Endeavor South Africa Partners With The SA SME Fund To Scale Ten High-Impact Firms In Five Years This initiative will leverage the powerful procurement, financial and mentorship muscle of the CEO Circle, which includes business leaders from some of the largest corporates operating in South Africa.
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Discovery CEO and Endeavor South Africa patron board member, Adrian Gore, announced that Big Business in South Africa is launching a new initiative aimed at deliberately accelerating, the expansion of ten established black-owned companies into "substantial" enterprises with a value in excess of R500-million within five years.
"What we are trying to do is create a system where, if we come across a great company that has potential to scale, we would like to bring them to our shareholders. We want to match the appropriate company with the appropriate set of shareholder companies and ask the CEOs to commit to helping promote that organisation in their supply chains," explains Adrian Gore.
This is not a contractual obligation we are simply asking for a top-down referral by our shareholders into these big corporates.
Applications are open
Endeavor South Africa is excited to be partnering with the CEO Circle in this initiative and will be overseeing the process of identifying and selecting candidates from the applications received. Applications are open to all established black-owned enterprises with yearly revenues of R50-million or more and with five-year records of growing at yearly rates of above 20%.
The recently launched Endeavor ScaleUP programme will form the backbone of the selection methodology that will be used to deliver a rigorous selection process, including interviews, financial reviews and review panels by industry experts. Successful candidates will progress to the CEO Circle panel where the inaugural cohort of 5 to 10 companies will be chosen.
These winning companies will receive a "personalised pathway', including introducing them to capital providers; providing them with access to markets through introductions to key executives and procurement officers in select companies; and matching them to C-suite mentors and scale-up support.
"I am pleased to be part of the Endeavor journey and to be a part of this initiative. My team and I are committed to ensuring this initiative continues to positively impact the South African ecosystem," says Alison Collier, leader of the high-impact search and selection project in her new capacity as Managing Director of Endeavor South Africa.
Related: 5 Ways to Support South African SMEs
