NEW MOMENTUM: The agreement builds on OIF’s efforts to spark the growth of technology start-ups in the Sultanate by tapping into, among other players, the formidable expertise of Irish firms in this field .
Conrad Prabhu -
MUSCAT, NOV 21 -
Atlantic Bridge, one of Europe’s top performing technology funds, has announced that it has signed a strategic investment partnership with Oman Investment Fund (OIF), a sovereign wealth fund of the Sultanate of Oman, as well as its tech-focused spinoff, the Oman Technology Fund (OTF).
The pact was formalised during the recent visit of a delegation representing a number of leading Irish technology firms to the Sultanate.
Led by Enterprise Ireland, the Irish economic development agency, the delegation included well-known tech firms iheed, Ding and mAdme, which inked a number of cooperation agreements with the Oman Technology Fund (OTF), Omantel and other local firms.
Within the framework of the visit, Atlantic Bridge also signed partnership agreements with Oman Investment Fund and Oman Technology Fund. Atlantic Bridge’s relationship with these funds enables significant investment into Atlantic Bridge III, in addition to co-investment opportunities for Irish companies looking to expand into MENA region via Oman, said Enterprise Ireland in a press statement soon after the signing.
The latest pact further builds on OIF’s efforts to spark the growth of technology start-ups in the Sultanate by tapping into, among other players, the formidable and much-vaunted expertise of Irish firms in this field.
Early last year, the wholly Omani government-owned fund launched the $200 million Oman Technology Fund (OTF) to invest in startup technology companies in Oman, the wider region, and across the world.
OTF, majority owned by OIF, has since partnered with international firms Atlantic Bridge Capital (Ireland), 500 Startups (USA) and Techstarts Ventures (USA), which specialise in the funding of tech startups.
Atlantic Bridge Capital, which has, of late, added Muscat to its international network of offices, is a Global Technology Fund with over $500 million of assets under management across six Funds, investing in technology companies in Europe, the US, The Middle East and China.
The Fund is focused on investing primarily at the expansion capital and growth equity stages in companies that have started to scale in revenues with a proven business model with evidence of market uptake and customer adoption.
In March 2016, the Dublin-based Fund announced the launch of Atlantic Bridge III, a 140-million euro fund for technology companies with global market scalability.
Atlantic Bridge said at the time that the Fund would invest in up to 20 European companies specialising in high growth enterprise technology sectors such as Cloud, Big Data, Augmented & Virtual Reality software, Robotics and Internet of Things.
Separately, Dublin-headquartered iheed, a next-generation medical education technology company, announced that it has secured a 3-million euro investment led by Atlantic Bridge and joined by institutional investors Oman Technology Fund, among other leading e-learning private investors.
The Irish tech firm designs, develops and delivers online accredited post-graduate education programmes and degrees in partnership with the world’s leading medical universities. It currently has over 25,000 active students enrolled in its programmes from around the Gulf region, Sudan, India, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, as well as UK and Ireland.
Following the signing of an MoU with Oman Technology Fund, the company has announced plans to open an office in Muscat to support both local customers, as well as use the Sultanate as a base to expand into the wider Middle East, East Africa and Asian regions.
In other agreements inked during the visit of Enterprise Ireland to the Sultanate, Ding, the world’s largest international mobile top-up platform, said it had signed a deal with Asian Express Exchange Oman, a leading exchange house in the Sultanate, as well as an MoU with Oman Investment and Finance Co SAOG (SAOG), which specialises in billing, collection and debt factoring for local utilities. Dublin-based Ding directly connects with over 400 operators in 130 countries to reach an estimated billion phones around the world.
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