The JSE and the government's Technology Innovation Agency have launched a 16-week pilot to prepare 10 small and medium-sized technology companies to raise capital. The companies work in health, agriculture and financial technology, and the programme runs under the JSE's SME Rise banner. It gives them no grant funding.

Patrick Krappie, TIA's executive for innovation enabling, describes it as business development, investment readiness and market access instead.

Participants get support with business diagnostics, growth planning, pitch development and technology commercialisation, and each leaves with a funding-ready pitch pack.

The JSE adds sector-specific sessions and a market-access day for meeting investors. Companies that meet the requirements may then be considered for JSE Private Placements, the exchange's digital platform for raising debt and equity for unlisted and listed companies, or for AltX, its market for smaller high-growth firms. Selection was competitive. TIA invited 43 companies from its database, 16 applied, 14 completed an interview, and 10 were chosen on innovation, market potential, readiness, leadership and risk.

The companies have not been named, but the context here is a shrinking exchange: The JSE has about 280 listed companies, down from more than 800 in the 1990s. TIA is also unusually well funded right now. In February, it received about R1.2 billion in a settlement over its 2015 sale of a 49% stake in biotech start-up Kapa Biosystems for $ 4.9 million, roughly R80 million, eight months before Kapa sold to Roche for $ 445 million, roughly R7.3 billion.

TechCentral's Fanie van Rooyen reported the launch and the selection process, and quoted Krappie saying the aim is closing the gap between developing a promising technology and taking it to market. Duarte da Silva's TechCentral column in May set out how far the JSE's listings have fallen.

TechCentral also reported in June that TIA had committed R137.3 million of the settlement to its seed fund and commercialisation hubs and R300 million to a fund-of-funds approach, but had not yet paid it out.

There is a fitting irony in who is running this. TIA sold half of Kapa Biosystems for about R80 million and watched the whole company sell for about R7.3 billion eight months later. That is exactly the lesson in investment readiness and timing the pilot now sets out to teach.

Not offering grants is the right design, because grants can keep a company comfortable without making it fundable, and the gap most local tech firms face is preparation and access, not a lack of cash alone. The scale is modest: 10 unnamed companies over four months, explicitly a test of the partnership itself. But it gives founders something concrete, a route from private placement to AltX that most do not think of as open to them.

It also fits TIA's wider role as an investor, including as a backer of Mamor Capital's first fund, and an exchange that needs more companies, which is why a Fidelity listing would be welcome news there.

You might also like our piece on what SA venture exits actually return, Capitec's secondary listing on A2X, and the Investec early-stage entrepreneur awards.

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