Tech in Africa
Hlayisani Growth Fund announces the first close of its R350m fund to invest in high-growth and high-impact businesses. This funding round was led by Standard Bank and some prominent businesses across South Africa.
HFG is firmly focussed on SMEs while tackling the existing SME funding gap between early-stage venture capital firms and their traditional private equity players in South Africa. The fund provides strategic support to and capital to high growth and scalable SMEs with proven track records. Its idea is to grow the SMEs into large and successful enterprises operating across multiple territories, creating jobs, and generating export revenue.
Investments are based on sustainable growth and have an average potential for returns. There is also a strong focus on its socio-economic impact. Thus far R200m has been invested in 7 award-winning businesses expanding globally with operations across 6 countries. Among the company’s portfolio is Gometro, Opennetworks, Ikeja, Snapplify, Wyzetalk, Sunodum, and LEAP.
During the recent lockdown, businesses have doubled their businesses doubling their employees for creating direct jobs aiming to employ 422 people in portfolio companies. These businesses offer solutions that support over 1600 entrepreneurs, who serve over 55,000 global customers.
The companies in Hlayisani’s portfolio have not only educated and trained over 404,000 learners and 3,900 teachers, where over half a million teachers have access to digital e-learning content in 2020. In Hlayisani’s portfolio solutions are applied by over 7,850 schools internationally.
Source: Bizcommunity
