The companies affiliated with A15, a company specialised in investing in startups, will reach a volume of business worth $150m by 2017, said the company’s CEO Fadi Antaki. A15 is also seeking to exit one of their affiliated companies in 2017, especially given that some of the companies have reached a high enough growth rate to be able to exit.
Antaki added that his company depends on three main axes for investing in start-ups. A15 relies on the “experience” of its staff in the field of start-ups and pioneering companies to help small companies and transfer the experience of the firm’s four main companies (Arpuplus, Connect Ads, LINK Development, and LDC) to new start-ups.
A15 also depends on its business partners, which benefit its investees. For example, A15 agreed with DELL to provide technological training to young workers among the company’s investees, as well as training the staff of A15’s ventures to enhance their skills.
There are main conditions that A15 takes into account before investing in a certain company. The investee should provide a feasible solution for a social problem and have a great deal of interdependence and integration among its team.
Antaki believes that entrepreneurship in Egypt has a promising future and is likely to grow strongly in 2017. According to Forbes magazine, the volume of investment injected in the top 20 start-ups in Egypt reached $24.2m during 2016, compared to $41.6m in UAE.
According to Antaki, venture capital has become a pillar of funding for start-ups, which relies on creativity. Venture capital’s global contribution in financing projects in 2016 reached about $100bn, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Index. Taiwan has about 250 start-ups with venture capital investments of about $5bn annually.
The Global Entrepreneurship Development Institute said that Egypt ranked 89th globally in the entrepreneurial sector, while Morocco ranked 78th, Lebanon 50th, United Arab Emirates 19th, Qatar 14th, and Israel came in the 36th globally.
