Wamda Capital

Fadi Ghandour is executive chairman and the firm's centre of gravity. He co-founded Aramex and spent the first 30 years of his working life as its chief executive, building it into a leading emerging-market logistics company and the first Arab business to list on Nasdaq. He also founded and chairs Ruwwad for Development, a private-sector community engagement platform working in marginalised communities across the region. Fares Ghandour is a partner. Daniel dos Reis is investment director; he previously managed a Dubai government entity's early-stage venture fund and, from 2012 to 2015, set up and led the corporate venture arm of a publicly listed Saudi telecoms company, having started his career as a management consultant covering telecoms, media and technology. He holds a Diplom in business administration from the University of Hamburg. Varun Sharma is an investment associate who began his career in Standard Chartered's private wealth division in the UAE.

Wamda Capital's history runs through Fadi Ghandour's own. He launched Arab American Express, later Aramex, in 1982 and took it public on Nasdaq in 1997, the first Arab company to list on a US exchange. That same year he became a founding investor in Maktoob, one of the region's first direct angel investments; Yahoo's 2009 acquisition of Maktoob produced the exit that funded MENA Venture Investments, the region's first angel fund, which backed more than 110 companies over a 14-year life. Wamda itself was established in 2010, with the wamda.com media platform following in 2011. The institutional fund arrived in 2015: Wamda Capital Fund I, a $70 million vehicle anchored by the IFC with participation from Zain and other regional investors, mandated for Series A and later rounds across the Middle East, Africa and Turkey. Its exits include Careem, Mumzworld and Twiga. By 2019 Fund I was fully deployed and harvesting, and the firm shifted to Wamda Seed, an evergreen entity backed by Ghandour's personal capital investing seed to Series A across MENAPT. Wamda Seed has since backed more than 67 companies, among them Tabby, Eyewa and Hala.