{"id":829261,"date":"2025-06-28T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=829261"},"modified":"2025-06-27T14:27:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T12:27:13","slug":"the-little-known-company-founded-by-south-africas-most-prominent-investor-billionaire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business-opinion\/829261\/the-little-known-company-founded-by-south-africas-most-prominent-investor-billionaire\/","title":{"rendered":"The little-known company founded by South Africa’s most prominent investor billionaire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The late Allan Gray was one of South Africa’s most prominent and wealthiest investors, but many may have never heard of the impact firm he founded, E Squared.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gray is primarily known in South Africa for the investment company named after him\u2014the largest private asset manager in the world\u2014and other ventures like the Bermuda-based Orbis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, in addition to his keen interest in finance and wealth, Gray was also a prominent philanthropist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He founded E Squared in 2007, which was set up as Allan Gray’s employment equity partner, holding roughly 18% of the investment firm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, the company started its funding activity, with the company now offering pre-seed funding to mature-stage investments.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company takes a unique approach to funding by trying to marry investor returns with social good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company is dedicated to funding entrepreneurs to create employment opportunities to tackle social inequality and enable economic inclusivity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an impact investor, E Squared provides funding and business support to high-growth businesses, early-stage founders and social entrepreneurs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking with BusinessTech, E Squared CEO Gladwyn Leeuw said the company is essentially two companies within one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first focuses on Social Entrepreneurs, which relatively smaller amounts to start-ups and non-profit benefit organisations to help them build scale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These businesses can often receive pre-seed funding, where business concepts are put to practice, and seed funding, where a company has started earning revenue but requires more cash. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

E Squared Ventures operates more like a conventional venture capital firm, where high-growth and scalable ventures are invested in. This can also include post-investment support. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to larger investments, Leeuw said that E Squared will often partner with other venture capital firms with slightly more experience to ensure a greater chance of success. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike other Venture Capitalists that have to answer to shareholders and often have a shorter timeframe to receive profits, E Squared benefits from the dividends it receives from Allan Gray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any potential earnings from its portfolio companies are then used to fund other ventures, with the cycle then repeating. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means the company can adopt a longer-term investment strategy, giving entrepreneurs patient capital from pre-seed to maturity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company is also sector-agnostic, allowing it to invest in various sectors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in 2024, the company invested in Fintr, which tries to improve financial literacy via gamified learning, and the digital agriculture company, Khula. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regarding more well-known entities, the company recently invested in MyNextCar, which offers services to Bolt drivers and fleet managers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Measuring impact  <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>
E Squared CEO Gladwyn Leeuw<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

In 2024, E Squared invested R370 million into companies, spanning the full enterprise lifecycle from pre-seed ventures to Search & Pipeline initiatives and strategic co-investments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group noted that 32,000 jobs have now been created, supported and benefited from E Squared. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The portfolio grew by 44% year-on-year, with multiple invested capital increasing to 1.42 times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company\u2019s total returns of R103 million from a total investment of R1.02 billion may seem low. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it is essential to note that venture capital firms often take longer to earn returns, and that the greater risk usually leads to greater returns from only a set of investments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collaboration with other funds is becoming increasingly common for the group, which recently partnered in a R300 million Fund of Funds with the SA SME Fund and the Technology Innovation Agency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

E Squared Co-Funding also funds high-growth investment with a mandate to focus on ventures with at least 25% black and\/or female ownership at the Series A+ stage, where companies tend to break even.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking to the future, the company plans to expand E Squared Co-Funding in terms of capital deployed and geographic reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company also plans to invest in more diverse founders across Africa and hopes to change how capital is allocated across the continent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Allan Gray established E Squared in 2007, which is becoming a growing force in the South African venture capital space. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":829292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6756,22959],"class_list":["post-829261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-opinion","tag-allan-gray","tag-e-squared"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829261"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829502,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829261\/revisions\/829502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}