Oasis500, a premier early stage and seed investment company in the region, said it has secured a $1 million investment from Turkey-based Timar Ventures to fund the fast-growth and investment-ready early stage companies.

Announcing this at a press conference, Dr Usama Fayyad, executive chairman of Oasis500, said, "This investment is targeted at the first funding round of Oasis500 Ventures 1, the investment arm of Oasis500, and will be invested directly into startup companies, either during the initial $15,000 funding stage or beyond.

Paul Doany, chairman of Timar Ventures and former CEO of Oger Telecom, Mehtap Mae Ozkan founding partner and managing director of Timar Ventures and founder of Golden Horn Ventures, the first institutional venture capital fund in Turkey, were also present.

Dr Fayyad, the former executive VP and chief data officer of Yahoo! Inc, said Timar’s investment will be used to strategically fund fast-growth and investment-ready early stage ICT, digital media and mobile companies in the Mena region.

These companies will be selected by Oasis500 for their innovative technologies and business models after having undergone the extremely competitive BootCamp selection process.

Dr Doany said, "I am very proud to be participating in Oasis500, and to be investing in Jordan and the young promising talents we see emerging in Jordan.”

Timar Ventures is a $150 million early-to-expansion-stage venture capital fund that invests globally in companies that apply disruptive innovation in technology and business models to create category dominant players.

Tarik Awad, CEO of King Abdullah II Fund for Development (KAFD) and vice chairman of Oasis 500 said, “We welcome Timar Ventures alongside KAFD as Anchor Investors in the first Oasis500 fund and we are proud to have attracted them to Jordan as a place to invest in fast-growth technology startups.”

Commenting on the partnership, Mehtap Ozkan said, "We see a joint future between Turkish and Arab companies, for regional businesses, and even for global ones, and we are here because Jordan has taken great steps to support its home grown talents, as we have done in Turkey."-TradeArabia News Service