The Middle Eastern company has appointed serial entrepreneur Rakhil Fernando as the new head of the unit.
Crescent Enterprises, the United Arab Emirates-based conglomerate, is investing $68m to scale up its venture building arm, CE Creates, and has named serial entrepreneur Rakhil Fernando (pictured above) as head of the unit.
The financial boost will allow a large expansion of the CE Creates platform, which has been in operation since 2018 and has built ventures including ION, a sustainable mobility provider; BreakBread, a digital supperclub, and Kava and Chai, a specialty coffeehouse.
The move aligns with the UAE’s ambition to become a global entrepreneurship hub. The Ministry of Economy and Tourism recently launched a campaign: ‘The Emirates: The Startup Capital of the World’ and set out plans to train 10,000 Emiratis in entrepreneurship by 2030. The campaign involves the collaboration of more than 50 public and private sector incubators, accelerators and strategic partners.
“The UAE has become a launchpad for serious builders, and our collective vision is for the country to be known as the start-up capital of the world. With CE-Creates, our venture-building platform, we’re helping entrepreneurs convert purpose into performance – locally proven, globally competitive,” said Badr Jafar, CEO of Crescent Enterprises.
The increased financial commitment to the CE Creates arm also comes amid a widespread trend among corporations to embrace venture building. The ability to create new startups inside the company is seen as a important tool for innovation, alongside more traditional research and development work, and investments in external startups.
Around a third of corporations that invest in startups also have a venture building operation, according Global Corporate Venturing’s annual benchmarking survey last year. Crescent Enterprises has an investment arm, CE Ventures, founded in 2017, which makes investments in early to late-stage technology startups.
Rakhil Fernando who comes in to head CE Creates, is a serial entrepreneur, who previously served as CEO of Yabi, an AI-driven personal finance coaching platform. Earlier in his career, he cofounded Kashmi, a South East Asian peer-to-peer payments platform, and also created Koko, a buy-now-pay-later company within ecommerce company Daraz — later acquired by Alibaba Group.
“Having built and scaled companies from the ground up, I know the hurdles founders face. At CE-Creates, entrepreneurs can build with confidence – backed by capital, operating tools, and partnerships that unlock regional and global potential,” said Fernando.
Crescent Enterprises is a subsidiary of Crescent Group, which also owns oil and gas company Crescent Petroleum. The Crescent Enterprises arm has interests in a number of business areas from logistics and aviation to food, real estate and engineering.
For more on the growing corporate venture building trend and to see emerging best practice, see recent GCV report:
Maija Palmer
Maija Palmer is editor of Global Venturing and puts together the weekly email newsletter (sign up here for free).
