Cairo Angels, the Middle East and Africa’s leading network of business angels, has announced the first close of the Cairo Angels Syndicate Fund (CASF), a Delaware-based angel fund.
CASF will be investing ticket sizes of $100,000 – $250,000 on average across the Middle East and Africa with a particular focus on Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa.
Apart from the investment made by the fund, the fund negotiates additional coinvestment rights for its LPs on a deal-by-deal basis, allowing the funds investors to double down on opportunities.
The fund is ready to deploy capital and is already in negotiations with several start-ups that fit within the fund’s investment thesis, which targets sector-agnostic and early-stage scalable start-ups that have strong sector experience and technical teams.
“This fund is a natural step in the evolution of the Cairo Angels,” said Aly El Shalakany, CEO of CASF. “It couples our already strong deal sourcing platform with a faster and more rigorous due diligence and capital deployment capability further down the value chain. This is the new missing middle.”
In order to democratize access to this exciting asset class, CASF intentionally focused fundraising for first close on individual investors and family offices. The only exception was an institutional investor, who have provided their soft commitment to invest and support the fund and will be formally be joining in Q1 of next year.
CASF will now focus on achieving the final close and reaching its funding target of $5 million. The fund is now in advanced discussions
with institutional investors that can add value to the regional ecosystem and support the fund in its mission.
“The pace and quality of opportunities coming through the pipeline, has far exceeded our expectations. Couple that with the level of startup M&A activity seen in the market, and we have cause for great optimism.” commented Minoush Abdelmeguid, Board Member of CASF.
