Prior to co-founding Sawari Ventures, Hany Al-Sonbaty was a Partner and Member of the Investment Committee at EFG-Hermes Private Equity (EHPE), a leading private equity house in the Middle East. During his twelve year career there , he served as the Head of the TMT investment sector, managing a TMT portfolio of $200 million across four funds. He also founded Ideavelopers, EHPE’s dedicated venture capital arm pioneering the introduction of institutional venture capital in MENA and launching the Technology Development Funds (TDF I & II); one of the region’s first serial TMT-focused venture capital funds. During the last decade, he has been a Board Member of many of the region’s pioneering technology companies, including Maktoob.com, LinkdotNet, ITWorx, Menatel and NextMedia Holdings. He also managed EHPE’s investments in Orascom Telecom, Vodafone Egypt and Raya prior, to their respective IPOs.
He was also the fund manager of EHPE’s largest general fund, Horus III, in addition to heading its Tourism and Real Estate investment sectors, with a total portfolio size in excess of $500 million. Prior to joining EHPE, he was a development engineer at Systel (Motorola Land Mobile Products Sector, Egypt), where he was engaged in product design, development and localization of Motorola’s products for the Egyptian market.