Thuso Incubation Partners

Thuso Incubation Partners (Proprietary) Limited (“Thuso”) is an independent, majority black-owned and managed company.

Being an incubated partnership between Ke Nako and its Black Staff, Thuso is the only transformed team in SA with extensive experience in incubating local teams in private markets and real assets.

Key individuals of Thuso and Ke Nako have demonstrated a track record of incubation and manager selection in South Africa for over 15 years and have developed significant intellectual property with respect to incubation of South African Asset Management Teams. The team has broad incubation experience, having incubated teams in the unlisted/direct property, fixed income and corporate credit, hedge funds (multiple strategies), mezzanine debt, listed property and long only equity portfolio managers. Thuso team members also have extensive experience in managing assets on behalf of institutional investors, and thus have extensive experience in matching fund capital calls and distributions to improve the cash flow requirements of clients.

Ke Nako Capital began its private equity fund-of-funds programme in 2007, allied to this, Carlo Dickson alongside founding partners have successfully owned and run incubation platforms in South Africa and abroad since 2005. Since then, Ke Nako has positioned itself as an independent “bridge” between the investors and the single strategy private equity managers, ensuring that no perceived or potential conflicts exist. Importantly, Ke Nako unlike other institutional offerings in SA does not compete in the single strategy fund arena and can therefore act as a completely independent fund-of-funds manager able to develop very close relationships with the underlying private equity teams.

In Q1 2019, Thuso Incubation Partners earned a mandate from institutional investors and launched Hodisang Fund I which is South Africa’s first dedicated Black SA PE Manager Incubation Fund of Funds.

We have named this the Hodisang Fund I (hodisang means “we grow together”) and set the target size more than R1bn.