Shorooq to Manage du’s New $50M Venture Fund — and Why the Mandate Matters
du — the UAE’s leading telecom and digital services provider — announced the launch of du Ventures, a $50 million corporate venture fund built to back the next wave of digital innovation across the UAE and the wider region. The fund will be managed by Shorooq, the multi-strategy investment firm and a Narrative One client.
Narrative One · Client in the News · June 2026
Today, du — the UAE’s leading telecom and digital services provider — announced the launch of du Ventures, a $50 million corporate venture fund built to back the next wave of digital innovation across the UAE and the wider region. The fund will be managed by Shorooq, the multi-strategy investment firm and a Narrative One client.
We want to start by congratulating the teams at both du and Shorooq. This is a significant step — and a telling one.
A telecom becoming a platform for founders
du Ventures is more than a balance-sheet allocation. It marks du’s deliberate move beyond traditional telecom services toward becoming a full digital-ecosystem player. The fund will target founders building in fintech, AI, cybersecurity, cloud, loyalty, gaming, enterprise software, and customer-experience technologies — with a meaningful share of the capital earmarked specifically for UAE-based ventures.
That focus matters. Across the region, corporates are increasingly standing up dedicated investment arms — not to chase financial returns alone, but to sit closer to the technologies reshaping their core business. For founders, a strategic backer like du offers something a purely financial investor cannot: distribution, infrastructure, and a route to scale inside one of the country’s largest digital platforms.
Why du chose Shorooq to run it
The detail worth pausing on is the mandate itself. du did not build a venture team from scratch. It appointed an external manager to deploy its capital and shape portfolio strategy — and it chose Shorooq.
That decision sits inside a clear pattern. Over the past year, Shorooq has been entrusted with managing capital on behalf of some of the region’s most significant institutions: a $100M global AI innovation fund alongside Presight, a $200M late-stage growth fund backed by the Qatar Investment Authority, and now du’s corporate venture vehicle. Three different institutions, three different mandates — each handing Shorooq the responsibility of investing their capital well.
For a fund manager, that is the most credible form of validation there is. Sovereign and corporate institutions do not delegate capital deployment to firms they are unsure of. Each new mandate compounds the last, and the market reads it accordingly: Shorooq is increasingly the multi-strategy platform that institutional capital in the region trusts to do the work.
The narrative behind the headline
A fund launch is a single news cycle. What endures is the story it tells about the firm behind it — and whether that story is captured, framed, and carried into the market with intent.
At Narrative One, we are proud to partner with Shorooq on their communications, and to play our part in moments like this one. Our role is quiet by design: the achievement belongs entirely to the Shorooq and du teams. Ours is to help ensure the right audiences understand what it means.
Congratulations again to everyone involved. We are glad to be in the room.
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