With so many small businesses in South Africa, there is huge potential for the economy. Many of these businesses are the biggest employers in the country and the ones that are growing will do the same. For these businesses to sustain their growth and economic contributions, they need funding.
Access to funding is one of the most prominent challenges for small businesses. There are a lot of processes, compulsory supporting documents and of course, application costs. Additionally, there are a lot of requirements that are diffucult to meet.
To help small businesses get the funding they need, Nedbank has introduced the Nedbank Indalo Fund.
What is the Nedbank Indalo Fund?
The Nedbank Indalo Fund is a financing offering for small businesses. The fund aims to provide financial support and strategic mentorship to ensure the success of small businesses. The fund targets businesses that are operating in the water, energy, sustainable agriculture and integrated waste management sectors.
The fund offers grants of between R 350 000 – R 500 000. These are recoverable grants and must be paid back over 36-months and come with performance-based incentives.
“By focusing on enterprises that are ready to scale and deliver measurable social, environmental and economic impact, this fund is helping SMEs transition from reliance on grants to securing investor funding,” says Nedbank.
How to Apply for the Nedbank Indalo Fund
Before sending in your application for the Indalo Fund, you will need to know what the evaluation criteria is.
The fund criteria asses two areas of the applicant:
1. The scalability of the applicant (entrepreneur) and the business model.
2. The social impact of the business model and if it aligns with the Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Further qualifying criteria includes:
- Management or minimum of one director must be working fulltime in the business.
- Management must commit to attending Indalo workshops and to work with/be mentored by the Indalo Enterprise Specialist.
- Management must commit to attending all the briefing sessions for the Indalo Fund pre-selection group.
- The enterprise must have financial planning and sound management practices in place to support growth, cashflow management, reinvestment of profits for expansion purposes and securing of additional funding when needed.
- Management must be able to clearly state how much funding is required for scaling by producing cash flow statements. The statements must include investment amount and attached must be the support plan template.
- Applicants must show proof that funding will result in commercial growth of the business.
- There must be a workforce plan, and the enterprise must show that it has the ability to create more jobs.
- The enterprise must have a reasonable size of employees and at least five should be approved for the grant.
- There must be a demonstrable existence of sufficient market demand for the goods or services made by the business.
- There must be at least two off take agreements in place or an order of goods or services with a written contract.
- The enterprise must be leveraging technology.
- The enterprise must have standardised operating procedures.
- The enterprise must be fully compliant and registered with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC).
- Showcase continuous monitoring of key performance indicators, market trends, strategy adaption and growth opportunities and address all potential challenges.
Because Nedbank has put a great emphasis on social impact, applicants must also meet the following social impact criteria:
- The enterprise must align with at least one SDG.
- The enterprise is working on tracking and measuring environmental metrics such as carbon emissions reduced, water saved, water diverted from landfills and minimised energy consumption.
- The enterprise must be measuring or willing to measure the social benefits generated by the business such as number of jobs created in local communities, improvements in living standards for workers or communities, access and empowerment of marginalised groups (employment) and training opportunities.
- The business is willing to adopt a triple bottom line approach to reporting. This considers not only financial performance but also environmental and social impacts.
- The business must develop key performance indicators and metrics aligned with sustainability goals and report regularly on progress towards achieving them.
These are the required criteria you will need to meet before applying for the Nedbank Indalo Fund. If you believe that your business meets all or most of the criteria, you can apply for the Indalo Fund.
With so many small businesses in South Africa, there is huge potential for the economy. Many of these businesses are the biggest employers in the country and the ones that Read More
