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Huda Al Lawati, founder and CEO of Aliph Capital: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Huda Al Lawati (LinkedIn), the founder and CEO of Aliph Capital. Edited excerpts from our conversation:
I’m a private equity professional from Oman with more than 22 years of experience in business. I started my career in finance at Schlumberger in Oman, but soon moved to Dubai. I later joined what was one of the early startups in the region, Zawya. I was actually responsible for the business case and pilot for creating its financials platform as project-based work. I then came across Abraaj which was an early mover and pioneer in the private equity space, and joined them, spent 12 years there, saw the industry get built up, and even coined the term for private equity in Arabic.
I then moved to Savola as chief investment officer, which was more of a corporate role, and stayed there for three years. I also sit on a lot of boards, including a couple of companies in Saudi. Then I was with Gateway Partners briefly, and three years ago, decided to venture out on my own and set up Aliph Capital.
I don’t think there was any time in my life when I didn’t envisage doing my own thing. I just wanted to make sure I have the right strategy and timing. Money management, unlike any widget or app you can start in your garage, involves a lot of responsibility. But what pushed me to do it is I always had an ambition to create a world-class, global level asset manager that operates out of this region.
We write a lot of tickets and capital into different funds and managers out of this region, but I don’t think we have a non-government money manager that is considered global or world-class.
I felt that there was a funding and knowledge gap when it comes to backing businesses, because governments can spend at a certain level, and they do that very well. Even though governments in the region in the last seven to 10 years have been investing a lot more inside rather than outside, it’s hard to take the money down to the grassroots levels.
What I thought was really topical and timely was to launch a fund that focuses on mid-market businesses in the GCC. These businesses don’t have as many pockets focused on them as large caps or as startups. And they’re not the kind of businesses they could just hand over money to, they need support, business building, organizational structure, and digital transformation, which is an area we focus on at Aliph.
We are opportunistic and sector agnostic, but by virtue of the market we exist in, certain sectors are more attractive than others. In any country that has the demographics that we do, with a young population, consumer is always going to be big. Our first investment was in the pet space. We also like the baby and luxury spaces.
We like transport and logistics because it’s benefiting from huge investments from GCC governments. We also like healthcare and education for similar reasons as the first, which is demographics, as well as the trends in healthcare like decentralization into clinics, and a shift from just “sick” care to wellness. Education is similar in that there’s a lot of uncharted territory for investment — we have vocational training, certifications, colleges, etc. Finally, the fifth theme is energy services.
We currently have one fund that we’re working through. The fund should close next year. But we’re actively deploying; we’ve deployed into The Pet Shop, and we’re in the process of another deployment. We have a very interesting and mixed pipeline when it comes to sectors.
What’s interesting is when I put pen to paper in October 2021, I can tell you that there was really nothing much happening in private equity. But today, you have international funds coming in and not just raising money here, but deploying and setting up offices. You had mostly VCs raising money years ago, now, you actually have people raising PE funds for the region. And I think the other thing, which I think is a very good sign for the region, is that you’ve started to see exits. There are a lot more buyers, and corporates are becoming more acquisitive, which is really supporting the industry.
One thing about being a founder and an entrepreneur is that nothing is routine. There was a time when I would wake up at five or six in the morning, do Pilates and then start my work day. Today, what I try to do is balance between two kinds of days. There are days which are very meeting-focused, where I have a lot of networking and I have to meet a lot of people. On those days, I usually wake up, get to the first meeting, and start from there. I always wake up early enough to be able to do my emails — at least an hour before I have to be somewhere.
Then there are days when I want to think. I try to keep one or two days a week aside where there’s slower mornings, so I’m not rushing out of the house or getting on a lot of calls. On those days, I focus more on reading, thinking about strategy, or working on solving a problem. I try to do a mix of those two days and not confuse them because it’s very hard to switch gears.
We have a very good tracker at work of all our projects, so I go through that first thing in the morning. Everyday, I go through our list of investments and our portfolio and all that we’re working on. The second thing is going through our list of potential investors to make sure there’s nothing pending there. I have slight OCD, so I can’t leave emails unread and action items pending, so I do that at the end of the day.
I don’t disconnect fully. I think that it’s a function of being an early-years founder, not that I’ve ever been good at disconnected. But in the last year I’ve picked up an interesting hobby, which is DIY miniatures. It kind of keeps your mind occupied. Watching TV would not do it for me because my hands need to be busy as well.
My goal is to take Aliph Capital to the next level, and create a fantastic team to do that. Even now we have a small team, but they’re all such technically strong people with good personalities, and they all have great work ethic. I want Aliph to represent talent and capability, with people a lot smarter than me in the future leading it.
I like podcasts, and I have a lot of interest in life sciences. Andrew Huberman is particularly interesting to me. I also enjoy reading articles, usually the New York times or I also like the Spectator. It’s interesting because it gives you a holistic view on how people are perceiving events around you. With books, I like fiction, so murder mysteries, for example, like Agatha Christie.
The best piece of advice I got is from my dad, and he said don’t worry about the limitations that people think you should set for yourself. He would tell me, if you draw a circle on tile or something with a white chalk and you put an ant in it, it won’t cross that border. It’s not really a barrier, but it looks like one. So my dad would say, don’t let people tell you that there’s a limit to what you can do. There are limits to what you can do. You have to be sensible about it, but don’t let others tell you what that might be for you.
