Investing in Critical Frontiers for Society

[Music] hello it's a pleasure to be back here again seeing you all we're going to be very efficient we have a really exciting discussion with some phenomenal panelists I love this topic investing in critical Frontiers for society I'm going to take literally 30 seconds to reference the thing I love about private markets I didn't say this in my previous discussion is that you can look at the actual businesses that are being invested in we don't need to rely on macro data or um you know large aggregate numbers we're able to actually look at Investments that are being made and and businesses that are being funded and entrepreneurs that are being backed in the outcomes um of all of those efforts and I'll just mention um our organization is headquartered in New York the global private Capital Association we're a membership organization of funded institutional investors our second headquarters is in Singapore where we're co-funded by the monetary authority of Singapore and tomorrow we'll be announcing um a presence and institutional presence here in Abu Dhabi uh in partnership with the Middle East Venture Capital Association building on our long track record of um hosting a Middle East Council chaired by our board member Dr Kareem ELO so just getting that quick plugin um let me quickly move to the panel I'm going to kick it off with Dr lean uh K kaas uh who's managing partner of propel Bio Life Sciences and healthc Care is one of the areas that has really investors are extremely excited about it seems that we're at the Forefront of some very important in ations including Innovations potentially driven by artificial intelligence just talk us through your investment thesis for propell bio and what opportunities you see to leverage new technologies and Innovation to solve problems for the future yeah I think that Healthcare and uh biotech Life Sciences is one of the key uh economies of the future um we're living longer um people are more focused on their health and there's bigger awareness around around access of treatment or technologies that could improve human health so we co-founded a Propel bio actually 18 months ago a group of uh experienced industry veterans that have you know cumulatively over a 100 year in drug development and um experience in advancing therapies or Technologies in in in the space and the one thing that I would say that is very exciting around healthc care is the overlap between technology and biotech where we're seeing extensive acceleration and in Discovery there's significant number of uh companies that are using artificial intelligence to accelerate Discovery uh large Pharma is is integrating AI in clinical development to accelerate testing of drugs or Technologies within the clinical setup um The Regulators uh we're in the US uh La based uh fund even the FDA is is putting forward some regulations around how can we use real world data um using models that could help us also understand and accelerate access uh of treatment uh for our industry specifically I think a lot of people are familiar that there has been significant dislocation in valuation which is again provides extensive ex opportunities for investors um and that's why we've uh accessed um you know investment opport unities and specifically around Propel we're not only interested in the private Market because of this dislocation and valuation we have been looking at public companies um with the mindset of private Equity to support them with our experience uh Beyond Capital bring experts within the industry that can help you know progress the companies and and and recover their expected valuation and this industry specifically and we've seen it as part of our portfolio where when you have a approved product that could have an impact on human health you see a separation from Market Trend significant upside and we have a few of these examples within our portfolio Okay I'll come back to you but I want to hear specific examples of the diseases that are being addressed and problems that you're solving with those Technologies going forward when we come back in the second round I'm going to jump over to um Jill um who is leading um food and and um and agratech and and Agriculture and food sustainability for 8 adq if you can just talk to a little bit about your specific mandate in targeting Agra business and food security for adq and what role does Technology Innovation play there what times of solutions are you seeing and then maybe you can just touch on as well how important are Financial returns for adq in this space or are you really targeting other kinds of outcomes sure so maybe what I'll do first is let me talk a little bit about uh the food and a sector and and technology so when do you think about food and a uh especially the Upstream part of the value chain uh you think about Farmers you don't necessarily think about technology first it's one of the the last sectors that I've been impacted um by by technology but that's changing fast what we've seen in the last 10 years is uh amounts to uh about $190 billion dollars of investment going into what we call fut Tech and act Tech and that's absolutely fundamentally changing the sector how food is produced and how we how we consume food now when it comes to adq when we think about uh investing we think uh foremost about how we can leverage our investment capabilities to impact Abu Dhabi and so food security is a priority for us and so we look at technologies that help us not only increase productivity for instance in the UAE or in the places where we invest or technologies that allow us to localize Value chains uh that we couldn't have in Abu Dhabi otherwise just to give you a couple of examples if you're in the U 10 15 years ago uh you couldn't get uh local berries throughout the year you could get them during the winter but throughout the summer you couldn't now through the use of control environment a and Technology now today you have all sorts of berries blueberries strawberries that are produced locally on our shelves throughout the year uh you can also get salmon that's sustainably produced here in the UAE on the shelves in here and talk a bit about plant-based protein which is a bit of a hype but it's incredibly important for places like the UAE where it's quite challenging to think about localizing the supply chain of beef for instance so all of a sudden you can shorten that supply chain and localize a bigger portion of that in the UA so that's what we try to do as adq when we look at uh deploying capital in uh in the space our mandate is financial as well as creating impact so we do aim to return uh um we pay dividends to our shareholder we do to return Capital to our to our shareholder fundamentally but maybe I'll add just one more point is to say the challenge in investing in Innovation and technology and food uh is because a lot of these uh Technologies are very early stage so unlike many sectors that are more mature you have to deal with a lot of early stage small VC Investments and for so for large companies like us it's um it's slower it's a longer term process deploying the capital efficiently and having an impact and what I'll add to that as well is also a bit of the risk what I call the translation risk because a lot of the technologies that we see have been developing developed for other climates so when you try to localize them here in the UAE you need to tweak that a little bit and add that risk factor to your investment case very simple example if you think about green houses uh they've been around it for for decades really uh but the fact of the matter is they've been created to uh in temporate climats where the challenge is you're trying to keep the heat inside and keep the cool outside but when you bring it here in the summer summer well it's actually quite the opposite and so there's an adaptation a risk another layer of risk that you need to factor in into your whole financial economics but look by by in all regards we we're generally positive and what we see as well is some of these Technologies coming being developing here being potentially useful in the future as we live in a world that's more arid and more we may see more climates like ours here in other parts of the world we see Technologies being developed here being being useful elsewhere great thank you so jumping quickly to m mood with shuk um you have made your track record on growth stage um and early investments in in sectors like fintech as a Cornerstone but now you're moving into areas such as deep tech and and even Life Sciences as well why that move and what opportunity to you see and what does it take to to to invest in that space first of all thank you for having me here really excited this is a great time to be in Abu Dhabi where we celebrating all the Innovation and all the investment that's are happening from Abu Dhabi exporting to the world um I would actually emphasize one important thing when we started sh Partners back in 2016 and 17 we were ahead of the market in my perspective on where actually the ecosystem was and we have been always behaving in a manner where we believe in our Market in our region there are 400 million people plus there are young population and we believe that marrying technology to smart people can solve real hard problems at that time I would say and continue to to the technology or financial technology what we call it ftech is continue to be a big part of what any traditional Venture Capital doing in this market but there is an emerging of a newer themes as a reflection of the talent pool that has been in the market that are really taking a risk on new stuff so I'll I'll touch briefly on two two example one example actually in the in the in the agre space so we were an early backer and the first backer of a company called the pure Harvest Smart Farms that actually took the challenge that Gil talked about from green houses that are being used to keep the heat inside to actually using green houses to sort of control the climate because it's actually quite harsh out there and today this company operate across the region and we are exporting it to Asia we actually in an expansion plant to Singapore and particular and again that is a reflection for smart entrepreneurs in this market that solving bigger problem that can be exported outside another another critical uh kind of inflection that we are seeing in the market today in the life science so uh the the the power of compute have unlocked a lot of potential for us so we back this uh amazing company from uh Founders that that comes out of aale University in Cairo that they are solving a biotech problem it's called proia and what does this company do is AI powered for drug enhancement rather than drug Discovery and it is just really amazing when you see this entrepreneur that putting their heads down and leveraging the uh the Deep knowledge that has been created in our Market with also connection and advisor from worldclass institution that they have relationship with that they are building a new product and exporting them to other part of the world and to sort of kind of sum this up what we are doing today on the Frontier Tech is the reflection for where we think the power of our entrepreneurs is from Talent point of view and the power of maring that smart Capital with them to unlock potential okay great I mean I think we can build right on that point coming back to um Dr lean with the example of you're from uh Lebanon and and um uh Jordan Jordan originally you built a very successful business and sold it in the United States and now you're you're based in Los Angeles but your you're launching here again in Mina focused on this region talk about some of the specific problems that you're looking to solve for the types of drug discovery that you're thinking about and expansion of Access to Health Care in the Mina region yes so as part of our investment thesis is we look at products that uh either um are best in class so they improve on the current uh uh products drugs or they first inclass addressing huge unmet medical need where there's no treatments available for patients um we've been focused on metabolic indications we have a few companies that are part of you know focused on diabetes or outcomes of of diabetes I'm sure everyone on and in the audience have heard of OIC and you know weight loss uh uh products which has been uh driving significant shifts in a positive way in in in the industry uh we' also focused on Orphan indications uh which is you know important to address because first it has a favorable regulatory path for approval Plus pricing and revenues are very attractive in in in in these indications the second part of your question is our interest uh here in in Abu Dhabi and and Mina region I my roots are from the Middle East my whole professional life was in the US you know taking companies public and and and raising Capital advancing products in the pipeline um I think it's it's very exciting to build on what Mahmud said Abu Dhabi you know being here and I've been here eight nine years ago there is a huge shift in the whole energy and the focus on future economies we do think that biotech is one of these future economies as people are becoming more conscientious about their health and the extensive advancements that we're seeing in in in this space with the overlap and and the I'd say the infrastructure that in this region around AI I didn't realize it was the fourth uh country when it comes to AI I've met a lot of uh great um entrepreneurs that are focused on databases and advancement of uh product development so we're looking uh propell to to set up something here so we're we want to meet you know we're for the first time it's not a fund that is coming from the US to raise Capital it's a fund that is looking here to actually build connections and and potentially help advance the industry here locally um you know build local businesses that could have a global impact great again with this theme of global ties right because it's all about bringing the International Community in and then exporting out G what other you mentioned that the example of uh you know export to export to Asia where are you finding Solutions and how are you partnering globally and how do you think about solutions that you're finding in other parts of the world and bringing them here in food specifically yeah look I think it's it's all over the place uh when we think about food security we think primarily about three levers to improve food security is one how can you increase local production wherever you are second is how can you build more reserves to the extent you can and third is how do you participate more actively in the global supply chain of food now uh all of our portfolio companies in adq for food and a aim to do one or more of these pull one or more of these levers just to pick an example one company I think is doing fantastic work uh is cal cal is a company we created in the UAE in 2020 and the initial onset of creation was to help farmers get better access to Market by aggregating their volumes help them sell it package it and go back to go to the to the retailers but what we realize in that process is that there's an opportunity to upscale how we produce uh food in the uee and so what we set up with in silal is a dedicated Agri Tech team whose sole role is to scour the globe for technology IES that are relevant for Desert Tech just so we can help push the envelope of what we're doing so I can give you examples of working with European uh supplies of sensors that we roll out last year and that enable us to reduce water consumption by 50% which is massive in our context in the in the desert climate I can talk about the the Japanese technology for instance which is Farah where normally takes you about three months to produce uh compost we're doing that in a day and as a result of that you can you can now uh nourish your so so and richual soil which is quite critical so that's that's how we look at look at it uh whether it's in the UAE or in our portfolios that are international I can take the example of uni fruti with operations in Chile we look at uh rolling out for instance uh robotic picking as we deal with labor shortages and uh uh rising cost of Labor in that environment so quite a full range of of places we look for technology at and it's throughout our portfolio really great exciting I'm imagining the Abraham cards coming to to play here because Israel's done incredible work in this space mmud just F finishing up with you do your investors expect something other than financial returns do you keep track of metrics like um job creation or female employment or other social impact outcomes other than just Financial returns so there are three layers in my view and kind of answer this question uh at high level when you talk about some of the larger institution in our region and when they are allocating Capital to the region probably they have uh I would say a developmental kind of perspective on that so when it come to kind of allocation to the region from pocket I would say take the mark but then when they're selecting the manager and when we kind of talking about our incentives as managers as GPS right we essentially eat what we cook that is how we like how we get measured that is what they are underwriting for us um uh and that's kind of the expectation now on our duty as managers we also um uh quite focus on making sure to understand what is the wider impact of what we are doing so today if I look at over our past uh 6 years of a journey around we have backed around 60 companies across the region and the region for us is the Middle East and Beyond um uh and if I look at employment we have uh our companies have employed around 14,000 people across this market and actually around 35% of those quite young so age of 30 uh and Below uh female representation stand around 10% which I would say is still probably on the on the uh lower end and something that we are keeping an eye on and would like to see that increasing but also at the same time we measure the technical talent and the technical engineering participation on that pool and stand around uh like 11% or so so there's a lot of metrics that we we can of we try track on on on a regular basis um again for us to understand the impact of our business but ultimately as an alternative investment manager we are judged by our financial performance and that's key for us now maybe just a bonus on that uh what we have seen in the market from investor appetite if you put out to the market a green product um uh there is actually uh some uh population of the investor that would like that and the uh the example there is one of our portfolio companies put together a green sukuk which is kind of conventional well it's a Shar compliant uh Bond type of kind of structure and the appetite was quite interesting for that because it does fit a mandate of agree and a mandate of Shar or inclusion for some of the investors and I think that is an idea that we want to we want to scale more on in this market great I love that ending on this um uh the green premium which I think is something we're going to see in the social impact premium thank you so much to all of you for your time thank you for your attention and I'd like to pass the stage on to the next panel thank you