Umang Kajaria

ASVLP 2026 | EMERGING FUND MANAGERS ROUNDTABLE Navigating the 2026 VC Cycle: Opportunities, Constraints & Competitive Edge for Emerging Fund Managers Raising and deploying capital as an emerging fund manager in 2026 is no longer about momentum. It’s about positioning, credibility, and structural advantage. LP expectations have tightened. Capital formation is slower and more selective. And differentiation is no longer declared — it’s demonstrated. At ASVLP — Africa Startup & VC Landscape Preview, this high‑signal roundtable brings together experienced investors, capital allocators, and ecosystem leaders to unpack what it truly takes to compete — and survive — as a new fund manager in the current cycle. This is not a discussion about starting funds. It is a candid examination of how capital is actually being allocated, where emerging managers face real constraints, and what separates those who scale institutional credibility from those who stall. Speakers Emmie van Halder — @/MPower Netherlands Varun Turlapati — Chaanakya Capital Abiola Adediran, MBA, FCA, FIMC, CMC, M.CIoD — GENEA FAMILY OFFICE Emmanuel Adegboye — Madica Mope Abudu — AfriGloCal VC Zachariah George — Launch Africa Ventures Amb. Dr. Dunston P. — Private Office of H.H. Sheikh Ahmed Bin Faisal Al‑Qassimi Moderator Maha M. — COREangels MEA The conversation will explore: • What LPs are truly underwriting in emerging managers today • Where structural constraints — not talent — limit fund performance • How new managers can build defensible edge in portfolio construction, signalling, and partnerships • What must change for emerging funds to graduate into durable institutions Who should attend Emerging fund managers, LPs, DFIs, and ecosystem builders focused on shaping Africa & MENA’s next generation of venture capital — with discipline, not hype. ASVLP 2026 Participation is FREE but strictly by invitation. To join: Repost and comment #ASVLP2026 — your registration link will be sent via DM. This Session is Powered by COREangels MEA

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📢 MAGNIFY Capital Partners invests in Shortcut, developer of the WATT utility bill savings platform. Shortcut is a Yellow Tulip Inc strategic portfolio company. Through its WATT platform, Shortcut delivers automated energy bill validation, overcharge recovery, and consumption analytics — identifying the 3–5% of utility bills that contain errors and turning them into immediate savings for clients. This is what an integrated energy platform looks like. Yellow Tulip Inc delivers the full solution — infrastructure, software, and energy management — with companies like Shortcut embedded across the stack. WATT ensures every bill flowing through the platform is accurate. Infrastructure → software → billing accuracy. Magnify's investment, through their NOVUS fund backed by Banco Português de Fomento, validates the strategic value of what Valter Henriques and the Shortcut team have built. As Pedro Ortigao Correia of Magnify noted, WATT's ability to combine bill validation with energy analytics makes it a compelling fit for their portfolio. The energy transition isn't just about generation. It's about intelligence at every layer. 🔗 Full press release: https://lnkd.in/gFmsbEYk #EnergyTransition #CleanEnergy #SaaS #UtilityManagement #YellowTulip #Portugal #Infrastructure

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"99 Out of 100 First-Time Managers Don't Understand Fund Expenses" Adam Tope at DLA Piper has launched hundreds of funds. I asked him: what's the single most misunderstood thing about launching a fund? His answer.... Not terms. Not structure. Not fees. Expenses. Many first-time manager assumes the management fee covers everything. Office rent, analyst salaries, admin fees, legal fees, deal sourcing travel. It doesn't. The management fee (typically 2% of committed capital) covers the management company's overhead. Your team's salaries. Your office lease. Your Bloomberg terminal. That's it. Everything else? The fund admin, the legal bills for the fund entity, the audit, the tax prep, compliance consulting, deal sourcing costs, even conference attendance, those come out of the fund itself. The investors pay for them. Not from management fee revenue. Directly from the fund's capital. It's standard industry practice. Institutional LP expects it. Interestingly, Adam shared that about 10-15 years ago, the expense section in a fund agreement was literally one sentence. "Anything other than management company overhead is a fund expense." That was it. Then the SEC started auditing managers and asking: how did your investors know you'd charge them for those Super Bowl tickets etc.? That first-class flight to a conference? The dinner with a prospective portfolio company? So the industry responded. Law firms started building detailed expense lists. One sentence became a paragraph. A paragraph became a page. Now a two-page expense provision listing every conceivable charge, from swag at the annual meeting to conferences that might lead to new investors. The SEC's position is straightforward: if it's on the list and disclosed, they can't challenge it. If it's not on the list, they'll ask why you charged it. https://lnkd.in/eXGZpfhC

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Attractive valuation; move to OW: JDL has underperformed HSI by 30ppt since Jan-25 on margin contraction and earnings miss. While we think JDL's robust growth in 2026 is partly due to base effects from on-demand delivery business and Deppon's business transformation, with a return to margin expansion, we see upside from both EPS growth and valuation re-rating. Shares are trading at 8x 2026 P/E on our estimates, lower vs. peer average, which we view as attractive. Our PT implies 10x 2026e P/E, indicating 28% upside. Upgrade to OW.

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