The Creative Dock Group (CDG), Europe’s leading corporate venture builder, has acquired FoundersLane and has created the largest independent corporate venture builder in the world. Under this acquisition, the Group launched FoundersLane Egypt to manage the company’s operations inside Egypt during the coming period.
Egyptian entrepreneur Mohamed Aboulnaga was named chairperson of FoundersLane Egypt, and Anas Rabah as managing director. With the acquisition, the firm plans to invest over €100m in the region over the next five years.
Both Creative Dock and FoundersLane design, build, and scale digital businesses and products across different industries and verticals. Over the last decade, they have launched more than 100 ventures around the world for European and MENA region clients.
The group’s total annualized turnover will exceed €100m within two years, with an expected annual growth rate of over 50%. By the end of this year, CDG will employ more than 600 employees, working from seven places with key offices in Zurich, Prague, Berlin, Vienna, and Riyadh.
Martin Pejsa, Founder and CEO of the CDG, said in a press release issued, that the new entity aims to build ventures capable of generating profits and making a continuous positive impact on people’s lives, and build projects and products for our customers that will be used by one billion people around the world over the next five years.
Felix Stearitz, Co-founder and CEO of FoundersLane and a board member of the CDG, said that the field of building bold facilities for companies is growing, and it is a gold coin in the time of inflation we are living in now, and this partnership will have an effective impact in shaping the market, causing a qualitative leap in the field of building bold corporate establishments.
Bassam Al-Wabel, a partner at FoundersLane, explained that the corporate venture building model is a new and rapidly growing trend in the region, and this model is capable of making a qualitative shift in the way companies and large facilities operate as we know it today, as it accelerates the adoption of these entities of digital technologies and keeping pace with development plans and digital economic transformation in the Middle East and North Africa region.
With this acquisition, the CDG strengthens its presence in the Middle East and North Africa, as the group plans to invest more than €100m in the region over the next five years, with expectations of achieving a return on investment of €100m during the next twelve months, with an annual growth rate of more than 50%, according to the statement.
Aboulnaga said that the presence of a large entity such as the CDG and FoundersLane in the Egyptian market will greatly contribute to achieving a qualitative leap in the nature of the work of emerging companies.
He pointed out that Egypt is one of the largest markets around the world in terms of growth, which prompted the Egyptian political leadership to direct the various sectors of the country to harness all means of support for emerging companies.
“We seek to attract the largest percentage of the volume of investments allocated to the Middle East,” he added.
