Unpacking One of Inyosi’s Most Misunderstood Criterion
More often than not, the same comment lands in our inbox: “Why do you only fund businesses making over a million rand per annum? Where does that leave the rest of us?”
It’s a fair question. If you’re running an early-stage business or startup, the R1 million turnover per annum threshold can feel less like part of the criteria to meet, and more like another institution slamming a door in your face, telling you that you haven’t earned your seat at the table yet, despite all your hard work. But not every table serves the same meal: some are set for funding, some for a meal you’re not quite ready for yet, and some are simply set for a conversation and a chance to be heard.
Let’s open that door and show you what’s behind it. Once you understand why we ask for this, it becomes clear this isn’t a locked door keeping you out; it’s a signpost pointing you toward the exact support you need for where your business is right now.
Different capital tools exist to do specific jobs at different moments in a business’s life:
Grants & Sponsorships:
Non-repayable capital used to support strategic initiatives, community programmes, growth projects and early-stage concepts without creating additional financial exposure or repayment obligations for the recipient.
Seed Capital & Accelerators:
Investors take equity in exchange for funding unproven ideas, pricing in high failure risks to answer one question: Does this idea work?
Bank Loans:
Lenders provide funds backed strictly by collateral (like your paid off house or car) and/or personal guarantees to secure their risk.
Growth Funding (Inyosi’s Focus):
We don’t take an equity stake in your business or hand out donations, and in most cases, we don’t ask for your home or other personal assets as security. Instead, we invest in businesses that have already proven their model and need expansion capital to scale higher.
Where a seed funder asks, “Does this idea work?”, a growth funder asks, “Now that it works, how do we help it grow bigger?”
Because we don’t take equity, and rarely rely on personal assets as security, we need a different kind of evidence: proven turnover.
What R1m Turnover Per Annum Proves (and What It Doesn’t)
Turnover is not wealth or profit. It is simply the total revenue flowing through your business before paying salaries, rent, stock, or taxes. A founder turning over R1 million can still take home a modest salary, drive a car, and feel the weight of cash flow stress.
When we set a R1 million per annum turnover threshold, we aren’t asking, “Are you rich?”
We are asking a much narrower, more vital question: Have you proven that real customers will repeatedly pay for what you have built at a meaningful scale?
Passing R1 million in revenue per annum proves something a business plan cannot:
1. Market Validation: Customers consistently choose your product over competitors.
2. Operational Resilience: You have navigated pricing errors, supplier delays, and slow seasons.
3. Track Record: You have established a repeatable revenue pattern we can measure, rather than an unproven forecast.
Why This Matters for Enterprise & Supplier Development (ESD)
As an Enterprise and Supplier Development (ESD) funder, Inyosi’s mandate is to build resilient, black-owned businesses that can integrate meaningfully into corporate supply chains.
Scaling a business actually eats cash faster than starting one.
Larger inventory orders, new hires, and systems infrastructure create new financial fragility. Providing growth capital too early can overload a business with obligations before its operational foundation is ready. Matching the right funding tool to your current stage protects your business’s long-term sustainability.
If your business has under R1m in turnover per annum:
This criterion is a benchmark, not a judgment. Focus on early-stage tools designed for validation, bootstrapping, incubator programs, specialised grant funds, or seed micro-loans. Focus on securing repeatable customers and reaching that first R1 million per annum milestone. Once you cross it, our growth capital will be waiting for you.
If you are at R1m in turnover per annum:
That milestone is tangible proof that you’ve completed the hardest phase of entrepreneurship. You have built a working engine; growth funding is the fuel to make it bigger without sacrificing equity, and with far less reliance on personal assets than a traditional loan.
Whether you’re still paving the road to that first R1 million or ready to hit the accelerator on your next big phase of growth, remember that every successful business started right where you are standing today.