Mark Aitchison believes EIGHTClouds has been too quiet. “I think we definitely need to be a lot louder about what we do, loud and proud,” says the founder and CEO of the Dubai-based investment firm. “What we do is incredibly exciting – particularly for this market.”
It is a typically Dubai sentiment: ambition grounded in discipline. And for Aitchison, the discipline is the real story. Behind the headline numbers – its growing range of funds, around a dozen portfolio businesses, and an expanding pipeline – sits a private equity process that he insists is far more rigorous than many outsiders realise.
“If people saw the level of detail we go into before we commit capital,” he says, “I think a lot more people would want to invest their money with us.”
From teaser to term sheet
EIGHTClouds was officially established in January 2022, when it secured its ADGM licence, although Aitchison had been working on the concept since mid-2021. Since launch, the firm has invested in roughly 12 businesses.
The process begins long before any capital changes hands. An opportunity typically arrives via an advisory firm and so begins a strict process. If approved, deeper research into market demographics, leadership capability, operational structure and financial performance is carried out. From start to finish, the entire journey can take four months at its quickest, or up to 18 months if information is complex. “We take this incredibly seriously,” Aitchison says.
In a typical year, EIGHTClouds may evaluate 40 to 50 businesses, depending on fundraising momentum.
Operating in the $1m to $50m bracket, Aitchison argues, gives the firm a privileged position. “There isn’t really anybody else like us in that part of the market,” he says. Larger private equity firms often pass on opportunities that are too small for their mandates – sometimes with the understanding that EIGHTClouds could scale the business and sell it back to them in five years.
Aitchison did not arrive in private equity through a traditional finance route. For years he ran a marketing consultancy, advising predominantly UK businesses and leveraging networks he had built across Asia, South Africa and Latin America during 17 years in the region.
As his consultancy generated profits, he began investing his own money into businesses. His experiences shaped his conviction that institutional frameworks matter. Strong governance, formal due diligence, structured oversight – these were not optional extras. They were essential.
“That’s why I set up EIGHTClouds in the first place,” he says. “I had a portfolio of investments and I wanted to institutionalise it. Private equity was the best way to do that. And there was nobody here doing it at this level.”
Well groomed
Chaps & Co, the grooming brand launched in 2015, was the catalyst. From a single concept, it has grown to multiple locations in the UAE, two in Saudi Arabia and two in New York. But Aitchison’s deeper interest lay in the mechanics of scale.
He studied brands that achieved $100m-plus exits, largely in the US. The common thread: early-stage private equity involvement, institutionalisation, five-year strategies, and onward sale to larger funds.
When he approached regional firms, the response was blunt: come back at $100m valuation. “How are we supposed to get there if nobody helps us?” he recalls thinking. That gap – the absence of structured, mid-market institutional support – became the opportunity. EIGHTClouds would professionalise businesses before they hit nine-figure valuations.
Aitchison self-funded the firm in its early years, even transferring his majority stake in Chaps & Co into the EIGHTClouds portfolio. “Chaps needed a private equity company to come in,” he says. “So we became that.”
Today, EIGHTClouds is explicitly hands-on. Its marketing team helps refine brand positioning and campaigns. Legal specialists rewrite fragile agreements. Finance professionals upgrade spreadsheet-based systems into structured reporting frameworks. The investment team builds five-year strategies and takes board seats to ensure alignment.
Two engines, one ambition
The firm operates through two core structures.On one side is a consumer holding company, EIGHTClouds Enterprise, owning or investing in homegrown consumer brands across categories such as manufacturing, mobility, grooming and F&B.
On the other is a regulated fund platform, EIGHTClouds Funds, each with a specific mandate. A $50m healthcare fund is already live. An open-ended real estate fund has launched with an initial $300m target. Another fund of similar scale is in development.
As track record grows, Aitchison expects future raises to move towards the $300m–$500m range.
The real estate strategy is deliberately unglamorous: income-generating residential assets. No off-plan speculation. No trophy towers for brochure appeal.
“We don’t need a trophy asset that looks really nice on a brochure,” he says. “We need to deliver returns.”
The team is data-driven, focusing on yield and performance rather than prestige locations. Areas such as Dubai Sports City, Motor City, DIP and Dubai South are on the radar, among around 15 identified zones. Assets may be exited opportunistically if returns spike, or rotated out if downside risk emerges.
“There’s no ego in what we do,” he says.
Healthcare and longevity
The healthcare fund focuses on obesity and related diseases, using a roll-up strategy. EIGHTClouds acquires individual clinics and consolidates them under one brand and system. Improved insurance coverage and operational efficiencies follow.
At the centre are “centres of excellence” designed to feel more like wellness spaces than hospitals, offering integrated treatment in comfortable environments.
Beyond healthcare sits Aitchison’s longer-term conviction: wellness and longevity. Having personally joined a longevity clinic, he has been exposed to treatments and diagnostics that he believes will become mainstream.
“The addressable market is everyone,” he says. “Everyone wants to look younger and live longer.”
But longevity services are expensive, often membership-based and layered with additional fees. The EIGHTClouds thesis is to make elements of this ecosystem more accessible, starting with nutrition as a foundation.
Healthcare and longevity is a real passion point for Aitchison and led to the launch of Healthcare Fund I, and later this year it will launch its Wellness & Longevity Fund.
Clean food
Nutrition sits at the centre of Aitchison’s broader wellness thesis. The strategy, he explains, is to build a vertically integrated food ecosystem designed to address structural gaps in the region’s supply chain.
Across the GCC, much of the food system is heavily dependent on imports, with fragmented logistics and inconsistent cold-chain infrastructure often limiting quality and traceability. For Aitchison, this represents both a challenge and an opportunity.
EIGHTClouds is developing a platform that combines food brands, hospitality venues and the logistics backbone required to support them. Central to the model is a cold-chain operation that not only services the group’s own venues but could eventually support other operators across the hospitality sector.
“It’s about building an ecosystem,” Aitchison says. “If you control sourcing, logistics and the brand experience, you can deliver something far more consistent.”
The approach also responds to a growing consumer concern around the quality of everyday food choices. Delivery platforms have transformed convenience across the region, but critics argue that many offerings prioritise speed and indulgence over nutrition.
Aitchison believes the next evolution of the sector will be driven by healthier, ingredient-led concepts that still deliver on flavour. That philosophy became the starting point for the group’s own F&B venture.
Unable to find a concept that met the firm’s strict sourcing and ingredient standards, EIGHTClouds ultimately decided to build one internally. Nine months of research and development followed. Today, the team itself acts as the internal tasting panel, refining menus that aim to deliver both quality and nutritional integrity.
“The difference,” Aitchison says, “is how you feel afterwards.”
Rather than chasing short-term dining trends, the aim is to create infrastructure capable of supporting a new generation of food brands across the region.
For Aitchison, the logic is simple. If longevity and wellness are long-term global megatrends, then the foundations must begin with what people eat every day.
Infinite mindset
Aitchison’s leadership philosophy is shaped by two principles. First: surround yourself with people smarter than you. “That’s really key,” he says. “We’re building a tier-one organisation.”
Second: think infinitely. Simon Sinek’s The Infinite Game resonated deeply. Aitchison avoids opportunities with hard ceilings. He wants platforms that outlive him.
The firm’s name reflects that personal dimension. EIGHTClouds honours his late father, who captained his army football team and wore the number eight. The number became symbolic, and the “clouds” nod to looking upwards and building something lasting.
“I feel like my dad’s name is above the door,” he says. “That’s why values matter so much to me.”
Built in Dubai, for Dubai
Seventeen years in the UAE have left Aitchison unequivocal about the city’s role in his ambition.
“When I fly back in and we land here, it’s like a switch goes off,” he says. “The motivation and excitement just happens every single time.”
He cites the competitive intensity of the market as both pressure and privilege. Talent is global. Opportunity windows are finite. Execution must be relentless.
“If you do that,” he says, “every tool that you need is here to make yourself a success.”
EIGHTClouds’ plan is to align closely with the UAE’s long-term economic vision, raise capital locally and deploy it into local businesses – with billions of dollars invested over the next five to seven years as the stated ambition.
The firm may expand geographically within the GCC. It may enter adjacent sectors such as sport if the right opportunity emerges. But the core remains clear: institutionalise growth, professionalise ambition, and scale the next generation of regional brands.
And perhaps, as Aitchison suggests, be a little louder about it.