Who will fund and nurture the fast-growing technology businesses of the future in the Middle East, North Africa and other markets in which support is in short supply? Disrupt.com, an investment group based in the United Arab Emirates, says it is ready to step into the breach. It is today unveiling a $100 million commitment to fund technology ventures in markets worldwide.
Disrupt.com, which describes itself as a “venture builder”, is the brainchild of three Pakistani founders, Aaqib Gadit, Uzair Gadit and Umair Gadit. Two brothers and a cousin, the three family members grew up together and went on to build a number of businesses – including the cloud hosting platform Cloudways, which they sold to Digital Ocean in 2022 for $350 million. The launch of Disrupt.com enables them to reinvest some of those proceeds.
“Cloudways was the largest exit in Pakistan’s technology sector to date, but we need many more success stories to celebrate. For now, 80% of all technology sector unicorns have been based in the US, but there are entrepreneurs in many other markets with good ideas.”
“There are people in this region who have incredible passion and huge intellectual capabilities, but they don’t have access to investment support, or to knowledge capital. They need more help as they work to build their ideas into world-class products and start to sell those products to the world.”
Disrupt.com’s founders believe there is no one-size-fits-all approach to venture investment. They’re open to three different types of investment, which they describe as “build, co-build and invest”. In practice, the firm will seek to build its own start-ups from scratch, to co-build new ventures alongside other founders, and to make strategic investments in start-ups and other venture capital funds. The founders are at pains to emphasise that many businesses will need more than just an injection of capital – particularly ventures that it supports on a co-build basis. Disrupt.com will therefore provide access to around 650 professionals it has identified as in a strong position to offer practical advice and experience; it also offers support with a range of back-office functions. “Our network brings the experience of all the mistakes we’ve made ourselves in the past,” Aaqib Gadit adds.
Disrupt.com’s sweet spot will be businesses ranging from pre-seed to Series A in their funding journey. It is focused on four technology sub-sectors in particular – cybersecurity, Web3.0, automotive technology and retail innovation – though it sees artificial intelligence as a theme that cuts across each of these areas. While Disrupt.com is launching publicly today, it has already made a number of investments, deploying around $40 million to date. Examples include ZigChain, a Web3.0 platform that has more than 500,000 users, PureSquare, a cybersecurity venture, and Squatwolf, a UAE-based fitness apparel brand. It is also a strategic investor in AI-focused startups including organisational transformation platform Agentnoon and climate action scaling tool Ahya.
Anam Khalid and Wajdan Gul, co-founders of Squatwolf, point to the advantage of working with experienced founders.
“With Disrupt, you get founder-friendly partners because they’re founders themselves. They understand our challenges and opportunities in a way traditional investors simply cannot.”
Bartolome Bordallo, co-founder and CEO of ZigChain, highlights scale-up support as a key feature of Disrupt.com’s proposition.
“They’ve helped us scale from a few early adopters to managing hundreds of millions in assets and launching our own blockchain.”
While Disrupt.com is prepared to fund businesses in markets worldwide, its focus on MENA and other underserved markets is particularly important at a time when support for founders in these geographies appears to be declining. MENA venture capital investment fell 29% to just under $2 billion last year according to data from Magnitt. Saudi Arabian startups saw a 44% funding while investments in early-stage businesses in the UAE fell 8%.
