How this pharmacist-turned-VC is piping money from the Middle East to Southeast Asian startups

Ahmed Shabana, founder or Parkpine Capital, prefers to keep it casual. Photo Credit: Ahmed Shabana.

Ahmed Shabana can spot an opportunity. In 2006, while still in university in Cairo, he took his family’s pharma business online. Agzakhana became the first Egyptian online drugstore to use social media to reach customers. It delivered medicines across the Middle East.

In 2013, while honeymooning in Bali, he sensed a new opportunity. With its positive economic outlook, unruffled by uncertainties elsewhere, Southeast Asia was booming. Shabana could see internet businesses beginning to make an impact. He wanted to take part in that change and set the wheels in motion.

There’s an appetite to get out of traditional investment sectors, like oil.

“How intensely people were immersing themselves in messaging apps, and later, transportation apps like Go-Jek, made me believe in the growth opportunities for tech startups in the region,” Shabana recalls.

Fast forward to now. After Vodafone took a 22 percent stake in Agzakhana, he left the business under the management of his family and moved to the US. He topped up his pharmacology degree with an MBA and set up Parkpine Captial.

The former pharmacist, now 31 years old, is launching a US$50 million VC fund. It targets startups in the US and emerging markets like Southeast Asia, linking capital from the Middle East with opportunities abroad.

The political situation in Egypt has been tense, and the economic outlook bleak. This made fund-raising easier for Shabana. “A lot of investor money from the Middle East is going out of the region. And there’s an appetite to get out of traditional investment sectors, like oil.”

The fund plans to make relatively large seed investments of up to US$2 million. It’s particularly interested in consumer health, logistics, and big data.

The majority of Parkpine’s first US$50 million fund is closed, according to Shabana. While most contributors to the fund are from the Middle East, some individuals from the US also put in cash.

Cairo at night. Photo credit: Dennis Jarvis.

Part VC, part venture builder

Parkpine Capital works with a hybrid model. It’s part venture builder, part VC.

Shabana plans to put 50 percent of the funds Parkpine raises into companies the firm builds itself. “The rest goes into companies that complement our ventures,” he says.

Putting people in the same room