Sales are coming in. Customers are buying. You’re working long hours and chasing every opportunity you can find.
Then a funding opportunity appears, or an investor starts asking questions and things suddenly get complicated.
Across the enterprise and supplier development sector, there’s a common assumption: if a business is active, it must be ready to grow. In practice, commercial activity and funding readiness are not the same thing.
Picture a business doing steady monthly sales, with a small team and a growing customer base. But the owner still runs the books from memory because there’s never been time to build anything more formal. From the outside, that business looks like it’s winning. From a funder’s desk, it looks like a risk they can’t properly assess.
Fetola calls this the MSME Bankability Gap:the distance between a business proving it can trade, and a business proving it’s ready to be backed.
This pattern shows up across South Africa, including among businesses that are already generating revenue, creating jobs and serving growing customer bases. Take Our Poultry Place, for example. Like many growing MSMEs, owner Jo-Andra Cloete Greegory initially struggled to understand why accessing finance remained difficult despite the business growing and creating jobs. As she puts it:
“I realised that running a growing business and being investment-ready are two very different things.”
The investment-readiness process helped Jo-Andra view her business through the eyes of an investor, highlighting where stronger systems, planning and financial visibility were needed. It shifted the conversation from simply needing funding to understanding exactly what needed to change and how the business could demonstrate readiness for growth.
That’s what funders, investors and procurement teams are looking for. Not just proof of effort, but confidence in the numbers. They need to see how a business like Our Poultry Place manages its money, and whether it’s ready to handle growth without defaulting or getting into difficulties.
The good news is that investment readiness can be built. However, the challenge isn’t understanding that something needs attention, it’s knowing which actions will have the greatest impact on funder confidence.
Understanding your cash flow, maintaining accurate records and regularly reviewing business performance are among the fundamentals that help a business move from simply staying busy to scaling sustainably. But knowing which lever to unlock first is critical. That is why the Fetola Bankability Platform™ was built, as a technology-enabled solution to solve this challenge.
It helps businesses identify what to fix first, using the financial verification approach trusted by funders. Rather than guessing where to focus, entrepreneurs can see which actions are most likely to strengthen investment readiness and accelerate access to growth finance.
South Africa is not short of active, promising MSMEs, nor of funding opportunities. It is short of a fast, accessible way for those businesses to prove they’re ready for the capital and contracts already available to them.
Closing that gap starts with knowing what to fix next.
For funders and partners: Read Fetola’s MSME Bankability Gap Report here. [https://fetola.co.za/bankability-gap-report/?utm_source=esd_handbook&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=bankability_report%2C_impactsa_website&utm_content=waitlist]. To discuss the research, contact Grant Prince, Head of Impact Investing at bankable@fetola.co.za
For Entrepreneurs: Know what to fix next. Be the first to access the Bankability Platform. Join the waitlist here. [https://fetola.co.za/bankability-gap-report/?utm_source=esd_handbook&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=bankability_report%2C_impactsa_website&utm_content=waitlist]
Contact block: Grant Prince, Head of Impact Investing, Fetola · 066 473 7773 · bankable@fetola.co.za · fetola.co.za
