The Nuwa Capital podcast

In the second episode of 'Unplugged,' we get up close and personal with Abdullah Mutawi of Taylor Wessing. Abdullah is English-qualified lawyer with a knack for seed and early-stage investments.

Dubbed as 'one of the MENA region's top corporate lawyers with deep ties in technology, media, and communications,' he also wears the hat of cofounder and chairman at Dubai Angels Investors.

Ever wondered why someone with such a corporate flair was once drawn to criminal law? Abdullah spills the beans on that and more. He takes us on a journey through the evolution of deal-making, highlighting the ebb and flow of regulations, market dynamics, and investment strategies.

Welcome to Unplugged, our fireside chat series, where we host casual conversations with some of the region's boldest and brightest game changers.

In our first recorded episode, Nuwa Capital's Stephanie Nour Prince chats with Mustafa Koita, founder of Koita Milk. In 2016, Mustafa turned frustration into inspiration when he launched Koita Milk. He wanted to offer his children, Serena, Danyal, and Sophia, a better option when it came to organic and fresh foods, especially Milk. And so started a journey of research, travel, strategizing a cross-country operation - and of course, building the brand we've all come to know.

In our chat with him, Mustafa takes us through everything Koita, from impetus, to making the choice to bootstrap, and legacy.

In Episode 21 of our podcast, I sat with Nadine Benchaffai of Fab Food co, Tortilla Mexican Grills (UK), Taqado Mexican Kitchen - and many other much-loved homegrown brands. Nadine explains the intricacies of (and the required mindset for) building successful food brands in markets with fast-changing consumer behaviors. We also discuss where the region stands in terms of future-proofing food and building sustainable food systems, as well as why our markets could stand to innovate on a global scale.

Before moving over to the investing side, Arzan.vc's Laith Zraikat was the cofounder of Jeeran.com along along with Omar Koudsi. Jeeran, founded in 2000, was one of MENA's earliest and at some stage most trafficked and valuable digital businesses in the region. The company started out as a free hosting platform and eventually evolved into a regional blogging platform and then after an additional pivot, into a reviews site which ultimately proved to be unsuccessful.

I met Laith Zraikat early in my career in 2008. At the time, I was an Associate at Accelerator Technology Holdings - the pre-cursor to Silicon Badia a regional VC. Jeeran was one of the earliest companies I got exposed to as a VC and I had, for a brief period, the privilege of working with one of the leading businesses in the region and learning from both founders on scaling a business.

I had the opportunity to catch up with Laith on the history of Jeeran, its development from an idea into a regional powerhouse and then its ultimate unraveling. Laith and I go over the many lessons learned from the Jeeran journey that serve as a cautionary tale to both founders and VCs.

- Khaled Talhouni

There is a clear mismatch between the demands of the modern day traveler and the available supply of apartments. As a corporate traveler, Aahan Bhojani sought the comfort of a homely apartment with the conveniences of a hotel, something that proved difficult to find. A year later, Aahan and his team had brought to market the first set of Silkhaus branded units. 

In this episode, Aahan takes us through how his vision evolved throughout Silkhaus’ first year in operations and how understanding the needs of all his stakeholders created new potential for the business, enabled by instilling agility in his team and creating a company culture built for growth.

Art and Web 3.0 are two spaces where community is a key driver for growth. And through both, we have also seen the meaning of 'ownership' evolve. While further digging into the Web 3.0 space earlier this year, we felt the need to explore the unfolding of NFTs from a creator's perspective, so we reached out to Kristel Bechara, an award-winning contemporary artist whose work has been displayed globally. Kristel was one of the first artists to create NFT art in the Middle East, and has developed Arts DAO's debut NFT drop, dubbed "The Ethernal Gates".

In this episode, we take a bit of a different angle and dig into how NFTs as a medium for art could offer more legitimacy online for artists. Kristel discusses her path to building her business as an artist, how she shaped her view on NFTs, as well as how the latter have helped evolve the meaning of ownership.

Introducing our #canceled series:

Every Friday afternoon, we set up in our meeting room and discuss market developments, hot topics - give or take a few tangents - to wind down and conclude the week. Totally unscripted, and very, very lightly edited.

Ep. 1 features Khaled Talhouni, Stephanie Nour Prince, Nitin Reen, Arnav Danthi, Ghassan Noursi and special guest Mikail Malik.

Ep. 1 was recorded on May 13.

Traditionally, startups have had to face large delays prior to launch due to the need to build infrastructure and core back-end functionalities in-house, such as the acceptance of payments. This takes up valuable resources, and shrinks the amount of time developers have to build the startup’s core product/service.

Realizing this issue is faced by every startup and can be commoditized, many infrastructure-as-a-service / API-first startups emerged, enabling startups to outsource these core functionalities and add them via third-party integrations, making their path to market faster and easier.

However, as startups today have increased their dependence on these third-party services, they face some friction. This has led to a second wave of infrastructure-led startups, like MoneyHash, a Nuwa portfolio company.

For episode 17 of our podcast, we chatted with Nader Abdelrazik, cofounder of MoneyHash. We dug into the MoneyHash culture, the challenges faced by regional startups with payments and how MoneyHash platform will help solve them.

The tech ecosystem across MENA is young but rapidly evolving. As recently as a few years ago, startups were restricted to fundraise from limited sources of capital, predominantly from a handful of VCs or angel investors. Today, with increasingly more capital entering the ecosystem, the capital base has diversified, with an innovative set of players such as super angels, solo GPs, and syndicates arriving and changing the game.

Investment in MENA-based companies has more than doubled in the last 2 years, going from ~$1B in investments in 2020 to ~$2.6B in 2021 according to Magnitt. With the increased availability of capital, early-stage companies are raising faster and larger rounds to double or triple down on growth, bolstering further startup activity. While capital is cheaper, it has also never been more important for founders to pause and reflect on who they want to partner with and who is best positioned to support them.

So for Episode 16 of our podcast, we chatted with Chad Fox, solo GP of Fox Ventures. Both Nuwa Capital and Fox Ventures have backed the stellar teams of baraka and MoneyHash, and Chad’s reputation as a value add investor makes him a force to be reckoned with. We go into Chad’s thinking on fintech, and his emerging market investment thesis.

Two years ago, many of us went through some sort of a reset in terms of how we think of, prepare, and consume food. With more time spent at home, some resorted to making their own bread and nut butters, while food delivery still soared. This, however, may have only acted as an accelerant to an existing trend: MENA is witnessing an increased adoption of health-conscious food choices, in line with global trends: over 60% of the region’s population has adopted a healthier lifestyle over 2020/21, according to PWC. With people increasingly back on the go, allocating time to prepare or order the right meals matching one’s health and fitness goals becomes quite the commitment - enter Calo.

For episode 15 of our podcast, recorded a few weeks ago, we chatted with Ahmed Alrawi and Moayed Almoayed, co-founders of Calo. Calo lifts the burden of preparing or choosing adequate, quality meals from consumers working on reaching their fitness goals or managing health conditions - and since its inception, the company has seen explosive growth, becoming the leader in health-conscious ready-to-eat meals in under a year in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. 

We dug into the Calo culture, the technology, and how Ahmed and Moayed seem to have cracked the code when it comes to meal customization and end-to-end operations.