Business

Lifting the VC curtain

Investing in South African businesses to help them scale (or sell) takes teamwork.

19 April 2021

Clive Butkow, CEO of Kalon Venture Partners, a Johannesburg-based venture capitalist (VC) firm, says Africa is a good hunting ground right now for venture capital. “There’s lots of money flowing into Africa and lots of money flying into South Africa,” he says.

He says the South African investment space has matured over the past 10 years, thanks in large part to Section 12J, the tax incentive scheme introduced in 2009 by the National Treasury. So while early stage, pre-series A investors are hard to come by locally, there are VCs like Butkow who are putting their capital into pre-existing businesses and seeing them scale. “The VC space is maturing at the growth stage for a business. In the early stage, it’s pretty much non-existent…we want to see a business, not a product. We want to see revenue, traction, logos; we want to put foot on the gas to see the companies take off,” he says.

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