DPI Venture Capital has reached a final close on Egypt-born Nclude at more than $112mn, adding roughly $7mn to a fund that had been static since DPI took over its management. The close, four years after Nclude launched in Cairo, marks a modest but symbolically important expansion of the largest fintech-focused vehicle on the continent, as its new manager shifts the mandate toward companies that can scale across the Middle East and Africa rather than remain confined to a single national market.
The final close increases Nclude’s assets under management from the $105mn level at which it stood after its second close in 2022 — the size it was still running at when Development Partners International (DPI) assumed management control through a restructuring in 2025. The statement did not disclose how much new capital the incoming investors committed, though the arithmetic implies a net gain of approximately $7mn. “At over $112mn, we believe Nclude is appropriately sized for today’s market,” Ashley Lewis, managing partner and head of DPI Venture Capital, said in the statement. The figure sits below the fund’s original $150mn target, a shortfall that underscores the tougher fundraising environment for African venture capital even as Nclude’s close outpaces the aggregate final closes recorded across the continent’s venture funds in 2025.
From national fintech champion to regional platform
Nclude was launched in March 2022 with $85mn under the management of Dubai-based Global Ventures, after receiving approval from the Central Bank of Egypt. Banque Misr anchored the fund, with National Bank of Egypt committing $30mn, Banque du Caire $25mn, eFinance Investment Group $10mn, and the Egyptian Banks Company and Mastercard taking undisclosed positions. The fund’s early identity was inseparable from Egypt’s state-linked banking establishment: it was designed as a policy-compatible vehicle to accelerate financial inclusion in a market where, by end-2025, 77.6% of eligible citizens held active transactional accounts but where fintech penetration remained concentrated in payments and lending. That anchoring gave Nclude privileged access to the largest domestic financial institutions, but it also tied its initial mandate closely to Egypt’s borders.
DPI’s takeover changed that trajectory. The London-based private equity firm, which says it manages some $4bn in assets and co-investments and has invested nearly $850mn in Egypt over the past decade, replaced Global Ventures and established DPI Venture Capital as a dedicated early-stage arm led by Lewis. The restructuring did more than swap managers. It widened Nclude’s cheque-writing range from seed-to-Series-B to seed-through-Series-C, with tickets now between $500,000 and $10mn, and it formalised a minimum 10% allocation for seed-stage bets. More consequentially for the fund’s “next targets,” it permitted up to 30% of capital to flow to companies outside Egypt — whether in the Gulf, North Africa, or sub-Saharan Africa — provided those businesses can demonstrate a pathway into the Egyptian market or a capacity to expand from Egypt outward.
That geographic widening is visible in a portfolio that now spans 15 companies. The largest disclosed co-investments remain Egyptian: proptech platform Nawy, which raised a $52mn Series A in 2025; digital payments infrastructure provider Paymob, which closed a $35mn pre-Series C round led by Mubadala and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in September 2026; and Money Fellows, the digitised rotating savings and credit association platform that raised $13mn in a round led by Nclude. But the fund’s newer additions signal the direction of travel. FlapKap, a UAE-based revenue-based financing provider for small and medium enterprises, raised $34mn in debt and equity; Kera, a healthcare artificial intelligence company operating in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, had previously secured $10mn from the International Finance Corporation; and Accord Partners, an AI-driven accounting and audit aggregator focused on Saudi Arabia, represents a bet on a Gulf market that Nclude’s Egyptian limited partners have increasingly identified as a natural expansion corridor. Lewis has said she expects the portfolio to mature at between 22 and 24 investments, leaving room for roughly seven to nine further deals from the final close.
The next targets: embedded finance and cross-border portability
The next targets are not merely a reference to the remaining unallocated capital. They describe a deliberate shift in investment thesis. Under DPI, the fund has moved beyond pure-play fintech — payments, lending, and savings applications — toward what Lewis has described as “embedded finance providers,” companies that distribute financial products through non-financial platforms. Nawy, a real estate marketplace that connects buyers with mortgage and financing options, is the clearest example: it is classified as proptech, but its economic engine is increasingly the attachment of financial services to property transactions. The logic is that Egypt’s large, underbanked population is more efficiently reached through commerce, healthcare, and real estate than through standalone banking apps.
The second target is portability. DPI’s statement said it is looking for businesses that can grow across markets, “whether that means expanding from Egypt into the Gulf and North Africa, or moving into Egypt from elsewhere in the region”. That two-way framing is important. It allows Nclude to back a Gulf-born company such as FlapKap that may eventually use Egypt as a large-scale manufacturing or SME-lending market, while also allowing Egyptian portfolio companies such as Paymob and Money Fellows to pursue Gulf expansion without requiring the fund to abandon its Egypt-first identity. Paymob has already indicated that the Gulf Cooperation Council region is approaching half of its revenue, according to market reports, and Money Fellows has signalled ambitions to expand into Morocco and other African markets. Nclude’s final close gives DPI the dry powder to follow those expansions through subsequent rounds, rather than merely holding initial positions.
A counter-cyclical close in a constrained market
The $112mn final close is modest by global venture standards, but it carries disproportionate weight in the African context. Nclude’s capital is overwhelmingly African: Lewis said 93% of the fund’s capital came from financial services institutions within Africa, a striking inversion of the typical African venture capital architecture in which development finance institutions and Western limited partners anchor funds. That domestic base — three of Egypt’s largest state-owned banks, plus eFinance, the Egyptian Banks Company, and Mastercard — gives Nclude a degree of insulation from the fluctuations in overseas development capital that have reshaped African venture funding since 2023. It also means the fund’s investment committee is accountable to institutions with a direct stake in Egypt’s financial inclusion agenda, which may temper the pursuit of purely commercial exits but strengthens the fund’s convening power with regulators and incumbent banks.
The market backdrop remains difficult. This year, investors in Egyptian startups have shifted toward larger, later-stage tickets and away from the high-volume seed activity that characterised the 2021–2022 period. Nclude’s own evolution reflects that shift: its cheque range now extends to $10mn and Series C, allowing it to participate in the kind of growth rounds that are increasingly dominating Egyptian deal flow. But the fund’s minimum 10% seed allocation is designed to preserve a pipeline of early-stage companies that can later be scaled with larger cheques — a structure that mimics the “platform” approach of established venture firms, even if Nclude’s scale remains sub-$150mn.
Whether that approach can generate the returns DPI’s limited partners expect remains an open question. Nclude’s disclosed portfolio includes companies that have raised substantial follow-on capital, but venture returns in Egypt and the wider region are constrained by shallow exit markets, currency volatility, and the difficulty of listing technology companies on local exchanges. DPI’s private equity experience in Egypt — including its backing of fintech unicorn MNT-Halan and supermarket chain Kazyon — may provide useful exit pathways through secondary sales or strategic acquisitions, but those routes are not guaranteed for a portfolio of early- and growth-stage fintechs. The final close buys DPI time; it does not resolve the structural liquidity challenge that hangs over African venture capital.
For now, the signal is one of consolidation and patience. Nclude is no longer a purely Egyptian policy vehicle, nor is it a freewheeling regional fintech fund. It is a $112mn platform with an explicit mandate to find companies that can cross borders, a domestic capital base that reduces dependence on external donors, and a manager in DPI that has both the private equity discipline and the local relationships to pursue a more selective deployment strategy. The next targets — embedded finance, Gulf-Egypt corridors, and a handful of additional portfolio companies — will test whether that hybrid model can produce returns in a market where capital remains scarce and exits remain distant.