UAE Shorooq Partners, early-stage venture capital firm investing to invest 150 million USD in Web3. It has launched a seed stage-focused fund, Bedaya Fund II. Bedaya FundII of 150 million USD is a continuation of the same strategy Shorooq Partners has been executing since its inception, as the firm is doubling down on the earliest stages of the startup founders’ journey. .
Bedaya Fund II will primarily focus on the pre-seed, seed, pre-series A, and series A stage startups in fintech, software, platform verticals, and digital assets. Shorooq Partners has recently been making strides as the first mover in the MENAP region through its Web 3.0 thesis. Shorooq Partners recently led the pre-seed round of Nuqtah, the first NFT born out of KSA.
“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,” stated Shane Shin, a founding partner at Shorooq Partners.
With the Bedaya Fund II having already started deploying, announcements of the first investments are soon to be made public. The fund currently boasts an exceptionally strong list of investors from the world’s top-tier sovereign wealth funds, corporates, institutions, and family offices. The newest investor groups include DisruptAD which is ADQ’s venture platform, Dubai Future District Fund, Bupa Insurance, among others.
The firm has made over 80 investments in over 50 companies that currently have a gross equity value of $1.5 billion. These companies have created more than 5,000 jobs, and include names such as Pure Harvest Smart Farms, TruKKer, Capiter, Lean Technologies, Sarwa, Lendo, NymCard, Breadfast, Airlift, Mozn, Aumet, and more.
The continuous increase in interest from regional and international institutional investors to explore merger and acquisition opportunities in the region and to tap into emerging market startups as a path of differentiation and a mechanism to generate higher returns is creating a stronger market for exits.
“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, added Mahmoud Adi, a founding partner at Shorooq Partners.