Fadi Ghandour the founder and Vice Chairman of delivery company Aramex has teamed up with World Bank’s International Finance Corporation to launch a new VC fund for North Africa and the Middle East.
According to sources, the fund will work with Ghandour’s Wamda Capital, and will offer between $1 million to $3 million in series A funding.
IFC will invest some $10 million to $15 million whhich is expected to raise $75 million by April.
Mr. Ghandour is not new to angel investing. He has invested in Maktoob which had an exit to Yahoo, Instabeat, a wearable tech startup and Souq.com, Middle East’s Amazon.
In an interview with 500 Startups, Ghandour said Middle East startups face similar problems he faced while starting up Aramex such as access to capital, markets, finding talent, legislation and ease of doing business. This fund will try to address some of the above.