About Innovation Edge.
Innovation Edge was founded in 2014 through a partnership between the Omidyar Network, the UBS Optimus Foundation, the DG Murray Trust, the FirstRand Foundation and the ELMA Foundation.
Our Vision
A country where each of our youngest citizens has an optimum early childhood, regardless of the circumstances they’re born into.
Our Mission
We support entrepreneurs and social innovators to develop, test and launch innovative solutions to early childhood challenges.
We are an impact-first investor focused on solving early childhood challenges in South Africa.
Our hands-on backing spans the journey from ideation, to proof of concept (POC), to the transition to scale for successful concepts that promise transformative impact in the lives of young children and those who care for them.
We provide financial, strategic and active support to entrepreneurs and social innovators.
In our first year of operations, the focus was on experimentation with sourcing ideas and development of an iterative approach to POC. By year three, we had 22 investments in South Africa and 6 successful POCs, 4 of which began transitioning to scale.
As of end 2023 we have made a total of 55 investments, mostly in South Africa. While we continue to experiment with ideation and POC, we have begun to place greater emphasis on addressing the challenges associated with transitioning to scale.
We are collaborative, competent, curious, grounded and are driven by a fervent desire to create meaningful change.