Top 5 Community VC Funds &amp; Investors in South Africa (June 2026)

Knife Capital is an independent growth equity investment firm focusing on innovation-driven ventures with proven traction. By leveraging knowledge, networks & funding, Knife accelerates the international expansion of entrepreneurial businesses that achieved a product/market fit in a beachhead market. Knife have offices in Cape Town andLondon.Knife invests via a consortium of funding partnerships, including SARS section 12J Venture Capital Company KNF Ventures and select family offices. Knife facilitated lucrative exits of local technology companies to the likes of General Electric, Visa, Garmin and Uber.

Investment focus

Industry: Software, Education, Manufacturing
Stage:Series A, Seed
Geography: South Africa, United States, Kenya

Investor stats

Total investments: 31
Round size: Series A $2M–$30M
Lead/follow: 71% lead, 29% follow
Last fund: May invest from a new fund soon — raised $10M in 2021

Portfolio highlights

d6 — SCHOOLS Schools Communication Platforms and School Management Software COMMUNITIES Community & Internal Business Communication Platforms MEDIA Let your brand be seen Advertise on
DataProphet — DataProphet offers production intelligence solutions for manufacturers. By combining human ingenuity with production data, we supercharge manufacturing excellence. Explore our Connect platform and expert services, trusted by industry leaders.
Stone Three Venture Technology — We combine expert services with the power of machine learning to help our customers increase their productivity and safety.

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Vumela was established in 2009 by FNB Business Banking and Edge Growth. The objective was to create an innovative model for the development of a sustainable and a financially and operationally independent investment business which invests in high growth small, medium and micro size enterprises with good economic and impact returns.Vumela wascapitalised in 2010. Within the first four years, we’d invested R90 million into eight high growth SMEs, and created a total of 400 jobs. They launched their 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 invest in and develop entrepreneurial companies in order 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.

Investment focus

Industry: Education, Software, E-Commerce
Stage:Seed, Debt Financing
Geography: South Africa, Brazil

Investor stats

Total investments: 20
Round size: Seed $600k–$822k; Debt Financing $854k–$1.4M
Lead/follow: 80% lead, 20% follow
Last fund: May invest from a new fund soon — raised $14M in 2015

Portfolio highlights

Rentoza — We champion giving you access, affordability and flexibility to explore tech on your own terms
Mia Healthcare —
ProfitShare Partners — Business funding solutions with ProfitShare Partners. We specialise in Short Term Asset Finance to help empower SMEs.

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Savannah Fund is a seed capital fund specializing in US$25,000-US$500,000 investments in early stage high growth technology (web and mobile) startups in sub-Saharan Africa. Initially focused on East Africa, the fund aims to bridge the early stage/angel and venture capital investment gap that currently exists in Africa. The Fund expects toachieve this objective by combining capital with mentor networks both in the region and from Silicon Valley via an accelerator program and a follow-on independent seed fund.The fund is managed by an experienced and technology savvy team that have founded companies or are actively involved in angel investing or having run successful accelerator programs in past but also understand the unique Subsaharan African environment. They are backed and supported by both local, regional and international networks of angels,venture capitalists whose expertise we can draw on to help startups succeed and scale to fully fledged regional or global companies.They believe in the potential for Africa to become a global technology innovator by creating sustainable for profit companies that create jobs and make an impact.

Investment focus

Industry: E-Commerce, FinTech, Software
Stage:Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
Geography: Kenya, United States, South Africa

Investor stats

Total investments: 38
Round size: Seed $25k–$3M; Pre-Seed $200k–$2.1M; Series A $750k–$8M
Lead/follow: 32% lead, 68% follow
Last fund: May invest from a new fund soon — raised $25M in 2021

Portfolio highlights

Oze — OZÉ brings African small businesses into the digital era. It is an app that makes it easy for businesses to track sales, expenses, and customer information. The data is analyzed to provide tailored recommendations, reports, and business education. If the entrepreneur needs a little extra support, an OZÉ Coach is just a click away. As they are usingOZÉ to manage their business and learn how to run it better, we are learning about them. Using this data and machine learning, we can predict their credit risk and provide them with affordable capital from our banking partners. With over 20,000 registered users, OZÉ is the largest online community of SMEs in Ghana. The most exciting thing is that OZÉ works; 97% of businesses that have used OZE for at least 9 months are growing or profitable or both!
Root — Launch digital and embedded insurance solutions with omni-channel distribution.
Afropolitan — Afropolitan is building a Network State to unleash the maximum potential of Africans around the world. Are you interested? Join us with your email.

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TotalEnergies Ventures is the venture capital arm of Total.As part of Total's commitment to a better energy future, TotalEnergies Ventures is focused on finding, funding and fostering high-potential start-ups which will contribute to creating a low carbon future.Current areas of interest include Renewables, Distributed Energy, NewMobility, Energy Access, Energy Storage, Bio-Plastics, Circular Economy, Carbon Capture and Hydrogen.

Investment focus

Industry: Energy, Renewable Energy, Transportation
Stage:Series B, Series C
Geography: United States, France, United Kingdom

Investor stats

Total investments: 93
Round size: Series B $9.3M–$175M; Series C $12M–$65M
Lead/follow: 11% lead, 89% follow

Portfolio highlights

Autogrid — AutoGrid Systems organizes energy data and employs big data analytics to generate real-time predictions that create actionable data.The company’s suite of flexibility management applications allows utilities, electricity retailers, renewable energy project developers and energy service providers to deliver cheap, clean and reliable energy bymanaging networked distributed energy resources (DERs) in real time and at scale. AutoGrid applications utilize petabytes of smart meter, sensor and third-party data, along with powerful data science and high-performance computing algorithms, to monitor, predict, optimize and control the operations of millions of assets connected across global energy networks.Established at Stanford University in 2011, they have assembled a team of world-class software architects, electrical and computer engineers, data scientists and energy experts who apply cutting-edge analytics and in-depth energy data science to solve the world’s most critical energy problems.
45-8 ENERGY — 45-8 ENERGY is exploring eco-friendly helium for uses in many industries.
Ampersand — Ampersand catalyzes and power mass-market electric mobility. By supplying the battery swap network and operating system the company makes sustainable mobility rapidly accessible and affordable for developing markets, to improve livelihoods and the environment. With over a million km already covered by e-motorcycles in Africa using our plug-and-playpowertrain and energy network.

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