Middle East Venture Capital - VC, Private Equity and Real Estate

Saffar Holding, an early-stage private equity investor in the Middle East, will exit its investment in regional financial portal Zawya in the next few weeks.

Back in October 2011 Saffar hired a London-based advisory firm, Arma Partners, to find acquirers and now The National is reporting that a multimillion-dollar sale of Zawya is expected to be finalized next month. Thomson Reuters, Emap and Pearson have expressed interest in acquiring the website.

(As DubaiBeat reported earlier, founders of Zawya Ihsan Jawad, Zaid Jawad and Husain Makiya managed Zawya for ten years and then left last year to launch HBT ventures).

Saffar Capital is listed in the Middle East Investors Directory with the code PI15

Today The Next Web has an article about Laimoon, a new job site in the Middle East which is the first venture launched by HBT Ventures.

HBT Ventures (Honeybee Tech Ventures) is a newly established investment company based in Dubai with an exclusive focus on consumer internet ventures across the Middle East. The company will focus on identifying, developing and launching high impact online ventures with a wide reach to consumers in the region. (Let's wait for their website to launch on hbtventures.com which is currently under construction)

The partners in the firm are Ihsan Jawad, Zaid Jawad and Husain Makiya the co-foudners of Zawya (a Middle East business portal). They founded and run Zawya for a good ten years and then left it last year. The other partner in the firm is Abdulrahman Tarabzouni who is the regional manager of Emerging Arabia at Google.

We wish them the best of luck!

To see a list of investors from the Middle East check our Middle East Investors Directory

Twofour54, the Abu Dhabi media firm, has announced new venture capital investment deals with two online games companies, Tahadi Games and Jawaker worth $2.5 million.

Tahadi is established in 2008 and aims to be the region's leading online games publisher for client and browser based massive multiplayer online (MMO) games. Jawaker is a multiplayer card gaming website developed especially for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and is launched in April of 2009.

To see a list of Abu Dhabi investors similar to Twofour54, check our Middle East Investors Directory

More details follows

The only thing as hot as launching a group buying website in the Middle East: launching a startup incubator / seed fund.

Tenmou, which calls itself a "business angels' company" and had a soft launch a couple of months ago, just announced its official launch with an initial start up capital of $2.7 million.

Tenmou joins a relatively long (and young) list of incubators and seed funds from the region like Oasis500, Seeqnce and SeedStartup. We sincerely hope they end up in a better place than similar firms like Intilaq, a business incubator launched by Bayt.com, which died very early; very quietly.

More details about Tenmou follows:

Continue reading " Another startup incubator for the Middle East - now in Bahrain" »

Intel Corporation, through its standalone business entity Intel Mobile Communications, announced that it has acquired most of the assets of SySDSoft, a privately held software company based in Cairo and hired approximately 100 of the company’s electrical engineers and computer scientists.

SySDSoft designs state-of-the-art IP solutions in the software stack and physical layer domain, and RF/analog circuits embedded in mobile platforms.

Their full press release follows

Continue reading "Intel Acquires Egypt-based SySDSoft" »