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Vumela Enterprise Development and First National Bank
Posted by Daniel Makhura on 9 May 2017 10:40 AM SAST
History of the Vumela Enterprise Development
Vumela was established in 2009 by FNB Business Banking and Edge Growth, as they wanted to work together to create an innovative model that filled the gaps in the current SME funding and support landscape.
While Vumela is an SME growth fund, it also functions as FirstRand primary Enterprise Development and Supply Development vehicle, able to fulfil both SME funding and growth needs, and corporate ESD requirements. Vumela was capitalised by FirstRand in 2010.
Within the first four years, we’d invested R90 million into eight high growth SMEs, and created a total of 400 jobs. We launched our second fund in 2015, after a further investment of R100 million from FirstRand and R127 million from the Jobs Fund. Within the first year of launching this second fund, we’ve committed R43 million to five investments that are expected to create over 1800 new jobs.
The first fund of its kind in South Africa, Vumela’s main goals are to help alleviate poverty in South Africa by creating jobs, and to generate a return for its beneficiaries: the Shalamuka Foundation and the FirstRand Group.
