Middle East Venture Partners, one of the leading VC firms of the region, has sunset its first fund, Middle East Venture Fund I (MEVF I), with a 2.5x cash-on-cash return, the firm announced on Tuesday. The fund which had vintage year 2011 was sunset in 2023. For the same period, S&P 500 returns were arond 3.6x.
MEVF I was the first fund in the Middle East & North Africa, with GP-LP structure, according to an announcement by MEVP. It was a $10 million fund and made seed investments in companies across the region, with cheque sizes between $200,000 to $1 million.
Sharing the details, MEVP noted that the portfolio companies of the fund generated a little over $200 million in investments and created over 1,000 direct jobs.
In its announcement, the firm highlighted that 29 percent of the companies backed by the fund were written off. Five portfolio companies, including Instabug and Lamsa, delivered returns in the range of 1 to 3x; two of them, including The Luxury Closet and TreasuryXpress generated returns of 3 to 7x. The top performers for the fund were Anghami, Hyperpay and Shahiya, with returns within 7 to 10x range.
Shahiya was previously reported as a 6x cash-on-cash exit by MEVP in another document. The disparity may arise from distinctions between gross and net returns. The documents do not specify whether they represent gross or net returns.
What’s notable is that many of the companies from MEVF I have neither been acquired nor listed on public markets, so most of the liquidity apparently has come from the secondary sale of shares in its portfolio companies.
MEVF I had made investments in companies operating in fintech, SaaS, e-commerce, gaming, media, and streaming sectors, across Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi.
