Eyal Ofer, chairperson of Ofer Global, one of the controlling shareholders in Mizrahi Tefahot Bank and a shareholder in the Royal Caribbean Group cruise line company, is taking advantage of falls in the market to invest in technology companies at relatively early stages. Ofer has invested $400 million of his personal capital to set up a second fund of his venture capital firm O.G.Tech, bringing his commitment to over $500 million. Ofer, the son of Sammy Ofer and brother of Idan, is in the second 1% of Forbes magazine’s rich list, with a personal fortune estimated at $13.6 billion.
Ofer set up the first fund in 2017 with capital of $100 million, giving him a first foothold in the technology world. The fund later grew to $150 million to meet the need for follow-on investment in portfolio companies. The partners managing the fund are Ofer’s son David Ofer together with Ziv Kop and Roy Oron, both experienced people from the venture capital industry. They have so far invested in more than 20 late-stage startups.
Up to now, the fund has made fairly modest exits, such as in Ensilo, Indegy and MyCheck, each sold for sums in the tens of millions of dollars, and the flotation of Arbe Robotics, but it holds some fast growing companies such as employee management application company Connecteam, automatic video abridgement company WSC Sports, and fintech platforms LendBuzz and BlueVine. At any rate, the firm acknowledges that five exits from the first fund have already returned more than half the original investment. It also reveals that it has four companies expected to surpass an annual revenue rate of $100 million in 2022.
Fund II will continue to focus on early growth startups that have a product and are at the start of sales. One of the reasons that Ofer decided to expand his investment in the firm was to allow the partners greater flexibility in later stage investments in order to maintain its holdings. The fund aims to invest in ten to twenty companies.
The Ofer Global group invested in technology companies even before O.G.Tech was founded. It invested in pre-IPO late-stage technology companies including Facebook and Uber. O.G. Tech is headquartered in Monaco with representation in Tel Aviv through O.G. Tech Partners (Israel) and London with O.G. Tech (Global).
“Technology has become the global economy’s central nervous system,” Ofer said. “Today, based on the success of Fund I, we are quadrupling our investment in O.G. Tech for Fund II. As a single LP VC, O.G. Tech is committed to doing business as a flexible long-term VC, without having to focus on the business of being a VC. Fund II marks the next chapter in our long-term commitment to investing in and supporting exciting new technology companies.”
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on September 8, 2022.
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