Nedbank Business Banking has presented the Bandwidth Barn, an information and communications technology business incubator in the Western Cape, with a cheque for R500 000. 

The funds have been provided as a grant to the Bandwidth Barn as part of Nedbank Business Banking’s Enterprise Development assistance, and will be used to grow ICT companies in the Western Cape.

The Bandwidth Barn is a Cape Town based company that incubates businesses in the ICT sector. The company encourages innovation and provides ongoing training and support needed to help businesses overcome the entry barriers to employment, start-up, survival and growing their businesses. The programme encompasses increasing ICT sector competitiveness through training and skills; supporting ICT Sector growth by stimulating and boosting entrepreneurship; and transformation of the ICT sector through SMME & BBBEE enterprise support.

Nirmala Reddy, Nedbank Business Banking’s Senior Manager Enterprise Development says, “We are extremely proud to contribute to this important initiative.  Bandwidth Barn’s success record surpasses international benchmarks in terms of success ratios from a sustainability point of view, and their contribution to the ICT sector is impacting positively on Cape Town’s vision to become the ‘Silicone Valley’ of the Southern Hemisphere.

The Bandwidth Barn has a two-pronged approach to supporting companies: The first prong is to lower the physical barriers to starting up a new business and mitigate the risks by ensuring companies are not bound to long term leases. This is done by providing the infrastructure required for a new business to operate successfully and businesses can benefit from short term leases (one year), bandwidth aggregation and reduced office set-up costs at Bandwidth Barn. The second is a carefully considered and proven business development programme to equip the budding entrepreneur with basic skills to ensure sustainability.

A recent impact analysis on the successes of the Bandwidth Barn’s programmes since 2006 has revealed that of the 40 companies that have participated in the programme, 33 are still in business. This equates to a survival rate of 82.5%.