Niche venture capital company Sadara has launched a fund focusing on a brand new start-up environment: Palestine.
Sadara was launched in 2011 by Palestinian-American Saed Nashef, a Palestinian-American who previously worked as a software engineer at Microsoft before setting up his own companies. Co-founded by Israeli-American Yadin Kaufmann, Sadara has already raised $30 million for its first fund.
Nashef aims to focus on early-stage Palestinian tech startups, largely in the technology sector. Palestine may not be the obvious choice for the next startup hub, but with backing from Cisco, the Google Foundation and the European Investment Fund, Sadara Ventures has financed six companies so far in the West Bank, the Palestinian territory long occupied by Israel.
“We’re likely to raise another fund in the months ahead that would be larger than the existing one,” said Kaufmann, adding that beyond the six firms backed so far, he and Nashef were looking at one or two others for the existing fund.
Nashef served as the Managing Director of financial services company Equiom Inc, proving expertise in planning and architecture. He has 14 years experience in the software and hi-tech industry, and used his expertise to co-found Sadara six years ago.
Sadara’s biggest success so far has been Freightos, an online marketplace for international shipping, which on March 29 raised a further $25 million from investors in a Series B funding round led by General Electric. Freightos is based in Hong Kong but has offices in both Jerusalem and Ramallah, where its chief technology officer Fareed Qaddoura manages around 70 R&D staff.
Its portfolio also includes Yamsafer and SoukTel, a company providing digital communications for businesses in environments without immediate access to internet.