Sawari also runs a $70 million North African fund that supports startups in Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia.

It raised $35 million in its first close in December 2018.

What Startups Would The Fund Invest In?

The Egyptian fund would put money into both seed and growth-stage companies. Flat6Labs will invest in seed-stage businesses in Egypt and Tunisia, while the remainder of the fund (90 percent) will go to growth-stage companies with an average funding spectrum of $2 to $3 million.

“We try to cast a wide net given that in essence, this is a transformative moment in emerging markets tech with the rapid digitization of the underlying economy. So as expected, we’re seeing a great deal flow in the digitization of financial services, health care and education technologies. Also, given the engineering talent, there are unique opportunities in SaaS products, semiconductors and IoT, ” Hany said.

A Look At What Sawari Ventures Does

Sawari Ventures, founded in 2010 and headed by Ahmed Al-Alfi, Hany Al-Sonbay, and Wael Amin, is one of Egypt’s leading venture capital firms, with over 30 companies in its portfolio, including Swvl, MoneyFellows, Instabug, Si-Ware, and Elves.

“The Egypt based fund is a privately-held fund regulated by the Financial Regulatory Authority of Egypt (FRA), which allowed us to attract capital from top tier local financial institutions to co-invest with foreign capital from international development financial institutions, doubling our allocation to invest in Egyptian high growth companies to sixty-eight million U.S. Dollars, ” Ahmed El Alfi, the founder and Chairman of Sawari Ventures added in the statement.

“Our aim is to create exceptional returns through investing in knowledge-driven companies, which have the potential of bringing transformational changes to the Egyptian economy. The fund will support local companies with dedicated capital, in addition to quality expertise from our seasoned and specialized team, and the value add of our investors,” he said.

For his part Basil Heni, Chairman and Managing Director of Misr Insurance Holding Company, said:

“Misr Insurance Holding Group, as the largest non-bank financial group in Egypt, was keen on this strategic partnership with Sawari Ventures, the leading company in managing capital funds. The partnership is directed towards emerging small and medium-sized enterprises, which is in accordance with the group’s role in supporting this vital sector in the economy. This is evident in the fact that we own the largest share in the fund.”

According to Adnan Al Sager, CEO of Ekuity Holding, the Kuwait Investment Authority’s Egyptian investment arm:

“Our alliance with Sawari Ventures further strengthens the resurgence of the Kuwaiti investments in Egypt, partnering with a selective group of Egyptian institutions and investment funds, with the aim of contributing to the creation of scalable businesses as well as achieving the targeted investment returns.”

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer

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Egypt’s Elves Raises $2 million for App-Based Concierge Service

September 18, 2020

Elves Founders: Karim Elsahy and Abeer Elsisi

The Cairo-based Elves has raised $2 million from one of Egypt’s leading VCs Sawari Ventures and its existing investors with the first phase of the investment which took part in February earlier this year and another in July. Sawari invested in both the transactions. The new investment takes Elves’ total raise to date to $5 million, said the startup. Elves had raised $2 million in December 2017 from Emaar, Kauffman Fellows Syndicate, and Dubai Angel Investors.

Founded in 2017 by husband-wife duo; Karim Elsahy and Abeer Elsisi, Elves offers different on-demand services, through its AI-powered concierge app. The app enables users to chat with an elf (a term it uses for its human assistants) to help them buy stuff (online or offline), book flights or hotels, pay bills, or even get some very customized requests addressed (e.g. arranging a car with flowers in it). Most of the offline services that Elves offers are only available for users in Egypt but anything that’s online is being offered to users all around the world.

Elves had started as a service on Facebook Messenger where users could chat with an elf to get things done but has now evolved to offer this through its own dedicated app. The startup has had an app for years but it launched a revamped version earlier this year and now over 90 percent of the total usage comes from the app, its co-founder and CEO said.

Karim in a statement said that they had to make some hard and fast decisions after Covid-19, “A large part of our revenue was coming from flight bookings, hotel reservations, concerts, cinema tickets, and those industries were basically shut down. We shifted rapidly to a focus on what people would need most while they were confined to their homes and drilled down on that. Groceries have become very big for us so we’ve automated it, signed up more than 40 grocery partners, jam-packed it with exclusive deals and we’re going in a big way.”

In spite of the very slow activity in travel, cinemas, and some other industries that were driving Elves growth before the pandemic, the app has still grown its user base by over 500 percent in the last six months. Karim said that these are the users who’ve made a purchase through its app or Messenger assistant. Explaining how the startup was able to grow its user base when the industries that it was associated with were adversely affected by Covid-19, Karim said that the users were using the app to order groceries, medicines, and even TVs. As Elves is a concierge service, they were able to adapt and divert their resources and efforts to address those requests.

Elves have also been investing efforts and money to scale up its development in machine learning. It has recently appointed Dr. Mohamed El-Beltagy as the new CTO, who in turn has built up a team under one of the leading PhD’s in NLP, said the startup in a statement.“They’ve successfully demonstrated how previous user requests can be reused to serve similar live requests thus raising the number of live concurrent users each human operator can handle. They are, in essence, generating “Alexa Skills” at a pace of tens of thousands a month through millions of live human conversations,” added the statement.

Wael Amin, Partner at Sawari Ventures, commenting on the investment, said, “What initially attracted us to Elves was its unique combination of AI and human concierge capabilities, giving it superior versatility and scalability over its competitors. The onset of Covid, and the company’s ability to quickly adapt to changing consumer behavior and scale to meet the surge in demand further reaffirmed our belief in the model, and led us to double down on our initial investment.”

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry