Founded by Andile Gcaza (Bsc. Biotechemistry) and Phetole Raseropo (BSc. Botany), the business now employs more than twenty people who work as gardeners and farmers. Through their hard work, they sell over a million seedlings across South Africa.
The dynamic duo are also graduates of Saica’s Enterprise Development (Saica ED) Flagship Programme which empowers SMMEs to elevate their businesses by offering them financial excellence through financial bootcamps, financial coaching, affordable accounting services, using accounting graduates where possible, and develop their financial excellence reporting standards. They established the business after identifying a gap within modern food systems around primary agricultural production value chains.
Through their participation in the programme, they now have an MS Excel comprehensive business plan with a financial model in place, three-year historic financial statements, five-year forward-looking projections on their income statements and a cash flow statement including a loan amortisation schedule. This means that they are now a credible business that can attract different kinds of financial investments and funding.
The two agripreneurs are now acknowledged as prominent contributors to not only the South African economy but to also SMMEs that produce local products that are relevant to our heritage. Evergrow Seedlings strives to offer high turnover vegetable seedlings and primary consultation services to smallholder farmers in urban to peri-urban areas.
Saica Enterprise Development (Saica ED) offers Financial Excellence to SMMEs through all designations of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica). Saica ED thus partners with the Saica associated small and medium practices (SMPs) and other groupings within Saica to achieve Financial Excellence in both small, medium and micro enterprises (SMME) and entrepreneurial incubators nationwide.
