Having recently signed up VC firm Khwarizmi Ventures to its platform, UK investment platform Vennre is making inroads in Saudi Arabia, while getting ready to launch its fully regulated operations in the Kingdom, CEO and co-founder Ziad Mabsout shared with IFN Investor.
The firm’s focus is on affluent investors dubbed ‘Henrys’ – short for ‘high earners, not rich yet’. “These people are often excluded from the premium opportunities that institutions or ultra-wealthy individuals enjoy. It was our very own experience with this challenge that inspired Vennre.
“We were turned away from high-quality investment opportunities simply because we didn’t meet traditional thresholds. Vennre is now available to level the playing field, offering a seamless, Shariah compliant platform that gives individuals access to curated deals and professional-grade tools without needing a private banker.”
In the expansion into Saudi Arabia, Vennre is also prioritizing investments in AI-based services to enhance its platform’s advisory and wealth management features to facilitate users with tools to analyze and manage their private market portfolios.
These tech-driven offerings became part of the qualifying criteria for Vennre to be accepted into the Sanabil Accelerator by 500 Global three-month program in April 2025 – opening access to not just mentors as the program facilitated relationships with other start-up peers.
This experience was very valuable as the Henry platform targets the same investor segment – ranging from consultants, doctors, engineers to those starting on the entrepreneurship journey, working for companies soon to go for IPOs, where some of them are also founders.
“We were able to kind of plug into that ecosystem, to connect with founders and by relating to them and understanding their wealth journey. They are so busy in building their businesses, they don’t have the bandwidth to think about their own financial stuff.”
With this aim, Ziad said Vennre was gratified to secure onto its Henrys platform the services of Saudi-based Khwarizmi Ventures, established in 2018, which had transitioned from corporate to institutional VC focus, investing mainly in early-stage start-ups.
Though the initial setup for Vennre is in the UK, to be part of a global financial hub with a regulatory environment that allowed access to investors worldwide, over half of its current customer base comes from Saudi Arabia and the GCC region.
Though Vennre always planned to set up the Saudi office, “the market in Saudi Arabia needs a lot of understanding as well respect to the local culture. It doesn’t work if you try to parachute in any solution.”
