Pitching your startup to venture capital (VC) investors can be a challenging endeavor. Pitching your Islamic startup can be even more arduous. As a Shariah compliant tech entrepreneur, one is competing with many conventional peers. It is a well-accepted fact that most tech businesses are Shariah compliant by nature —…

Some alphabetic characters are apparently immoral The are now 5,532 sanctions implemented against Russia. None are effective, but some are rather funny and amusing. Part 1 of the most weird sanction against Russia can be found here — https://malenko.medium.com/the-top-10-most-weird-and-unusual-sanctions-against-russia-part-1-3fc5ef0735b2 In short, there are: Closure of McDonalds restaurants to protect Russian’s…

Russia-Ukraine military conflict: the losers and the winner in Venture Capital industry I was going to write my scheduled article about the potential effect of investment funds in Abu Dhabi on Islamic technology companies. But I could not — because of weeks-long military conflict in Ukraine — I may not…

Here is a spoiler — even the Russian cats are under sanctions BCC states that “sanctions are penalties imposed by one country on another, to stop it acting aggressively or breaking international law”. There are plenty of types of international conduct that should be punished. The US Department of Treasury…

Awaiting the breakthrough 2021 was anything but typical year for venture capital and private equity. While the conventional funds were setting new fundraising records, the world of Islamic equity finance was just beginning to show the signs of life. Nowadays the industry is oscillating between two diametrical and conflicting…

In this short piece I wanted to see if that the Soviet-style Prohibition and the corresponding lack of alcohol had sown the seeds of destruction that actually pulled all of the Soviet republics from Moscow’s control. Below I analyse different consequences of enforced sobriety onto different republics of the USSR. …

A choice between evolutionary and revolutionary growth Doing a review of Islamic finance in Kazakhstan is not an easy task. Kazakhstan was an early starter — in 2009 it was the first country in the former USSR to introduce Islamic banking and finance. There are many positive factors playing well…

Evolution or revolution Before 1991 the concept of Islamic finance was a virtual “terra incognita” in the former Soviet Union. Several decades of the Communist Party rule had literally done away with the religious beliefs of generations of the Soviet people. In 1992 Tajikistan joined the Organization of Islamic Cooperation…

It is generally well accepted that the principles on which private equity and venture capital are built are Islamic in nature — they are based on risk sharing and the lack of guaranteed financial result. According to Eurekahedge Islamic Funds Database, the first Islamic private equity funds have existed since…