Investing in Financial Inclusion by Unlocking the Potential of Fintech Startups in Egypt and Beyond with Rana Abdel Latif

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Unlocking Africa podcast. Welcome to the Unlocking Africa podcast where we find inspiration. We have another special guest, Rana Abdel Latif who is a senior principal at Include which is an investment platform for Fintech innovation that supports early and growth stage entrepreneurs

[00:01:21] who are tackling financial inclusion. Welcome to the podcast, Rana. How are you? I'm well. Thank you, Terser. It's great to be here and I love the enthusiasm. Fantastic. It's a pleasure to have you on the podcast.

[00:01:38] You might have listened to the podcast before, you might have not but I liked the stuff in the beginning. I was hoping you could introduce yourself and tell us a bit more about Rana Abdel Latif. For sure. Where do I start? Well, for starters, I'm a human being.

[00:01:55] I'm a person. I like to start off with that. I'm a mom of two boys and it's been an interesting journey being a mother to two boys at this time and seeing the world through their eyes very different than the world that

[00:02:08] I saw growing up and learning from them and understanding how their views of the world are being shaped. So it's a constant learning for me and always challenging myself to understand how they view things rather than imposing how I view things.

[00:02:26] Now taking that and shifting it over to what I do, I'm an investor. I've worked as an investor for the past 15 years. For the most part, I was a private equity investor investing in very heavy industries,

[00:02:40] such as oil and gas, cement, transportation, and then made the shift into venture capital about two years ago. And with that using that sort of mindset of being flexible and seeing the world from others'

[00:02:57] views and rather than pushing forward my views, it's really helped me to make that sort of transition. I'm Egyptian. I live in Egypt. I didn't grow up in Egypt though. I grew up in the Gulf and moved back here in my late teens.

[00:03:12] And I've been living in Egypt ever since and love, love, love everything that Egypt has to offer in terms of diversity, in terms of national prize such as the pyramids and all the monuments we have all around Egypt.

[00:03:30] And I definitely love the nature aspect that Egypt has to offer. Fantastic. You've given us a great insight into your personal life. And as you mentioned, you're always challenging yourself, which ties into the work that you

[00:03:42] do as an investor, which is also part of what you're doing now at Include. I was hoping we could talk a bit more about Include in terms of what are the missions and goals of the organization? Absolutely. So we're setting out to solve for financial inclusion.

[00:04:03] And what does that mean? It means providing access as a whole and providing affordable and accessible financing and relevant financial products to the individuals and the businesses that were previously denied. And denied not in the sense that they had applied or had actually gone to financial

[00:04:22] institutions and were denied, but actually individuals that were considered not financially educated or not financially capable to come in to the system, so to speak. A lot of the larger institutions will look at effort versus reward and with smaller businesses

[00:04:40] and smaller individuals, it doesn't make a lot of financial sense for them to give them that access. So financial inclusion really helps to provide access to these individuals and to these businesses through fintech innovation. That's what our main target and our main goal is.

[00:04:57] So what we saw recently over the past few years, and especially in Egypt, is the rise of fintech, which really can help bridge that financial inclusion gap and solve fundamental infrastructure challenges. And ultimately what we do at Include is to help finance those founders that are looking

[00:05:17] to solve for financial inclusion through their businesses. Fantastic. See it's just some key points there in terms of solving financial inclusion via access and affordable financial products to entrepreneurs and also detailing how Include supports some of these entrepreneurs, especially in the fintech space.

[00:05:37] So is there a particular reason why you focused on fintech and fintech enabled startups? For sure. So if you look at one of our investments, it's Muzera. It's an agri fintech in Egypt and ultimately they provide financial products and financial services to independent farmers in Egypt.

[00:05:58] Now, if you take a step back and look at how the agri sector works in Egypt, these independent farmers have zero planning and zero projecting on how they're going to sell and how their crop is going to be valued at the end of the yield of every season.

[00:06:12] And ultimately what Muzera does is not only give them visibility by giving them long term contracts backed by off takers, but it also provides them financing for their inputs to be able to acquire the seeds, the fertilizers and all the other inputs

[00:06:28] that they need into their land and be able to have planning and budgeting for their land. One specific example that I love referring to is that one farmer that we spoke to last year,

[00:06:41] he was able to budget for the workers that he was going to need at the time of the yield. He was able to budget for how much he was going to be able to finance from Muzera directly versus out of his own pocket.

[00:06:54] And he was then able to budget for how much it would need for him to actually acquire solar panels to fuel the irrigation system on his land. Now, talking to an individual who comes from a moderate background

[00:07:09] or a smaller region in Egypt and doesn't have access to all that information, it was really impressive to see how a very simple product like that of Muzera can really help to elevate this individual's life and their business along with it.

[00:07:22] Brilliant. So you've given great insight into what and why you focus on FinTechs, I guess by investing in FinTechs, you are enabling them to overcome certain challenges and access opportunities. So typically, what challenges and opportunities do you see

[00:07:39] in the FinTech landscape and the regions that you're operating in? For sure. So we have been predominantly investing in Egypt, but more recently, we've opened up our pipeline and trying to understand and map out different regions or different countries around us

[00:07:55] to understand the differences and also the similarities as an investor and looking at business models that we can actually invest in and ultimately bring back to Egypt. So with that, what we've seen as a, I would say, a challenge across the board is that slow digitization

[00:08:13] or the migration to digital has been significantly slow across various countries. You mentioned that you're opening up your pipeline from Egypt to North Africa and other regions within Africa. So if we focus on the Egypt, North Africa region, do you think the investment environment is favorable for startups?

[00:08:35] Well, yes. If you're going to compare it to what it was five or 10 years ago. Yes, it's becoming more and more favorable for startups. But is there room for improvement? Absolutely. If you're going to strive for continuous growth and progress,

[00:08:49] you need to always have some sort of improvement. So on the one hand, the region is characterized by an extremely fast growing ecosystem. You're seeing more and more government support through funding and through regulatory changes. And that's really been visible in Egypt over the past three years,

[00:09:07] where the regulator here has been very quick to action and very quick to adapt the FinTech laws and the subsequent laws that are being released to what they're seeing as activity in the market and in the FinTech space.

[00:09:21] And ultimately, you have an extremely large tech talent pool available that is growing and that is a strong resource, not just for the companies that are operating here, but across the board. But while the investment landscape has improved, definitely there is a lot of room for improvement there.

[00:09:39] And one of the things that we try to strive to work on is creating a stronger visibility for our ecosystem and for the founders in Egypt, not just for the port, include portfolio companies, but really creating a platform where businesses in Egypt

[00:09:56] can really be viewed as strong, sustainable world class businesses that can operate across various markets. So you have a lot of investors that are interested in the region, but don't ultimately really understand the dynamics of the region and can very quick to judge based on macro changes,

[00:10:15] based on regulatory changes that this country or the specific region can be set aside for now. Another thing that obviously needs to develop is regulatory processes. So while there's been a massive move towards digitization and massive move towards creating processes that allow for the FinTechs

[00:10:35] to operate in a legitimized way, there's still a lot of work to be done. But I have to say that over the past two years that I have been in venture, I've seen not just a lot of progress coming from the regulators,

[00:10:49] but also a lot of adaptability in the sense that regulators are very interested to sit down with not just the startups, but also with the investors to understand and collaborate on how to best build out the infrastructure going forward for these businesses to thrive.

[00:11:06] Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. From what you've said, and I guess from the data available, we are aware that in the startup investments based in Africa, Egypt stands as one of the prominent four markets that are witnessing large flows of investment.

[00:11:22] So are we seeing a gradual shift in this pattern? Or does the startup investment landscape in North Africa predominantly revolve around Egypt? It's a matter of relative size, right? So how deep is the market and the population that it serves?

[00:11:39] But again, going back to that point of creating investable economies, not just in the sense of doing business, but also in the sense of creating a platform for these economies to shine and to attract foreign investments. Having said that, I was in Morocco a few months back

[00:11:56] and I was extremely impressed by the quality of startups that were coming out of the Moroccan ecosystem and by the quality of investors and depth of analysis on the discussions that I had with these investors of funds that were slowly emerging out of Morocco.

[00:12:14] So while Egypt has been predominantly taking the lion's share of investments, again, it's a larger market. You're addressing a much wider audience, so to speak. But I can definitely see how other economies in other countries will be coming up into North Africa as not just a country

[00:12:32] where investment is coming in from, but actually countries where investments are coming out from and be a source of capital for the entire African continent. So you touched on a key point, which is during a visit to Morocco,

[00:12:46] you saw some positive activity and a range of investors were quite visible there. So typically what forms of investments are we seeing in this region? Is a venture capital, private equity or other forms of investments coming in? You know, I haven't done the analysis on that,

[00:13:03] but given that I worked in private equity for as long as I did, there is a lot of activity and a lot of below the radar activity that happens within private equity investing. And I think it really helps to take a step back and look at

[00:13:18] different economies in different countries and what those investments are doing. What private equity has been doing over the past 20 plus years on the continent is really financing and building out industries and infrastructure and comes into telcos, infrastructure roads, railways and so on and so forth.

[00:13:38] Given that I've been in venture for the past two years, I can see that there is a rise in venture investing across the continent. But I would say that I don't have an answer to whether the landscape attracts more private equity versus venture capital or vice versa.

[00:13:53] But I can say that there's definitely a plethora of activity across both. Fantastic. So you touched on your experience in both private equity and venture capital, which is quite unique and interesting. So I was wondering if we could kind of discuss that area,

[00:14:09] but in terms of how do you see the dynamics differ between these two investment approaches and how has it influenced your perspective? So I came at a very interesting time, left private equity and came into venture capital at a very, very interesting time.

[00:14:26] It was at the time where there was no more capital to be deployed. Absurd valuations and valuation metrics that were being used were starting to be questioned. And I think it was on week one of being at Include

[00:14:40] that I was sitting with a startup, they were pitching and they said, you know, we're being valued at X times our GMV. And I stopped for a minute and I asked, what is GMV? And they started to explain to me what GMV meant.

[00:14:52] And I said, no, I understand the term. I've looked it up. But what does it signify? What does it mean for your business? And I think in that moment, I realized that, A, I need to open up my lens a little bit and be a bit more creative

[00:15:07] because with private equity, you definitely lack that creativity because you have a business that's been operating for the past 10 plus years. You're projecting the growth going forward. Usually unless it's a turnaround or unless it's a brownfield

[00:15:22] that you're really investing in, you have the pathway set out for you. But at the same time, I had more conviction that I need to hold on to those fundamentals that I developed during private equity days and during those investment days

[00:15:36] and not let go of them so easily because I'm moving into quote unquote VC. Right? Now, the other thing that happened was as an investor, I had to really shift my perspective. And I think it was on the launch of Include. I was chatting with another venture capitalist

[00:15:55] and he said to me, always look at everything that can go right rather than looking at everything that will go wrong. And that shift in perspective ultimately is where I hold myself true and holds all my investment decisions and investment rationales

[00:16:11] I hold against to be able to make sure that I'm in check with the fundamentals, but at the same time that I'm opening up my lens and staying creative and seeing the potential. So you've talked us through your experience in both private equity and venture capital.

[00:16:27] So what positive aspects of private equity do you think can be translated into the world of venture capital? So again, with private equity, you really have to focus on fundamentals and fundamentals are what drive your investment decisions. And I think it's important to transfer that sort of diligence

[00:16:50] towards not only numbers and performance, but also diligence towards the management team, diligence towards how the company has been performing so far in its ecosystem, so with its suppliers, with its customers and so on, so forth. And really taking that attention to detail and almost scrutinizing

[00:17:10] certain aspects of a business and its surrounding ecosystem and using that sort of attention to detail and scrutiny and transferring it into a venture capital investment. Now, I'm not going to lie, I thought it was all, you know, talking to founders

[00:17:25] and assessing the art versus science question of whether venture capital is really an art and a sport of science. And I was coming in a little bit skeptical as a PE investor that it was really more of an art and how can there be a science behind it?

[00:17:40] Now, I've been very pleased to learn and to understand that there is a lot of science behind venture capital, especially in later stage investing, and that I've been able to transfer that diligence, that focusing on the details

[00:17:55] and being able to question and scrutinize transferring it over to venture capital and with the investments that we've made and sort of using those core competencies to really assess a transaction or a certain investment

[00:18:10] and to use them also to convince others around me of the dealer of the transaction. As you mentioned, their private equity focuses on the fundamentals with regards to paying attention to detail. That includes you do have a full stack support ecosystem.

[00:18:27] So how do you feel the support contributes to the growth of the FinTech startups that you work with? So let me tell you a little bit about our ethos that includes and what we think our role is as an investor.

[00:18:42] Our role is as an investor is not to tell or dictate to the business what they should or shouldn't do. Our role is to provide whatever necessary support to the company in order to enable them to build sustainable businesses that can scale.

[00:18:58] So with that, we've broken it down into what is it that we really need to be doing and how do we do that at Include? And I think first and foremost, it's staying close enough to the company without having to be involved on a day to day basis,

[00:19:14] but staying close enough to the company, to the founders, to the performance, to the numbers to be able to become very quickly aware if there is an issue that arises and very quickly to act and to get involved if the help is needed.

[00:19:27] So that's first and foremost what we see as the number one support we give our companies. And then number two is an interesting one because it doesn't come naturally to a lot of people, but it's providing honest feedback.

[00:19:41] And even if that feedback can mean putting a bit of a rift between you and the person in front of you or ruffling some feathers, but constantly having that and being able to provide that feedback honestly can tremendously help a business and a founder.

[00:19:57] And that doesn't just come overnight. Right? This comes with long days, long hours, long nights of building relationships, of building trust with these founders. And then third is providing the opportunities by way of introductions. Now, this can go from anywhere from supporting the business

[00:20:17] in its fundraising journey and really helping them raise capital by way of introducing them to different sources of capital from around the world. But also it comes by way of supporting those businesses when they're expanding or when they're looking for opportunities,

[00:20:32] whether it's through regional expansion or even M&A opportunities. By helping them make those connections by using our network from our previous lives or previous jobs to help make introductions and to help them achieve those goals. So I think when we narrow it down that way,

[00:20:50] it helps us to really specify what it is that we do with our companies and what is the support that we give to our founders? Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. So if we take a few steps back in terms of before you invest

[00:21:05] and work with these startups, what's the key criteria or qualities that you look for when evaluating potential fintechs to invest in? Well, it depends. I mean, later stage businesses, if we're going to be investing in a series, ARS, ARSB onwards, we, you know, first and foremost,

[00:21:27] I need to make sure we need to make sure that the unit economics and that this business is a sustainable business and it can be scaled to become a profitable business. We understand as investors and as investors in BC that there's inherent risk in our investment

[00:21:44] and that sometimes you do need to spend considerable amounts of money to be able to lift your business out of the dip end of the hockey stick curve. But with that, you have to be able to view that this business

[00:21:57] can then turn around and become a profitable business in the next year, 18 months, two years onwards. Now when it comes to early stage investments, which is the skill set that I picked up and I'm still constantly learning, it's really about the founders and assessing those founders,

[00:22:14] assessing their ability to persevere because it's difficult where we're investing in Egypt. We're going through our own sort of macro changes in the economy in Egypt. And it has not been an easy journey and it will not be an easy journey,

[00:22:29] not just for Egyptians, but also for a founder looking to set up his own company. We're looking at how big the market is and the competitive landscape. So it's really a various criteria that we look at to assess

[00:22:42] whether this business is the viable and best of all business or not. Now, having said that, we have developed our own investment thesis and we have developed our own sort of views on different sectors and different sub verticals within Fintech that we think are investable right now.

[00:22:57] And we think that we'll have more opportunities to invest in in the next two to three years. Awesome. So again, if we take another step back, what you have in place to build that pipeline

[00:23:10] so that you have the flow of investable startups that you can look at and assess? That was one of the scariest things I faced when I first joined the company, which was everyone around me that had been working in venture capital

[00:23:26] looked me in the eye and said, you need to close a deal in the next three months. Wow. How am I going to do that? I don't know anyone. I don't know anything. I'm still learning how does one close a deal?

[00:23:38] And I'm going to be honest with you. It's, you know, the pipeline and the quality of the pipeline heavily depends on how much time you're going to put into developing relationships going back to that. It's network, it's relationships, it's building trust.

[00:23:55] Nine months into my job, I started getting referrals from the founders that I worked with and not necessarily invested in, but the founders that I had worked with and built relationships with over the past, you know, six to 12 months.

[00:24:07] And they started referring me to different founders and different startups that they thought would be interesting. So you can always get incoming. You can always do it through accelerators and going through the, you know, the various paths so you can go through accelerators.

[00:24:24] You can go through speaking to other VCs and talking to different angel investors and seeing what they're investing in. But I have found that the quality of pipeline comes from those founder referrals built on trust and built on just a long standing relationship with these guys.

[00:24:42] I agree. I agree 100%. So I guess this next question is probably linked to the key criteria or qualities you look for when evaluating potential fintech investments. What are some of the key factors that you believe contribute to the success

[00:25:00] of startups? We know that today's landscape is quite competitive and ever evolving, but what are some of the key factors that you believe contribute to the success of the startups? First and foremost, the founders mindset and are they resilient? Are they persistent?

[00:25:19] They're setting off on a journey that they're going to face challenges and setbacks. So are they individuals that can maintain that resilience can ultimately learn from their failures and not dwell on it for too long and pick up and transition or pivot into their, you know,

[00:25:36] learn from their failures and then move on from that. So that's I think first and foremost, number one criteria that we're going to look at and assessing or contribute to a success of a startup. Number two, I'm going to talk about financial

[00:25:49] planning and financial management because ultimately it's essential. You can have an extremely resilient founder. You can have a beautiful scalable model. You can have a large market and a demand for the product. But ultimately, if you don't have financial planning and financial effectiveness top of mind,

[00:26:08] you could be growing a business that is not earning any money on the unit economics level and ultimately falling into the trap of with scale will come further losses and will become further funding requirements. On that note, I'll talk about scalability.

[00:26:24] So many times you'll talk to a founder and you'll quickly understand or quickly they'll come back to you a few months later and say, well, you know, the product I was working on was sort of a nice to have

[00:26:35] and not a necessity. So how scalable is this model? And keeping that again top of mind and understanding how to design the business model to be able to accommodate for future growth. It's not just for today's growth, right? What else can I say?

[00:26:48] I think for me, really, it's that the founders, their resilience, how effective they are as leaders and setting forward their vision and being resilient to any adversities that can come and financial financial financial management that is key for success. Loud and clear.

[00:27:06] So you've given some great insights into what you believe contributes to the success of startups. I guess a huge element of success is the support that is available. I know that includes you, emphasise founder centric support. Can you provide some examples of how you've tailored your support

[00:27:24] to the specific needs of founders that you work with? So our portfolio company, we have anywhere from pre-seed all the way up to a series B company. It's not a one size fits all type of approach to providing the support to our startups.

[00:27:40] It's really understanding each unique business and each unique founders requirements, challenges and what is it that this business needs to go? Is it relationships? Is it funding? Is it hiring some talent for them or helping them understand

[00:27:57] what is required in terms of the talent needed in the company? So what we do at Include and I think we've worked very diligently on doing that is really building close relationships, whether it's through the leadership layer or whether through the team itself, building close relationships

[00:28:14] not just with the founders but with the individuals in that company to be able to understand what is the type of support that they need and how we can tailor our support to them. At the end of the day, we're investors.

[00:28:25] We're not setting out to set up our own businesses and there to dictate how it's run. We're investors and we're there to help guide and help advise when needed. Fantastic. So you touched on the relationship element. We know that relationships and collaboration go hand in hand.

[00:28:42] So at Include, how do you foster collaboration amongst your portfolio companies and partners? That's a very, very, very interesting one because collaboration is one of our strongest values at Include and as a team. So not only do we collaborate with each other as a team,

[00:29:02] but we also look to collaborate with different partners in the venture capital space. I very recently got asked to identify who the competitors were for Include. And when I took a step back, I thought, I don't see any of the other venture capital players in Egypt

[00:29:18] or even in the region as competitors. I see them as partners and partners that we can help together to develop the ecosystem and help together to foster growth for fintechs and startups in the region. So how do we foster that collaboration?

[00:29:33] First step towards that is building a relationship and sitting down with these individuals and sitting down and creating a relationship with these partners and other VCs to really open up the channel for collaboration at Include. We've been extremely diligent.

[00:29:49] I talked a little bit in the beginning about how we wanted to create a platform or a stage for Egypt to showcase what Egypt had to offer in terms of startup and to do that, we had to reach out to our network

[00:30:01] and build those relationships to say, why don't you come and visit the country and visit the startups and not just our portfolio companies because it's not about marketing what our portfolio is, but really marketing the entire ecosystem and what it has to offer.

[00:30:17] And when you start to do that and show that you're not reaching out to develop or grow your own portfolio, when you start to do that with a more wide approach of let's work together and see how others can use help, whether through investing

[00:30:31] or whether through collaboration, it's then that you start to build those relationships that are trust first and collaboration next. Now, when it comes to how do you get the portfolio companies to collaborate? I have to say that our founders and founders in general

[00:30:49] in Egypt, I've seen are extremely quick when it comes to figuring out opportunities to collaborate with each other. And even companies that could be seen on the offhand as competing businesses have found ways to work together and to help support each other.

[00:31:05] Because if you're going through the same journey and you're side by side in that journey, understanding that sharing those key learnings from the get go will help not only you but the businesses around you to further grow and to widen the market

[00:31:18] for all of you to work in. During our conversation, we've touched on so many points. So to bring it all together, I was hoping you could share a success story from your time, including that showcases the positive outcomes of your investment approach.

[00:31:35] So I think it was late last year, early this year, one of our companies was coming up to a follow on and the portfolio company was coming up for a follow on at an extremely difficult time

[00:31:47] for the fund itself, a difficult time for Egypt and a critical time for the company to sort of materialize some of its contracts and be able to grow and require required funding to be able to do that.

[00:32:01] So we had to really figure out how we were going to get involved. It's easy nowadays to be a cynical investor and to say that we're going to play it safe in this environment rather than saying,

[00:32:13] let's put in the work, let's put in the hours and the weeks of building out possible scenarios and really trying to see how to reserve value out of this business and then work on convincing those around us

[00:32:24] and around the fund to make that this investment is a worthwhile investment. So we decided to do the latter, the harder approach. We decided to put in the blood, sweat and tears. We worked hours and weeks with the management team. We built a closer relationship.

[00:32:40] We worked through the numbers, modeled out various scenarios from an upside scenario all the way to a doomsday scenario. And mind you, we're working with effects risks. We're working with market risk. We're working with access to capital, which at a time is quite limited,

[00:32:57] I have to say, and especially for our later stage companies. So we had to really put in the time and the effort to really model out all the possible scenarios and to work to build an investment story

[00:33:08] for this follow on that is going to help those around the fund make an investment decision and a positive investment decision at that. And I'm happy to say that the time and effort that we put in really paid off. It was an uphill journey.

[00:33:21] It came down to the wire, but ultimately we stood by our value of, you know, supporting the founders, especially at tough times. And we came through for this company with the follow on investment. That's one story that I can think about and it really showcases

[00:33:38] not only a positive outcome, but it showcases our approach to looking at investing and how we want to build out our portfolio. And it's building it out by really doing the work and really putting in the time and the effort to see these companies through.

[00:33:55] Thank you for that. So you touched on some of the risks and trends that you analyse to make an investment decision for one of your portfolio companies. So keeping the theme of trends. Are there any trends that you're seeing in the Egyptian,

[00:34:10] North African FinTech space that you're currently excited about? I mean, if you're going to look at FinTech, especially since you were a pure FinTech investor, if you're going to look at FinTech, the beauty of FinTech is that it's it's sort of like a pyramid or even

[00:34:25] a jigsaw puzzle where as you start to build the jigsaw puzzle, more and more pieces fit into space. And you look at the previous success stories such as EMPESA, such as the consumer financing companies that came up. That's really was the first piece of the jigsaw puzzle

[00:34:44] and really solving for that core need of consumer finance and access to consumer finance. Now, as that saturates, it moves on to solving for B2B, whether it's in payments, lending or all sorts of products that service businesses.

[00:35:01] We focused on the B2B financing and supply chain, specifically in food and pharma, but this can be built on all different sectors like I've touched on before it can really be built on logistics. It can be built on mobility, healthcare, education, and so on and so forth.

[00:35:19] Now, the evolution from there, the way that we see it is that as this evolves, the requirement for the infrastructure layer will become more and more imminent and more and more necessary. So as banks are becoming more digitized and you're really moving towards

[00:35:34] that requirement for open banking and the requirement for the banks and the entities to start to have an open flow of communication, you'll start to have a lot of data going around and lots of services required. So the infrastructure need starts to become more and more imminent

[00:35:50] and starts to emerge. We've built our portfolio out very similarly. So with our first flagship investments, we did investments in consumer finance, namely Lucky and Khazna. And these businesses really work towards providing access to financing to individuals that are not necessarily below the poverty line

[00:36:12] or are financially excluded, but individuals that traditionally wouldn't have access to financing. Now, as the consumer finance piece saturates and investments move on to more of the fintechs that are servicing B2B and providing services such as whether it's payments, lending and products.

[00:36:30] And with that, we had our investment in Paymob, it's a payments infrastructure provider and really one of the businesses that has really flourished, especially over the past few years with an acceleration during COVID. In our case, we also focused on B2B

[00:36:46] fintechs or B2B businesses that provide supply chain financing specifically in the horror industry with one order and in the pharma industry with Grinta. And what's interesting about these specific models is that they provide their core business is within the supply chain, but by acquiring

[00:37:05] business from the restaurants and acquiring business from the farmers, they're then able to push forward lending and financing through these independent businesses. The evolution from there is where we are today as it evolves into the infrastructure layer.

[00:37:21] So as banks are becoming more digitized, fintechs are starting to produce APIs and require that infrastructure layer to help with the communication or create a layer of communication between between the businesses and the banks. You're going to see more and more infrastructure plays start to emerge.

[00:37:39] And this is where we're really focusing our efforts on in the next wave of investments for include. So creating that infrastructure, that layer of communication, but then also looking at how to digitize the back end of these businesses. And I personally love reconciliation software and reconciliation companies.

[00:37:59] And you're really looking at business tools and business software that can really help enable those fintechs to streamline their back end operations in terms of the finance and accounting. So the infrastructure play and the digitizing play is really going

[00:38:14] to play an important role in really simplifying and creating a multiplier effect by orchestrating these fintechs that are around. Thank you for sharing that. So if we move from trends and look to the future, I know you've given us

[00:38:28] your vision in terms of where you see the Egyptian North African fintech space in the next few years. So where do you see include and yourself in five years time? What part would you be playing in this growth of the regional fintech landscape?

[00:38:46] So we are a fintech fund and we invest in in fintechs predominantly in Egypt. But there's another side of it too that isn't available or that isn't seen immediately, which is that success story and the ability of venture

[00:39:02] capital investors and the public sector to collaborate and to work together. Our LPs are predominantly Egyptian state owned banks that we're looking to build a vehicle that could really help to invest and to nourish the fintech ecosystem in Egypt.

[00:39:21] Where do I see include in five years continuing to be a major player in the fintech investor space, continuing to drive growth through investments but not only that by continuing to bring in investors from all over the world to invest in Egyptian companies to continue to attract

[00:39:39] that capital to Egypt and really showcasing what those businesses have to offer. And hopefully moving beyond the Egyptian realm and to invest in the region as well and to replicate this model outside of Egypt.

[00:39:54] Brilliant, that's a great vision and one that I hope to see come to life. Quote of the week. As people, we often have quotes, mantras, proverbs or affirmations that keep us going when times are challenging or when times are good.

[00:40:09] Do you have one that you can share with us today? There's one actually that I always go back to and it's one that links in funnily enough with one of our top values as a team, which is curiosity. And it's Lelfudul al-Ail.

[00:40:25] And what that means is curiosity is knowledge. And it really suggests that just by the act of being curious helps you to seek answers and then is a natural path to gaining knowledge. So it's one that I always go back to and I always try to remember

[00:40:44] because it's not always easy to continue to be curious. You can become phased as life takes you on its ups and downs. But if I go back to that core of continue to be curious, don't let past experiences taint what the future holds.

[00:41:00] It helps me to refocus and realign myself. Brilliant. Thank you for sharing that, Rana. As we come to the end of today's conversation, it's been a great conversation. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I was wondering if you have any closing remarks, final course or action

[00:41:16] for people who are interested in the work that you're doing at Include or Interested in Exploring the North African Egyptian FinTech space? Absolutely. Reach out to us. We are always, always, always happy to make new relationships and to build new learnings on different markets

[00:41:35] and see how others are doing things that we can learn from. We're always curious to understand about different business models, even if you're not a FinTech, still reach out to us. And we're more than happy to listen to what you have to offer

[00:41:47] and help connect you to our partners and to others around us that could be interested. So don't let that deter you. Rana, thank you for joining us on the podcast. And thank you for sharing your invaluable insights into the world of FinTech innovation and venture capital.

[00:42:05] And I look forward to witnessing the continued growth of Include and yourself. So it's been a pleasure having you on the podcast. Thank you, Teres. It's actually been a wonderful, wonderful time for me. And thank you. And we will speak soon. All right. Take care.

[00:42:23] Thank you to everyone who has listened and stayed tuned to the podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share or tell a friend about it. You can also rate reviewers in Apple Podcasts or wherever you download your podcast.

[00:42:38] Thank you and see you next week for the Unlocking Africa podcast.