Another piece of good news for Arab entrepreneurs:
Abraaj Capital, the Dubai investment bank that was an early investor in Maktoob, has acquired Jordan's Riyada Ventures, one of the region's better VC funds.
Riyada has invested in some pretty cool regional startups, including
Mediascope (which runs the MedieME website among others), the tech/media research house
Arab Advisors, and
Kindisoft, a pretty interesting software company specialised in security for flash applications.
Khaldoon Tabaza, an old hand in Jordan's startup community, will remain in charge of Riyada, which will have $200 million of new funding through Abraaj.
Mr Tabaza has been a part of some of the region's best known startups
and funds, including Arabia Online (the first Arab dotcom), the
Ideavelopers tech fund, ABAN and the iPark incubator in Amman.
Notably, as our story mentions,
the newly cash-rich Riyada will provide what the Abraaj CEO calls
"patriotic capital," partnering with the entrepreneurship and SME
development programs of regional governments.
That is a very
smart move - governments across the region are realising that
bankrolling entrepreneurs is a no-brainer, but most lack is the VC
mindset (and skill set). If Abraaj / Riyada are clever, they can team
up with the big government funds, access pools of money, make lots of
money in the process, and maybe make the Middle East a better place to
be a smart entrepreneur.
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