The Cape Town Stock Exchange (CTSE) has announced the closing of a $5 million oversubscribed funding round led by a new investor—Imvelo Ventures, a venture capital investment company founded by Capitec Bank and Empowerment Capital Investment Partners.
Other participants in the round include existing CTSE investors Lebashe Investment Group, Pallidus Alternative Investments, Shaolin Investments Limited and Gary Stroebel. The company has also expanded its board to include Mark Fitzjohnand, Bruce Ndidi from Empowerment Capital and Stephan Van Der Walt from Pallidus Alternative Investments.
The CTSE’s financial infrastructure is completely digital in that it operates on a cloud-based platform and uses its own in-house registry which runs on proprietary registry technology, making the entire process of listing companies easier and trading cheaper, faster and secure.
Speaking on the funding round, CTSE CEO Eugene Booysen stated that the exchange’s technology and financing innovation is changing the market’s capital and funding-raise experience and transforming a long and complicated process into a more transparent, safe and simple one.
“We are grateful for our newest and existing investors’ confidence in our business and the opportunity before us. We believe this underscores the fact that our business plays a transformative role in growing the African economy from Cape to Cairo,” he added.
For the lead investor Imvelo Ventures, director Mark Fitzjohn said the firm is always looking to fast-track the growth ambitions of South African entrepreneurs, pointing to the CTSE’s exchange and investment banking technologies capacity to actualise that ambition.
“Their cloud-based technology and end-to-end exchange architecture, combined with a marketplace of supporting partners, will allow them to rapidly and cost-effectively bring innovative, data-driven solutions to the market. This will enable us to push the boundaries of Capital and funding raise using data and AI with new age exchange infrastructure,” he added.
The Cape Town Stock Exchange opened its doors in October 2021 with a pledge to lure firms from across the continent with listings that cost a third of what is charged by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the largest stock exchange in Africa by market capitalisation.
