Bilal Djelassi

Bilal Djelassi is a venture capital investor with Orange Ventures (formerly Orange Digital Ventures), the corporate venture arm of French telecom group Orange. Based in London, he is responsible for sourcing new investment and corporate-development opportunities primarily in the UK and across Africa, while operating within a fund of roughly €350M that invests across the US, Europe, the Middle East and Africa from Series A onwards. His personal focus areas are fintech, enterprise software/SaaS, AfricaTech, data monetization, and fund-of-funds investing.

He holds a Master's degree in Finance & Strategy (2013–2016) from Sciences Po's School of Management and Innovation in Paris. Before moving into corporate venture capital, he spent roughly nine months as an analyst at Chausson Finance, a Paris-based advisory firm specializing in private placements and M&A, where he worked on venture transactions alongside founders. He has described his move to the investor side as a desire to see "the other side of the table, and build long-term relationships." Search-based sources also associate his career with experience touching 50 Partners Capital and, through deals, companies such as Raisin and Monzo.

In 2018, Djelassi was named one of Global Corporate Venturing's "Rising Stars" — a list positioned as the top ~1% of corporate venturing professionals worldwide — having by then been involved in more than 20 transactions at Orange Digital Ventures. He is an active writer on venture topics, publishing on Medium pieces such as "The Rise of French Corporate Venture Capital" and "Reaching the Next Billion: Modernizing Credit Scores to Expand Access to Finance."

More recently he has been listed as a Venture Partner at ADNEXUS, a Paris-based venture firm (founded 2022) that invests mainly in Series A rounds in France-based startups across areas such as telecommunications, cybersecurity and training — a role he appears to hold alongside his Orange affiliation (his contact email remains an orange.com address).

• Invests as a corporate VC, mainly from Series A onwards, deploying from Orange Ventures' ~€350M fund.
• Sector emphasis on fintech, enterprise software/SaaS, AfricaTech, data monetization, and fund of funds.
• Geographically oriented toward the UK and Africa within Orange Ventures' broader US / Europe / Middle East / Africa mandate; thematic and tech-focused rather than purely opportunistic.
• Particular interest in financial inclusion and credit access — e.g., his thesis on "modernizing credit scores to expand access to finance" and Orange's investment in credit-scoring startup Aire.
• Motivated by building long-term founder relationships, reflecting his stated reason for crossing from advisory/banking to the investor side of the table.