Flat6Labs’ Anava Seed Fund closes at $10M
Interested in more data on startup investments? Access our data on 7,490+ startup funding rounds
The regional seed and early-stage VC Flat6Labs, announced today the second close of its Tunisia-based Anava Seed Fund (ASF) at $10M from its previous $3M cap, expanding its impact through world-class startup programs across the North African markets. This is following a recent second close of Egypt-based Flat6Labs Accelerator Company fund (FAC) to $13M to support Egyptian early-stage startups.
Launched in 2017, the Anava Seed Fund in partnership with the Tunisian American Enterprise Fund, BIAT Bank, and Meninx Holding, set forth to invest in 75 Tunisian early-stage startups over a five-year period. This Seed Fund, now most recently backed by Egypt-based Sawari Ventures via a $1.6M investment, is one of many regional efforts by Flat6Labs to build the nascent startup ecosystem in MENA. To date, the early-stage VC has trained more than 440 entrepreneurs and invested in 130 startups with a total amount of $10.5M through its Cairo and Tunis Seed funds.
Funding in Early-Stage startups has been on a decline across geographies in MENAPT since 2019. As most recently recorded in our August 2021 Venture Investment Dashboard, Early-Stage rounds (below $500K) in MENA fell by 59% YoY despite MENA’s 35% YoY increase of capital raised in 2021 YTD. Despite this backward current, Flat6Labs was the top investor in Early-Stage startups across MENA With 25 Early-Stage deals closed in 2021 YTD.
During the last 4 years, the Anava Seed Fund successfully invested in over 50 startups in Tunisia between Seed, follow-on, and Pre-Series A rounds, across multiple sectors varying from Fintech, Delivery Services, and Retail-Tech, to Education, Health-tech, and Aeronautics. Wael Amin, Managing Partner at Sawari Ventures highlighted “We are very proud of our investment in the Anava Seed Fund as we have closely followed their progress and are more than convinced that Tunisia has talented entrepreneurs working on promising start-ups” said.
Flat6Labs startups in North Africa have gone on to raise over $37 million in follow-on funding, and Tunis-based startups have succeeded in creating more than 500 paying jobs, 61% of which are occupied by female talents. Ramez El-Serafy, CEO at Flat6Labs concluded “We’re very excited about our latest second close for the Tunisia-based Anava Seed Fund, we believe that the North African markets hold untapped potential and unique business opportunities, and I’m happy to see that more and more investors are sharing our enthusiasm towards this rapidly growing market by increasing their commitments in both FAC Egypt Fund and Anava Seed Fund. We look forward to expanding our impact even further in North Africa with the support of our investors and partners.”
Want to grasp this startup landscape? Browse 2,400+ Early-Stage startups in Emerging Venture Markets