Grace Ashiru
South Africa’s venture capital industry has spent years fielding the same question from institutional investors: where are the exits? Two new studies commissioned by the SA SME Fund, Endeavor South Africa and SAVCA suggest the industry finally has an answer, and it’s a good one.
The broader study, “South African Venture Capital: Exit and Performance Analysis,” tracked 226 realised exits reported by local VC fund managers between 2009 and 2026. It found that capital-weighted realised returns ranged from 2.01x to 2.45x invested capital, a range the researchers say is broadly comparable to what mature venture markets in the US, UK, Europe and India have historically produced.
A companion piece, the “Exit Case Studies Analysis,” dug deeper into 18 backed exits (spanning 21 investment rounds) between 2014 and 2026. The median gross internal rate of return came in at 54%, with a median money-on-invested-capital multiple of 3.5x and a median exit valuation of roughly R1.6 billion. The economic ripple effects were notable too: the companies in the sample grew revenue 256% and headcount 49% since 2021, collectively creating more than 4,000 jobs, an average of about 230 per company.
Recent deals back up the numbers. Mastercard’s pending purchase of BVNK, Motorola Solutions acquiring RapidDeploy, Nedbank buying iKhokha, Lesaka’s acquisition of Adumo, Ticketmaster taking Quicket, and Optasia’s R23.5 billion JSE listing have all landed in the past two years, spanning international M&A, domestic M&A, secondary sales and now public listings, the four exit routes the report identifies as active in the local market.
Ketso Gordhan, CEO of the SA SME Fund, framed the findings as proof that a long-standing gap in South Africa’s venture story is closing. “South Africa has long had entrepreneurial talent, credible founders and strong technology capability. What has been less visible is the proof that investors can realise meaningful returns from backing these companies,” he said, adding that the exit market is “no longer theoretical.”
Fintech dominates the exit list, unsurprising given the country’s deep financial services base and the appetite of banks, telcos and retailers to acquire digital capability. The report notes that more than half of Africa’s top 20 fintech exits since 2019 have involved South African companies. Beyond the returns, the sector’s growth has translated into real financial inclusion gains, cited examples include GoTymeBank’s expansion past 21 million customers across South Africa and the Philippines, iKhokha processing more than R20 billion in digital payments while extending over R3 billion in working capital to small businesses, and Retail Capital funding more than 50,000 businesses before its acquisition by TymeBank.
Karl Westvig, Retail Capital’s founder, pointed to what happens after an exit as the real payoff. “The real value of an exit is what happens the day after. Capital gets recycled, and founders and teams walk away with proof it can be done here,” he said, noting that many of those founders go on to become angels, operators or mentors themselves.
Alison Collier, managing director of Endeavor South Africa, said the pattern shows local scale-ups have stopped building only for the domestic market. The companies in the study, she said, solved real problems, scaled efficiently with technology and expanded regionally or globally, a combination that makes them attractive to both acquirers and investors.
For SAVCA, the numbers matter most to the institutions still on the sidelines. CEO Anusha Naidu said demonstrating realised exits is fundamental to developing any private capital market, and that the studies give pension funds, family offices and development finance institutions real evidence to weigh as they consider allocating to venture capital.
The reports argue the strongest wave of exits may still be ahead. More than 20 privately held South African high-growth companies with significant local operations have each raised over $25 million, and over 1,100 companies have received VC funding since 2016. With a median holding period of about six years, much of that capital hasn’t yet reached typical exit maturity, pointing to a deeper pipeline still forming.
It’s against that backdrop that the SA SME Fund is pursuing a new fundraise reported at around R10 billion (roughly $609 million), aimed squarely at the institutional and pension capital that has so far allocated cautiously to South African venture capital. The Fund has previously used a first-loss capital structure to de-risk commitments for private investors, a model it used to raise its R1 billion Venture Capital Fund of Funds. Gordhan has argued that exits are what will convince that capital to come off the sidelines. “Exits are the evidence investors need to come back, write bigger cheques and stay the course. These studies show that the flywheel is starting to turn,” he said.
Collier struck a similar note on where the ecosystem goes from here. “The opportunity now is to build on this momentum. South Africa has the entrepreneurial talent, market opportunities, corporate depth and investment capability to produce many more globally relevant scale-ups,” she said.
