Vumela Funds Giraffe – Changing The Recruitment Industry | Edge Growth

News Release

The Vumela Fund, FirstRand’s enterprise and supplier development fund managed by Edge Growth, is proud to announce an exciting new equity investment in Giraffe – an automated high-volume recruitment start-up, using mobile technology and matching algorithms.

Vumela was the lead Investor in this round which also included global impact investor The Omidyar Network as well as local investors Forever Young Capital and Catapult Trust

Sam Tennant, Investment Principal at Edge Growth, says that Vumela is excited to partner with this exceptional team of entrepreneurs and investors. 

“We believe this funding round will enable Giraffe to aggressively scale its offering to impact thousands of jobseekers as well as improve its value proposition to the company's corporate customers. Our strong alignment in values was a key determinant in our investment decision. It's inspiring to see companies looking to create such positive social impact through sustainable and scalable business models.”

Giraffe is a fully-automated digital recruitment solution that enables businesses to hire high volumes of medium-skilled workers faster than any existing recruitment solution, this is achieved through Giraffe's sophisticated matching algorithm. The platform allows jobseekers to upload their CVs through any browser enabled cell-phone at no data cost. The company’s algorithm then geolocates and matches the most appropriately skilled jobseekers with opportunities listed by Giraffe’s corporate customers.

The Company now has over 500,000 jobseekers’ CVs on their database and have invited over 150,000 jobseekers for interviews to date.

The platform is expected to place over 100,000 jobseekers over the next 3-5 years, with 10,000 of these placements relating to jobseekers who had been unemployed for a period of greater than 3 months. The platform also aims to reduce staff turnover rates in high staff turnover industries, as well as improving gross disposable income of placed jobseekers through the platform’s proprietary geolocation software.

This offering created a powerful impact value proposition which is attractive to an impact investor like Vumela.

Anish Shivdasani, CEO of Giraffe is delighted to partner with Edge Growth in their latest funding round.

“There are very few credible early stage investors in South Africa. Edge Growth stood out to us amongst other investors because of their credible track record, excellent team and strong alignment with our values”.

The Giraffe team: Shafin Anwarsha (Head of Product), Anish Shivdasani (CEO), Bradley Cowie (Head of Development)

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Vumela was established in 2009 by FirstRand and Edge Growth to help alleviate poverty in South Africa by creating jobs through supporting the growth of SMEs. Vumela has R388M under management, from FirstRand and the Jobs Fund, and to date has deployed R226M to 17 early stage businesses, creating over 1,811 full time equivalent jobs, primarily for low to middle income individuals.

Edge Growth creates jobs by bridging the gap between corporates and entrepreneurs through tailored ESD solutions and fund management.

Why Edge Growth?

• Financially efficient sustainable solutions


• Proven track record with most ESD funds under management


• Multi-sector expertise and scale to deliver


• Best-in-class results driven methodologies


• Access to additional SME funding and corporate contracts