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Tarek El Gammal is a seasoned investment executive with over 20 years of leadership experience in lower mid-market investment banking, and entrepreneurship across the MENA region. With a strong track record in capital raising, he has secured funding for multiple SME acquisitions, delivering an avg. 45% IRR for investors. His expertise spans strategic M&A advisory, and scaling businesses into nationwide brands. Having held leadership roles at Ubuntu Consulting Group, PepsiCo, Sadia International, and CI Capital, he has successfully driven regional expansion and multi-million-dollar growth initiatives. Beyond investments, Tarek is a trusted advisor to development organizations and family offices, providing deep insights into deal sourcing, portfolio scaling, and exit strategies. An entrepreneur at heart, he has founded and scaled ventures across tourism, F&B, retail, and e-commerce, including launching Egypt’s first e-commerce health store, which achieved 50x revenue growth.
A year and a half ago, he discovered the SF model and immediately saw its potential. Recognizing a unique opportunity, he launched a specialized investment vehicle to offer family offices and HNWIs access to a fast-growing, low-risk, high-return asset class. Instead of establishing a traditional a lower mid-market PE fund, he took the entrepreneurial route and founded U-Capital, the first Dubai-based investment vehicle backing Search Funds. U-Capital provides its clients with broad diversification by investing globally across multiple countries and industries, while also addressing the widespread succession challenges faced by SMBs worldwide.
Tarek aims to complete U-Capital’s first close in Q2 2025, targeting a $25M hard cap for this initial vehicle. Once operational, the fund will deploy capital to back 25-30 searchers, building a portfolio of approximately 15-20 SMBs. The investment focus will be 30% Europe, 30% Asia and the Middle East, 20% North America, and 20% Latin America, with an average ticket size of $1M per deal.
Although he does not intend to commit formally before the first closing, he is already in contact with all newly launched traditional searchers in Europe, US, and MENA region, as well as several self-funded searchers. As he explained, one of the key challenges in the MENA region is the complexity of the debt market, which requires searchers to focus on companies with strong growth potential rather than relying on leverage. To balance this limitation, U-Capital will also acquire businesses in Europe and North America, where debt financing typically accounts for 50% of enterprise value.
