About Us
Sawari Ventures is a venture capital firm based in Cairo, investing in knowledge and innovation-based technologies across North Africa.
In our part of the world, everywhere you look, there are huge opportunities to be captured and entire industries ripe for transformation.
We believe the best way to tackle these transformations is to pair the best talent with smart capital. Our goal is to empower entrepreneurs in the region to create innovative solutions that will drive the region’s economies for years to come.
Our Investment Thesis
We focus our investments on growth and early-stage startups across industries, in sectors including consumer internet, fintech, edtech, healthtech, deeptech, and e-commerce and enabling infrastructure.
We provide a small allocation to seed stage investments and, through our investments in the Tunis and Cairo seed stage vehicles of Flat6Labs, further contribute to building and strengthening the region’s early-stage ecosystem.
How we operate and invest is driven by our core convictions:
Innovation
Our region has an abundance of talent that we are convinced can transform industries if given the opportunity, capital, and necessary support. Our deeptech investments are testament to the innovation that can and will grow out of this region.
Value Creation
We see ourselves as proactive investors who go beyond providing capital. We continuously strive to bring expertise, operational support, and value-add to the companies we work with, and in the process build successful, sustainable companies that capitalize on their opportunities.
Responsible Investment
We aim to create value not only to our portfolio and investors, but to the wider ecosystem and societies in which we operate. In support of this vision, we have established a tailored framework to effectively integrate ESG considerations into fund decision making. We are also raising awareness and building capacity in ESG matters both at the fund and portfolio level. In the process, we are looking to establish Sawari Ventures as the go-to VC fund for ESG & Impact integration in the region.
Sawari Ventures North Africa Fund I & Egypt Fund I
Our dual fund structure, with Netherlands-incorporated North Africa Fund I and Egypt-incorporated Egypt Fund I, allows us to bring together international capital from our DFI partners and domestic capital from local stakeholders. We believe that this combination of international funds and expertise with local knowledge and roots is critical, and demonstrates how far the local ecosystem has come.
Founded in 2010, with currently 70M USD AUM, to date, we have invested in 19 companies and 2 seed stage vehicles.