• Bayzat

  Led · Series C · Dec 2022

  Bayzat is an employee benefits platform that automates and enhances insurance, payroll, and HR administration via a SaaS product. Founded in 2013 and based in Dubai, UAE, the company positions itself as a pioneer in InsureTech, HR and payroll automation. Bayzat says it is the category leader in the UAE and serves 127,000+ employees. Over the past three years the company has recorded more than 100% annual growth and has grown its workforce to almost 350 employees across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the wider region. The company plans to use new funding to expand its customer base across the Middle East with a particular focus on Saudi Arabia. The product and go-to-market focus centers on improving employee experience and automating HR workflows for businesses. Bayzat, founded in 2013 and headquartered in Dubai, offers a free platform to help SMEs manage and automate HR administration, payroll and health insurance. The company has expanded its product set this year to include fintech offerings such as EarlyPay. Bayzat counts customers including DMCC, The Luxury Closet and Deliveroo. Since the start of 2019 the company reports new monthly bookings have increased tenfold. Bayzat plans to use the new funding to invest in its technology and customer experience and to drive exponential growth in 2020. Bayzat provides insurance and HR solutions across the MENA region and operates an HR automation platform called Bayzat Benefits. Launched in 2015 by Talal Bayaa and Brian Habibi, the company extracts employee data (from passports and Emirates IDs) directly from scanned images. Bayzat has added payroll functionality to store and configure salary and commission information automatically for employees. The startup intends to use new funding to accelerate growth and product development in 2018. In May 2017 Bayzat secured additional capital to support its product roadmap and expansion within the region. Bayzat operates the Bayzat Benefits™ platform to help individuals and companies compare, buy and use health insurance while streamlining policy placement. Its HRMS automates HR administration, including employee record management, leave management and OCR-based extraction of scanned documents. The company reports connecting over 12,000 individuals to health insurance and receiving over 50,000 monthly visits to compare plans. Bayzat says it has achieved over 350% annual revenue growth following Dubai’s gradual implementation of mandatory health insurance. Headcount expanded from 12 to over 50 employees in 2017 to support its growing database and product set. With insurance solutions established, Bayzat is focused on further developing its HRMS and leave-management features to reduce manual HR work.

• MaxAB

  Participated · Series B · Oct 2022

  MaxAB operates a B2B e-commerce and distribution platform that connects suppliers with traditional grocery retailers across Egypt and Morocco. Since launching in 2018, it has connected suppliers with over 150,000 unique traditional retailers and delivered more than 2.5 million orders. The company focuses on groceries as its core product and has built an asset-heavy distribution operation. MaxAB has expanded into Morocco (now ~10% of its business) and plans to enter Saudi Arabia by the end of 2023. It has also developed fintech offerings for merchants, including a bill-aggregation product that has grown 5x in transaction value year-to-date and a newly launched working capital product. The company has raised multiple rounds (including a $55M Series A last year) and has raised over $100M in total; management says the recent raise was to accelerate opportunities rather than to address a cash shortfall. MaxAB operates a tech-enabled B2B e-commerce marketplace that lets store owners purchase goods, request delivery and logistics, and access customer support. The company was founded in 2018 by Belal El-Megharbel and Mohamed Ben Halim and until recently operated in Egypt. MaxAB plans to expand across the Middle East and North Africa, launch new product offerings and grow its team. Financially, the company completed a $40M Series A tranche and has taken a $15M Series A extension, bringing the total Series A to $55M. MaxAB announced the acquisition of Morocco-based WaystoCap (amount undisclosed) as its first step toward regional scale into the Maghreb. The combined platforms will serve more than 70,000 retailers; WaystoCap alone had grown to a network of over 8,000 Moroccan retailers and at one point processed over $3M in transactions per quarter. MaxAB operates a B2B e-commerce platform that manages procurement, delivery and logistics for traditional food and grocery retailers in Egypt; store owners can purchase goods, request delivery and access customer support through the app. The company owns and operates its own warehouses and fleet, buying and revamping warehouses and using internal technology to manage inventory flow. MaxAB says it services more than 55,000 merchants, delivers over 2,000 unique products and has grown staff to about 1,600 people. Founded in November 2018 and based in Cairo, the team has been launching into a new city roughly every month this year. The startup plans to expand its physical footprint across MENA, hire more talent, scale new supply-chain verticals and roll out embedded finance solutions to offer credit and capital financing via banking and non-banking partners. MaxAB reports improved unit economics during the COVID-19 pandemic as it consolidates its position in the market. MaxAB built a digital platform with apps for store owners, a logistics app for its delivery fleet, and a customer support app to manage procurement and delivery of grocery products. The company operates a large warehouse, a fleet of 60 trucks, and reports a staff of 270 and 9,000 retailers on its app. MaxAB generates revenue from margins on the buy-to-sell price of products and expects scale to improve margins toward profitability. Using the new funding, it plans to expand operations to several additional cities in Egypt and grow its tech team. The startup also aims to offer working-capital financing and data-analytics services to its retail clients. MaxAB was founded in 2018 and is led by CEO Belal El-Megharbel, who co-founded the company with Mohamed Ben Halim.

• NymCard

  Led · Equity · Jun 2022

  NymCard is a Dubai-based provider of an embedded finance platform operating across 10+ countries in the MENA region. The company offers the nCore platform, a MENA-based issuing processor that fully owns its processing and switching technology rather than licensing it. nCore is built on modular APIs and enables businesses to manage card issuance, transaction processing, lending infrastructure and real-time payments within an integrated finance stack. NymCard serves banks, enterprises, fintechs and telecom providers across three core verticals: Card Issuing & Processing, Embedded Lending, and Money Movement. In March 2025 the company raised $33M in a Series B round to support expansion. Led by founder and CEO Omar Onsi, NymCard intends to use the funds to consolidate its presence across its 10+ MENA markets and strengthen its payment infrastructure solutions. NymCard provides banking-as-a-service infrastructure to remove operational friction for fintechs and startups to issue their own payment cards. The company says it can cut the usual eight-month timescale to launch payment services by six months. NymCard supports multiple emerging use cases including gig economy, multi-currency, money transfers, corporate expense cards, on-demand delivery, BNPL offerings, and youth banking applications. It operates across Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Riyadh, Cairo, and Karachi. Founded in 2018, the firm is positioning to expand its product offering to serve a growing embedded finance market. CEO Omar Onsi framed the raise as a step toward evolving NymCard’s capabilities to better serve client needs in the region. NymCard provides end-to-end card issuing and processing solutions for financial institutions, banks, and fintechs, digitizing the payment card experience and reducing program costs. Its platform is designed to launch customer-focused card propositions in fewer than eight weeks. The company built its tech stack from the ground up to achieve speed and agility compared with legacy players. NymCard has served regional banks and fintechs, including a client described as the fastest-growing issuer in Iraq and the region’s first neo bank. Management says the cash-to-card shift is driving demand across banks, NBFIs, and startups, and that its technology helps clients navigate the regulatory and technical complexity of card programs. The Series A will support NymCard’s growth across the MENA region.

• Yalla Fel Sekka

  Led · Series A · Feb 2022

  Yalla Fel Sekka (YFS) operates an on-demand B2B2C logistics and delivery platform that builds a distributed network of dark stores and micro-warehouses to enable near-instant deliveries for retailers. The platform integrates with clients' backends, manages fleets and dark-store/micro-warehouse inventory, and serves verticals including groceries, pharmacies and e-commerce. YFS reports a fleet of 1,000 active drivers (with more than 3,000 on a waitlist), completes about 10,000 orders daily, and has completed two million deliveries across five Egyptian cities. Its gross merchandise volume is growing roughly 20% month-over-month, customer retention is above 90%, and the company is gross-margin positive. Existing clients include Spinneys, Vezeeta, Jumia and Noon, and YFS plans to expand its addressable market to SMEs. The company aims to scale across cities in Egypt and the MENA region and to build 20–40 dark stores in the coming year.

• SkyCell

  Participated · Series C · Oct 2021

  SkyCell develops smart hardware and software for pharmaceutical cold-chain logistics, including insulated "smart containers" and a logistics platform called SkyMind. Its containers use machine learning and sensors to maintain strict temperatures, humidity levels, and vibration control, and the company has begun selling components such as its smart thermometer. SkyCell says its containers are on average about half as heavy as competitors’, which it equates to roughly 50% less CO2 from air transport. The company reports roughly 50% annual growth and moves about $2.5 billion worth of pharmaceutical products and ingredients per month. Customers include pharmaceutical companies and a large network of cargo partners. SkyCell plans to use the new funding to double down on work with companies operating in Asia and the U.S. SkyCell designs and manufactures insulated, “smart” transport containers for temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals, underpinned by roughly 140 patents. Its latest container version can maintain conditions for up to 180 hours and is paired with an analytics platform that provides recurring revenue and shipment monitoring. The company says it now transports $1.5 billion of pharmaceutical products each month (finished and raw materials), representing hundreds of millions of doses. After pandemic disruptions, SkyCell reports a return to a 40–50% growth rate. The firm is focused on sustainability, aiming to transition to a CO2-neutral supply chain and reduce industry waste tied to disposable solutions. SkyCell is 10 years old and is choosing to remain focused on pharmaceuticals rather than diversify into other temperature-sensitive markets like food. SkyCell designs and manufactures self-charging hybrid containers that maintain stable temperature conditions, deflect shock, and protect temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals on long journeys. Its containers include embedded IoT sensors and shipment monitoring software that provide worldwide tracking and near-real-time quality oversight. The startup positions its product to reduce risk in transporting biologics and other temperature-sensitive drugs. Following an investment by Lazard Asset Management, SkyCell says it is financially equipped to accelerate innovation and expand its global reach. The company emphasizes growth ambition as a global leader in temperature-controlled container solutions and a trusted partner to pharmaceutical companies worldwide. SkyCell develops smart containers and a SaaS solution (SECURE) to enable safe, secure, and sustainable transportation of temperature‑sensitive pharmaceuticals. Its hardware is designed to predict, reduce, and control risks associated with cold‑chain logistics while the SECURE platform provides end‑to‑end shipment oversight and automated approval capabilities. The company has expanded its global service footprint with new centers in locations including San Francisco, Philadelphia, Seoul, Rome, Toronto, Tokyo, and Ireland. SkyCell significantly increased headcount (45% growth since its previous funding round in April 2020) and is focused on converting a growing pipeline of global pharma and biotech clients. The firm plans to use new funding to grow sales teams, further differentiate its hardware and SaaS offerings, and improve client experience to become a preferred distribution solution for the cold chain. SkyCell builds insulated, instrumented "smart containers" and a software platform to maintain strict temperature, humidity and vibration conditions for pharmaceuticals in transit. Its containers withstand temperatures from -35°C to 60°C and the hardware and software are covered by about 100 patents. The company operates a logistics network using some 22,000 air freight pallets and says its failure rate is under 0.1% while cutting CO2 emissions on a typical shipment by almost half. SkyCell works with eight of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies and is in validation trials with another seven. The company was founded in 2012 in Switzerland and counts customers involved in COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccine development among its clients. New capital will be used to expand in the U.S. and Asia and to double its fleet to become the largest pharmaceutical-transportation company globally.

No current team members are available.