About

PRESSTAR will develop and launch sub-funds depending on specific opportunities, both geographically and within different elements of the textile value chain (raw material (natural and synthetic), fibers and yarn, fabrics, apparel design, distribution and retailing). Each fund will have a specific investment mandate and value realization strategy either through income payouts or exit/liquidity events.

Given the specialized nature of the segment, PRESSTAR will target institutional investors with an ESG focus, and existing textile vertical players seeking to diversify into sustainable textiles. An advisory board comprising experts from sustainability and across the textiles value chain will be in place, as will strong corporate governance and an Investment Committee which will sign off on the investment principles as well as specific transactions.

Waleed Shafiqullah

FOUNDER, MANAGING PARTNER

Waleed Shafiqullah is an investor and fund manager. Following an international banking career spanning 20 years, he left HSBC in 2020 to start an impact fund in Singapore focused on sustainable textiles. As founder and managing partner of Presstar Capital he has been active in pre-seed to Series A financing of sustainable textile technologies and production facilities. In mid-2021 he founded PayPlus, a fintech investment fund with operating companies in payment services. PayPlus has subsequently invested in cybersecurity, gaming, enterprise security and authentication under the Cyberplus brand. He is also an early-stage investor in EZWage which is an Earned Wage Access (EWA) startup with footprint in Bangladesh and Pakistan and growth aspirations in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Waleed is also the controlling shareholder in Security Leasing Corporation in Pakistan, which is a non-bank finance company (NBFC) currently being restructured from a legacy leasing company into an asset financing platform. He is also a co-owner of Hello Nash in Malaysia, which is a disruptive digital marketing firm.

Prior to leaving HSBC to start Presstar, he was the Change & Implementation Lead for Asia Pacific in HSBC’s global Oracle Fusion programme, which was at the time the largest cloud-based-ERP programme worldwide in the financial services industry, with over 120,000 users within the bank using Oracle Fusion.

Mr. Shafiqullah has extensive experience in portfolio acquisition and retail banking credit, from scoring and underwriting, through to origination and collections. Until 2018, he was Head of Global Service Centres for HSBC’s Global Collections Operations based in Manila. In this role, he managed HSBC’s collections operations in shared service centres in China, Egypt, India, Malaysia and the Philippines with over 1,300 personnel and a US$ 32 billion portfolio value.

He held various senior positions within HSBC including Head of Transformation for HSBC Bank China, based in Shanghai, and Head of Consumer Finance for Saudi British Bank (SABB), based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Prior to joining HSBC in 2002, Mr. Shafiqullah was a management consultant within the strategy consulting practice at Accenture in Chicago, USA. He holds an M.B.A. in Accounting & Marketing from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a BA in Political Science from Oberlin College, Ohio. He is also fluent in Mandarin, Urdu, Bengali and is currently learning Bahasa Malay. He divides his time between Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Dubai.