Two new South African venture funds launched in the past three weeks. Mamor Capital reached a R300-million first close with the PIC as anchor, and Grindstone Ventures launched a R500-million fund targeting the seed-to-Series A gap, with a R150-million first close.

Both arrive shortly after the first serious attempt to answer the question that has dogged local venture capital for a decade: when South African startups do exit, what do investors actually get back?

Research published in July by the SA SME Fund, Endeavor South Africa and SAVCA examined 226 realised exits reported by local venture fund managers between 2009 and 2026. It found capital-weighted realised returns of 2.01 to 2.45 times invested capital, which the researchers describe as broadly in line with mature markets including the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and India.

A companion study looked more closely at 18 venture-backed exits across 21 investment rounds between 2014 and 2026, and found a median gross internal rate of return of 54%, a median money-on-invested-capital multiple of 3.5 times, and a median exit valuation of roughly R1.6-billion. Those 18 companies grew revenue 256% and headcount 49% since 2021, creating more than 4,000 direct jobs, around 230 per company.

For scale, SAVCA's 2026 survey puts the local industry at R15.45-billion under management across 1,529 active portfolio investments. The most visible recent exit is Nedbank's acquisition of iKhokha for about R1.65-billion in August 2025.

Thato Ntseare, head of venture investments at E Squared Investments, argues the more useful frame is value realisation rather than exit, and points to a shift the headline research does not capture: full trade sales are no longer the default route to liquidity.

Partial exits are becoming more common, she says, particularly in sectors such as FMCG, where founders partner with investors to reach manufacturing, distribution and expansion capacity while keeping strategic control.

E Squared's own realisations have come predominantly through partial exits rather than outright sales, and the firm reported R31-million of realised returns in 2025 from businesses it still holds, against R137-million realised since inception. As a permanent-capital investor, it is not bound to sell on a fund-life timetable, which is what makes holding and realising at the same time possible.

Ntseare's wider argument is that exit readiness belongs in the early build rather than the final year, describing exit planning as "not an endpoint, but a discipline that shapes decision-making over time".

She also makes the risk point plainly: most founders have the bulk of their personal wealth tied up in one business, and partial liquidity is how that gets diversified without walking away.

Business Day reported SAVCA chief executive Anusha Naidu's point that demonstrating realised exits is fundamental to developing any private capital market, and that the findings matter most for pension funds and family offices still weighing the asset class. Disrupt Africa reported Grindstone is finalising an exit from its first fund that will return meaningful capital to investors. IT-Online quoted Retail Capital founder Karl Westvig on what an exit actually produces: capital gets recycled, founders and teams walk away with proof it can be done here, and most of them go again.

The useful part for a founder is not the multiple; it is what the exited companies had in common. Endeavor's Alison Collier describes them as built from South Africa but not only for South Africa: they solved real market problems, used technology to scale efficiently, and in many cases expanded regionally or globally.

That combination is what made them attractive to acquirers. Ntseare's partial-exit point sharpens it, because it means liquidity and control are no longer a single either-or decision made once. And it matters now because Mamor took three years to reach its first close while Grindstone is raising with exits written into the mandate.

The capital arriving is being raised on the strength of these numbers, so the governance and reporting discipline that makes a business acquirable is the same discipline that gets it funded in the first place.

You might also like our piece on Mamor Capital's R300-million first close, Verascient's seed round and where SA founders are raising, and what the surge in South African M&A says about who is buying.

Get more SA tech and business news and subscribe to The Open Letter.