Empowering ventures ahead of the curve

About Us

Sukna ventures is a Saudi-based venture studio and fund. We invest by partnering with entrepreneurs and seasoned experts to build and back high-growth start-ups in tomorrow’s most promising industries.

OUR APPROACH

Building from the ground-up.

Focusing on the earliest stages of venture creation, we spark ideas in-house and test them to reach concepts with real market appeal. This way, we make sure our founders are focused and targeted.

Funding all the way to take-off.

By writing meaningful investment checks, we make sure that cash runways are long enough to support founders while they work on their core agenda, from developing the product to meeting customer needs - Building a business.

Setting up ventures for continuous growth.

We believe that creating impactful businesses that scale requires focus and disciplined execution. We empower our founders to lead with agility while we make sure the appropriate support functions, infrastructure, mentoring and coaching are consistently available.

VENTURES

We build, partner and invest in ventures with meaningful impact. We focus on the Sports & Entertainment and Health & Wellness sectors. We also invest in enabling technologies (AI/ML, FinTech, etc.) that drive the performance of our ventures and develop the ecosystem.

  • Adventure Entertainment and Events Platform

  • Hydroponics and Vertical Farming

  • Farm-to-table Food Retailer

  • Urban Farming & Sustainable Solutions

  • Tech enabled adventure destination

  • Online Adventure Experience Marketplace

  • Speciality Oncology Imaging Material Producer

  • The future of Tech learning and recruitment

  • Social Collaboration Community & Platform

TEAM

Founded by a team of serial entrepreneurs, investment professionals and corporate executives, we bring a pragmatic approach to venture building with data-driven decision making.

  • Leadership
  • Team
  • Partners

  • Fares Bardeesi

    Managing Partner

  • Asher Siddiqui

    Partner & Board Member

  • Hattan Tashkandi

    Founding Partner, Chief Executive Officer – Mishkat

  • Ahmed Kamran

    Partner

  • Amr Bardeesi

    Partner, Chief Executive Officer – Pheel

  • Danish Zafar

    Chief Financial Officer

    Sukna Ventures

  • Tameemul Hassan

    Senior Associate

    Sukna Ventures

  • Felwa Halal

    Associate

    Sukna Ventures

  • Ammar Tayeb

    Administration Manager

    Sukna Ventures

  • Jim Barger

    Chief Executive Officer

    Grease Monkey

  • Tarek Bushnak

    Vice President

    Mishkat

  • Fadi Ghalayini

    Vice President of Business Development

    Mishkat

  • Ahmed Bafageeh

    Project Manager

    Mishkat

  • Mohammed Junaid

    Greenhouse Engineer

    Mishkat

  • Tarig El Sheikh

    MENA General Manager

    Jigsaw Group Global

  • Tarek Hosny

    Business Development Director

    Egypt Kuwait Holding

  • Sigurd Meiche

    Managing Director, Mieche

    Sports & Adventure

  • Ralph Scherzer

    Senior Consultant, Swiss Global Partner AG

    Sports & Adventure

  • Dr. Ryan Lefers

    Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Red Sea Farms

    AgTech

Partner with us on a new opportuntity.

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Fares Bardeesi

Managing Partner and CEO

Fares is the Managing Partner and CEO of Sukna Ventures. Fares founded Sukna in 2016 and has incubated, launched and invested in 10+ ventures. He draws on his 17 years career as a banker where he advised several mega-corporations on a wide array of financial and strategic matters.

Currently, Fares sits on the board for two corporations with a revenue over USD 300 Mn. Additionally, he takes out time to mentor young entrepreneurs and start-ups on their journey.

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Hattan Tashkandi

Senior Partner, CEO - Mishkat

Hattan brings over 12 years of experience in corporate and investment banking, digital solutions, financial consultancy and franchising. He has co-founded several portfolio companies at Sukna including Franchise House, Mishkat, and Puremart. In addition to being a Co-Founding Partner at Sukna Ventures, Hattan is the full-time CEO of Mishkat, leading our interest in the Food 2.0 and Agtech spaces.

Prior to Sukna Ventures, he worked in the financial industry as a corporate banker and MIS specialist with Credit Agricole Group and ABN AMRO Group. He has previously managed asset portfolios reaching USD 5 billion and participated in several syndicated financing transactions with multi-national institutional banks.

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Ahmed Kamran

Partner

Ahmed is a Partner with Sukna Ventures and brings 15 years of strategy consulting experience. At Sukna, he works with the portfolio to bring in the execution discipline required to build and scale impactful businesses.

He draws on his extensive experience in developing business strategy, innovation and strategic agility for both private and public sectors.

Prior to joining Sukna, he was Head of the Strategy Consulting for KPMG in Jeddah delivering business strategy and planning engagements in public and private sectors across the Kingdom. He was also part KPMG Deal Advisory where he worked across various sectors advising a variety of transactions. In 2019, Ahmed was awarded a Masters in Leadership and Strategy as part of the Sloan Program at London Business School.

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Amr Bardeesi

Partner, CEO - Pheel

Amr is a Partner with Sukna Ventures and heads the sports and adventure vertical. In his current role as the CEO of Pheel, Amr leads Sukna’s interest in the Sports and Entertainment sector.

Amr worked for over 8 years at several financial institutions before joining Sukna. Mainly as an advisor in the global markets and treasury department.

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Asher Siddiqui

Advisor and Board Member

Asher has over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur, corporate development / M&A professional and a VC / tech investor - exposed to several disruptive events, from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis til the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic.

Previously part of the global leadership team at 500 Startups in Silicon Valley, helping 500 survive a difficult transition, raised significant capital, brought in a strategic investor/shareholder and launched the Opportunity Fund (securing anchor LP’s for a 1st close at ~40% of the target).

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Pure Mart

Offering subscriptions and delivery of tailored cuts and mixes of high quality fresh food produce from local and international farms available and accessible through digital and physical retail channels

Mishkat

An upmarket food technology company that grows, sources and distributes high quality fresh greens and foods that are natural, nutritious and sustainable in Saudi Arabia.

PHEEL

A platform that integrates world class expertise to create, develop and operate experiences in Events, Adventure, Sports and Destinations in both physical and digital worlds.

Schaduf

Sustainable living solutions - green walls and urban farming. Blending technology and nature for smart urban living solutions excelling in green walls, landscape and roof-top farms.

Adventure Hub

Sports and Adventure Park integrated with technology, providing a sandbox for the platform to test and launch digital consumer solutions.