E Squared Investments has released its 2025 Impact Report, outlining the organisation’s work in backing responsible entrepreneurs, supporting portfolio resilience and contributing to economic inclusion through a long-term investment model.
The report positions E Squared’s work within its long-term mandate to support entrepreneurs who build commercially resilient businesses while widening access to opportunity. Its integrated model supports founders across the entrepreneurial journey, from pre-seed programmes and early-stage business investment to co-investment, fund partnerships, social entrepreneurship, and venture philanthropy.
The report includes 37,756 jobs created, supported and beneficiated since inception. E Squared treats this as one reported outcome, while continuing to strengthen how longer-term impact is measured, with meaningful contribution to lives meaningfully improved.
Gladwyn Leeuw, Chief Executive Officer of E Squared, says the report reflects the practical demands of supporting entrepreneurs through uncertainty.
“Entrepreneurs continue to build in an environment where capital remains scarce and the margin for error is limited. That reality reinforces the importance of patient, long-term support. Our focus is on helping founders build sustainable businesses that can keep trading through difficult cycles, grow into the demands of scale and widen access to opportunity.
“Financial performance and social impact are mutually reinforcing. Businesses that are financially sustainable are better positioned to create jobs, serve customers, support suppliers and contribute to stronger communities. Our responsibility is to support responsible entrepreneurs with purpose and discipline, while strengthening the systems needed to advance this mandate over the long term,” says Leeuw.
E Squared’s support spans the full entrepreneurial journey: backing high-growth ventures founded by Allan Gray Fellows, extending reach through fund managers and their underlying investee companies, and deepening impact-first work through social entrepreneurship and venture philanthropy.
Since inception, E Squared has invested approximately R1.34 billion across 227 businesses at different growth stages, including R316 million in 2025. The report places these figures alongside the quality of businesses supported the durability of outcomes and the discipline with which impact is measured over time.
The portfolio shows signs of maturity. E Squared Ventures records 16% fair market value growth, with R31 million in realised returns from partially exited investments during the year. These indicators sit alongside ongoing work to help businesses survive, adapt, and continue building in a challenging early-stage market.
Transformation remains central to E Squared’s investment approach. In 2025, 92% of investment value was directed to black beneficiaries, while investment value supporting black-women-owned businesses reached 62% for the year. These figures reflect choices about where opportunities are sourced, how businesses are supported, and how value is created over time.
The report also notes that 42 ventures have surpassed R2 million in revenue, and four businesses have exceeded R400 million in revenue or R2 billion in market value. These milestones point to the importance of support beyond funding, including practical guidance, access to networks, governance and post-investment value creation.
Looking ahead, E Squared is focused on strengthening its pipeline, deepening post-investment value creation, improving measurement and building partnerships that support responsible capital, capability and opportunity in South Africa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
As E Squared moves towards 2030, the report points to work that remains ongoing: supporting responsible entrepreneurs with capital and capability, strengthening the systems that enable that support, and measuring impact with greater discipline over time.
