EVM Investor Analysis: Portfolio Exits 

Every investor in the world of venture capital wants a successful exit. For investors, it is about getting the best return on investment. Even if a startup fails to achieve what we can term a “successful” exit, exiting at the right time can play a role in cutting back losses for the founders as well as the investors. Typically there’s a lot that needs to be considered before a startup can even think about opting for an exit strategy. Market conditions, the company’s finances, and the time spent by a startup in its particular industry. The latter can vary across different industries, FinTech startups in the Emerging Venture Markets took an average of nine years to exit until 2019 and over the last few years, the mean years to exit has reduced to five. E-commerce and Transport and Logistics follow an almost similar trajectory while SaaS startups take longer with median years to exit in 2022 coming up to 7.5 years.

All things considered, the objective of investors in the VC space is more about the end result than the money that is going into a startup. A lot of startups fail in exiting the way they initially intended to, some do score a successful exit, very few of them being public exits as in the case of UAE’s Anghami and Swvl, KSA’s Jahez, and Egypt’s Fawry backed by the likes of Endeavor Catalyst, Arzan VC, Algebra Ventures, and Middle East Venture Partners. Startups are a high-risk, high-reward business, something the investors are well aware of. Investors invest money and hope for a sizable return. In case of some outliers, the investment can be returned at the original or more value, as in the case of Careem, and Peak Games in Turkey. If we talk about the landmark acquisition for the Arab world, Souq's acquisition by tech giant Amazon, the deal itself may not be the big exit that investors would have hoped for but it was a turning point for E-commerce in the Middle East. The company was valued at over $2Bn after its $275M Series D round and was acquired by Amazon in a $580M deal.

Here is a look at the investors that have seen the most exits in the MEAPT region.

500 Global and Flat6Labs have made the most investments in startups based in the Emerging Venture Markets. The former has 242 startups in the region in its portfolio and has seen 17 exits since its inception in 2010. 500 Gloabl’s portfolio company, Paymennt.com was acquired last year. The startup also is backed by another VC that has notable exits in its startup portfolio, Arzan VC. Founded in 2013, the firm has backed 38 startups in the MENA region with 7 startups seeing an exit. Arzan VC-backed startup POSRocket, based in Jordan, was acquired by KSA’s Foodics in a much talked about deal. MUNCH:ON was among the series of acquisitions that Careem made in 2022. The startup invested to startup exit percentage for the VC firm since its inception is 18%. BECO Capital is among the investors that have seen the most lucrative returns being one of the investors in Careem, which was acquired by Uber in a $3.1Bn deal (considerably higher than its reported valuation at the time), and Swvl, the ride-hailing startup that went public on NASDAQ in 2022.

The investors in the Sub-Saharan African region have seen fewer exits as opposed to the peer MENA region. Acumen, the VC firm based in the USA has backed a number of African startups, including PEG Africa, the leading energy startup in the continent. PEG Africa was famously acquired by Bboxx, a startup in the UK, in 2022. In Turkey, Endeavor Catalyst ranks at the top with the most startup exits. Peak Games, one of Endeavor’s portfolio companies and the Turkish gaming company that is known for creating Candy Crush-style games, was acquired by Zynga, an American developer of games, in a deal of $1.8Bn after Peak Games was valued close to $100M post its Series C round. The Pakistani VC ecosystem is fairly nascent and is yet to see a major M&A breakthrough for its investors. However, Sarmayacar is among the investors that have seen its portfolio startup getting acquired with TruckSher’s acquisition by MEGA round raiser TruKKer.