Africa’s on-demand home cleaning services startup SweepSouth has R10 million from a clutch of venture capitalists investors, which includes Vumela Fund, as well as from its existing investor, Vinny Lingham and Llew Claasen’s firm, Newtown Partners. By Gugu Lourie
The Vumela Fund is capitalised by the First Rand Group and the Jobs Fund and managed by FNB in an alliance relationship with Edge Growth.
The Cape-Town-based start-up said the funding will be utilised to fund growth.
Pandor, CEO of SweepSouth, explains: “With this major new cash injection from the Vumela Fund, we can further expand our rapidly growing national footprint.”
Launched in 2014, SweepSouth has created work opportunities for cleaners across the country, and has completed thousands of bookings in homes and offices in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria. It was founded on the belief that the home cleaning industry needed modernisation through technology as well as a change in mindset towards the belief that everyone deserves access to dignified work at decent pay.
“As we expand we can offer so many more work opportunities,” says Pandor. SweepSouth has created thousands of job opportunities in the last few months for women, the vast majority of whom were unemployed, resulting in over 100,000 hours of cleaning being completed over this time”.
Lead investor Janice Johnston of Edge Growth says, “We think SweepSouth is one of the leading tech startups in SA. The on-demand economy is a huge growth area because a lot of consumers’ needs can be far better served with tech-enabled, on-demand services. Uber is a great example of such innovation and we think SweepSouth is the Uber of cleaning in SA. The exciting job creation opportunities which the SweepSouth platform provides professional cleaners, is an important attribute of the investment for the Vumela Fund.”
