Business Support




We Provide Small Business Support through Our Incubators and Mentorship Programmes

Many small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) need business support to get off the ground and without a helping hand, many of them fail prematurely and never reach a sustainable stage.  Our goal is to ease the challenges of starting a new company because the businesses in our incubator are all part of a community of entrepreneurs.  This means that you are surrounded by like-minded people who want to succeed in business and you have access to common incubator resources, designed to build your business to realise its full commercial potential.

How can Our Business Incubators Help You?

Businesses within our business incubators receive all the business support and services they need to get them past that critical first stage in small business development.  To this end, we aim to:

  • improve these small businesses' enterprise performance
  • enhance their profitability
  • enhance their growth
  • offer them technology
  • provide management support

These are necessary in order to help entrepreneurial early movers cash in on the true value and potential of their ideas.  Every business moves through development stages in our business incubators at an optimal rate, from:

  • the concept phase, where the first-cut assessment is being made of the strategic environment,
  • the development phase, where feasibility and go-to-market strategies are devised and explored, up to
  • the commercial phase, where profitable market opportunities are exploited.

The Importance of SMME Development in Africa

Small and upstart business support is especially important in the African context in order to empower communities and entrepreneurial individuals to create thriving businesses and employment opportunities.  Small business development can go a long way towards redressing some of the most prevalent social ills, like crime, poverty, unemployment, social dysfunction and disease.  To this end, SMME development has vast potential on the continent, especially considering the surfeit of willing people, enterprising entrepreneurs and abundant natural resources.

Key Services

We offer a variety of key business support services and these include:

  • Business and technology mentoring and coaching.
  • Access to professional service providers.
  • Furnished, plug-and-play office space (in a secure environment).
  • Access to networking opportunities.
  • Access to skills and business development interventions (like training in functional business disciplines).
  • Shared resources (like reception and meeting facilities).
  • Internet access.

These key services greatly assist entrepreneurs to grow sustainable by achieving the following:

    • Reducing the amount of capital that has to be invested in non-productive assets (through the provision of furnished office space, a professional image and a sense of credibility and permeance).  Rather spend your scarce capital on product and market development.
    • Cutting running costs through shared facilities and thus lowering the venture's burn rate, thereby increasing return and lowering capital investment requirements.
    • Accessing customers and finance sources by leveraging the connections and strong reputation of the Incubator, improving the venture's chances to secure capital when needed.
    • Improving business building speed: business and technical advice will help you bring forward returns more quickly, reducing the investment needed.  It is a critical part of our business support function.