When you ask Kleoss Capital CEO, Hale Matsipa, if being one of the few black controlled equity firms in South Africa impacts how they do business, the answer is an emphatic no.
“We’re commercial businessmen, we’re extremely sensitive to transformation, and so we wear those hats. In fact, you can argue that transformation is part of being commercial. So no, it doesn’t change our thinking.”
Halekopane (Hale) Matsipa (42) together with Andile Keta (38) and private equity practitioner, Zain Laher (39) founded Kleoss Capital, a R1.2 billion growth equity fund, in 2014.
“We came together out of the burning desire to leave our jobs and start something new for ourselves and also to utilise our expertise we had acquired in our banking worlds which was deal sourcing, deal structuring, advising clients and on acquiring and disposing of businesses. So I think we came to the realisation that if we can get together a pool of money, we could do this on our own,” says Matsipa.
The ambition, Matsipa says, is for Kleoss Capital to be a multi-class investment manager in the alternative space.
“We identify companies, we value companies, we define and decide how much capital they need, what that capital is for, how they are going to grow the business with the capital we give them, whether they are empowered or not, their transformation story and then we invest in that business; we hopefully grow it, transform it and sell it at a higher price.”
Explaining how they decide on which companies to invest in, Matsipa says the first thing they look at is whether they can get a good return.