Egypt's Most Active Investors: Here Are The Global, Regional, And Local Players Fueling the Country's Startup Ecosystem Egypt's investor landscape has a fair mix of local, regional, and international investors ploughing funds into the ecosystem.
By Ashok Raman
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Egypt boasts of over 160 venture capital (VC) firms and investors that are supporting its startup ecosystem– both local and international. These players have collectively participated in over 800 deals over the past five years, worth over US$2 billion.
Egypt's investor landscape has a fair mix of local, regional, and international investors ploughing funds into the ecosystem. Here, we introduce you to some of the most prominent investors, accelerators, and incubators that are funding the Egyptian startup ecosystem.
Egypt's startup ecosystem is part of the top three within the MENA VC landscape, due to the strong entrepreneurial culture found in Egypt, and a supportive environment supported by various stakeholders, including the government, international agencies, incubators, and venture capital firms.
The list of most active investors are mostly local investors, who have primarily participated in lower rounds requiring smaller funding amounts, such as in seed and pre-seed levels. Some of the larger funds are both local and regional players who participate in later rounds, which require larger funding amounts. The investors are a mix of both funds and incubators- examples include Flat6Labs, one of the prominent accelerators in the country, as well as Falak Startups, which is a government-run accelerator.
While the most active investors are local, the investor landscape has always been dominated by presence of more international investors, year-on-year since 2015. It is interesting to note that in the past six years, international firms (beyond the region) have financed more Egyptian startups than regional VC firms.
The nature of business is different between incubators and accelerators vs. venture capital firms, as incubators and accelerators will invariably have a large number of portfolio companies, while venture capital funds tend to participate in seed stage and growth stage funding.
For more insights on Egypt's entrepreneurial ecosystem, check out the report, Investing in Egypt's Startup Ecosystem, here.
This article was originally published on Lucidity Insights, a partner of Entrepreneur Middle East in developing special reports on the Middle East and Africa's tech and entrepreneurial ecosystems.
Related: 10 Graphs You Need To See To Understand Egypt's Startup Ecosystem
