South Africa: Mineworkers Investment Company launches early-stage vehicle
Mineworkers Investment Company (MIC) today announced the launch of MIC Khulisani Ventures, a R150 million (about $10.4 million) early-stage investment vehicle targeting black-owned innovative, high growth businesses in South Africa.
MIC Khulisani Ventures will invest in promising high-growth potential companies across all sectors, with the exception of primary agriculture and primary extractive industries. The focus is innovation, namely innovative products or services that disrupt traditional markets, improve efficiencies or respond creatively to existing problems in South Africa.
Speaking on the launch, MIC CEO, Mary Bomela said, “We are thrilled to be introducing a unique offering to a broad-set of black-owned innovative ventures with exponential growth potential. MIC Khulisani Ventures forms part of our investment and transformation mandate at MIC, and through this investment vehicle we hope to add to our investee network future-focused, transformed entities with great promise for growth.”
MIC Khulisani Ventures addresses the significant gap in post-seed funding for businesses that are not plugged into the dominant streams of venture capital networks. Many of these investment-ready ventures tend to be black-owned, with ideas that can shift industries and society, but do not take off due to lack of support. This round of investments, projected to range between R15 million (about $1 million) to R30 million (about $2 million) per awarded applicant, will meet that need and help spur growth and expansion in South Africa and beyond.
MIC is an investment company established in 1995 by the Mineworkers Investment Trust (MIT) to create a sustainable asset base for the benefit of mine, energy and construction workers and their dependents.
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