In a country where access to water, food, and energy marks the line between survival and progress, Nedbank, under the leadership of Poovi Pillay, is putting its capital where it matters most. Anchored by the Green Economy Strategy, the bank targets catalytic sectors, including Water & Sanitation, Waste & Recycling, Regenerative Agriculture, and Renewable Energy, not as charity but as engines of long-term resilience. From regenerative farms in Limpopo to off-grid energy hubs in the Eastern Cape, Nedbank backs scalable ecosystems with a sharp focus on women, youth, and people with disabilities.
The Social Impact Unit is hardwired into the bank’s core, driving Corporate Social Investment (CSI) initiatives that prioritize public benefit. The bank’s work is not for commercial gain as a business but is focused on empowering beneficiaries to grow into sustainable commercial entities. It follows a layered funding model, starting with catalytic grants, advancing to concessional finance, and ultimately unlocking commercial capital, paired with mentorship, market access, and capacity development. As Poovi states, “Our priority is not simply funding businesses but building the conditions in which green enterprises can thrive.” Guided by real-time impact metrics and aligned with global ESG principles, Nedbank demonstrates that systemic green transformation can be ingrained into business strategy, redrawing the economic map in communities long overlooked.
The Gold-in-Green Imprint for Empowering Leadership
As Executive Head of Nedbank’s Social Impact Unit, Poovi leads with purpose and deep accountability. His expertise was earned through hands-on work, authentic partnerships, and a belief that finance, done right, can unlock equity. What he has built is not just a funding model but a framework for people- and planet-centered progress.
To him, truly empowering African business leaders don’t merely lead, they uplift. They blend global perspective with local insight, viewing South Africa’s toughest challenges- unemployment, inequality, and climate risk, as levers for reinvention. These leaders aren’t chasing applause or short-term wins. They create environments where profit and purpose advance together, what Nedbank aptly calls “the gold in green.”
Poovi believes boldness is essential. It took courage to co-develop the Green Economy Strategy, an initiative that turned homegrown ingenuity into economic opportunity. But African leadership also demands resilience: staying the course even when outcomes take time. For him, impactful leadership is collaborative. The most effective leaders, he stresses, listen intently, build cross-sector alliances, and know that meaningful change is never a solo effort.
Above all, they invest in people by equipping communities with the tools, confidence, and knowledge necessary to drive their transformation. Poovi explains, “True leaders work with a mindset of legacy building, focusing on creating ecosystems of opportunity that endure beyond their tenure or the life of their enterprise.” He adds that ethical governance and transparent communication are what give that legacy its strength and the trust to carry it forward.
Catalysts for Change: Green Funds That Fuel Enterprise
Poovi highlights the Nedbank Indalo Fund as one of the bank’s most pioneering initiatives. Launched in partnership with Indalo Inclusive, a nonprofit focused on green and responsible entrepreneurship, the fund provides interest-free loans to businesses with repayment potential that are typically excluded from traditional lending due to limited equity, liquidity, or track record.
As the social impact lead, he explains that Nedbank’s funding model progresses intentionally, from startup grants to concessionary finance and, ultimately, commercial capital, guided by a data-driven approach that tracks each enterprise’s growth following the intervention. “We want to showcase that the pipeline we’ve been developing is not only environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive, but also commercially viable,” says Poovi.
The Social Impact Unit (SIU) under the leadership of Poovi, has supported over 1,200 entrepreneurs and created more than 2,900 jobs through Green Economy initiatives.
To date, the Nedbank–Indalo partnership, through the South African Green and Inclusive Awards programme has supported 165 aspiring entrepreneurs through the exposure workshops, and 43 operating enterprises, creating 280 jobs and achieving a remarkable 85% success rate and has generated approximately R30 million combined revenue over the duration of the programme, under SIAGIA programme.
The Nedbank Indalo Fund
The fund provides concessionary financing, between R350K-R500K more specifically non-interest fee bearing recoverable grants, to established enterprises in sectors like water, energy, sustainable agriculture, and integrated waste management. The fund supports 23 enterprises and offers complemented by structured business development support to help these enterprises scale and attract further investment. The fund has achieved an 85% recovery rate to date.
The fund offers acceleration programs and investment readiness support, ensuring long-term sustainability and positioning it as a dynamic ecosystem blueprint for accelerating inclusive growth.
He also turns attention to the Nedbank Green Economy Fund, launched in 2023 with R10 million in seed capital from the Nedbank Social Development Fund. This focused grant pool supports early-stage businesses in South Africa’s green and circular economy, particularly those in the “missing middle” too large for microfinance but not yet eligible for traditional debt.
To date, the fund has approved grants for 45 businesses, many of which contribute to climate resilience through circular models unfamiliar to mainstream investors. One standout is OT Service (Pty) Ltd, a Polokwane-based enterprise founded in 2021 that received R250,000 in co-funding to acquire a 4-ton utility vehicle. The company collects and reprocesses construction waste, aiming to salvage 30% of it for brick production while reducing environmental impact and enabling scalable reuse. To Poovi, the green economy strategist, moving businesses along the finance spectrum from grant dependency to commercial investment remains a core priority.
Under the Agriculture portfolio, the SIU has established strategic partnerships with Timbali and Agri Enterprise to support emerging farmers in transitioning to commercially viable operations. Through these collaborations, over 100 farmers have benefited from comprehensive support, including mentorship, business development training, and the adoption of climate-smart and regenerative agricultural practices.
Balancing Purpose and Performance as Executive Head of Strategy & CSI
With a sharp mind, swift execution, and rock-solid conviction as his lodestar, Poovi exemplifies transformative leadership. His journey boils down to one word: trailblazing. His inclusion among “Africa’s 10 Most Empowering Business Leaders to Watch in 2025” is a fitting recognition.
For Poovi, the strategy only matters if it changes lives. As Executive Head of Strategy & CSI, he leads a centralized and integrated Social Impact Unit where specialized teams, from portfolio development to analytics and volunteerism, ensure that progressive ideas deliver tangible outcomes. Whether growing township-based agribusinesses or mentoring green startups, every decision is rooted in Nedbank’s Green Economy Strategy and driven by its broader purpose.
Real-time tracking through SROI, job creation, enterprise resilience, and environmental indicators helps the team remain agile while staying focused on long-term impact. It’s a model that fuses heart with precision, proving that when purpose and performance align, both communities and capital can grow together.
Empowerment Begins Where Capital Alone Can’t Reach
According to Poovi, Nedbank’s role as an empowerment driver is a methodical re-evaluation of the rules where access alone is no longer sufficient. Real empowerment, he believes, is about unlocking agency by equipping people with the tools, networks, and confidence to pursue their ambitions.
To him, this is empowerment in action, evidence that inclusive growth is possible when financial systems are designed to uplift, not just transact. Nedbank’s layered support model, spanning grant funding, concessional finance, technical assistance, market access, and mentorship, helps small enterprises become investor-ready and scalable.
Poovi describes it as a new economic compact where financial institutions do more than fund. They co-engineer futures. “Nedbank’s empowering role is about showing that profit and purpose can coexist,” he demonstrates, “It’s about creating the conditions where emerging green and social enterprises can become the drivers of South Africa’s inclusive, sustainable future.”
From Puzzle Pieces to a Playbook: Lessons in Leading Impact
For Poovi, the most complex challenges often start with a deceptively simple question: how to move promising green enterprises from grant dependency to full commercial viability? At Nedbank, this question became a strategic thread, revealing that funding is only one piece of the puzzle. True, lasting impact requires a more holistic approach: patient finance, market access, deep mentorship, and tailored capacity building.
This insight shaped a collaborative framework built through trusted partners like Indalo Inclusive and Fetola. Nedbank now delivers layered support, including grants, zero-interest loans, and scale-up tools embedded in investment-readiness programs to help enterprises grow with resilience. Their first bold move was backing climate-resilient entrepreneurship. Through sector-focused programs like Indalovator, Indalogrow, and Indaloaccel, the bank drives innovation in water, energy, waste, and regenerative agriculture, delivering practical solutions while strengthening community resilience.
Next came the SiAGIA model, designed to close inclusion gaps. It prioritizes women-led, youth-owned, and rural enterprises, combining grant support with mentorship and workshops that bridge economic divides and ignite grassroots empowerment. Recognizing that many enterprises falter post-startup, the model also strengthens market access and technical capacity by helping entrepreneurs build essential skills, navigate information barriers, and scale into new markets.
Every layer of this model aligns with South Africa’s development goals. By bridging grassroots innovation with national priorities, Nedbank’s CSI investments continue to drive systemic, measurable, and lasting impression through supporting jobs, enabling climate action, and strengthening local governance.
Nedbank Engineering Impact: Leveraging Innovation and Technology
“Innovation and technology are at the core of Nedbank’s approach to achieving meaningful, measurable and scalable impact through our CSI initiatives,” Poovi recounts. By embedding data and digital tools into its Corporate Social Investment (CSI) model, the bank has shifted impact from a hopeful by-product to an intentional outcome.
To drive this, Nedbank uses advanced analytics and real-time dashboards to monitor each initiative across critical metrics, job creation, enterprise resilience, environmental outcomes, and social return on investment. More than a reporting function, this data sharpens responsiveness, revealing which enterprises are scaling and where intervention can be most effective.
But innovation at Nedbank isn’t limited to measurement. It extends to how funding is structured through performance-linked and incentive-based disbursements that reward growth and foster long-term viability. It’s more than funding; it’s intelligent scaffolding. On the ground, this strategy is brought to life through dynamic partners like Kusini Water and Fetola’s Hloolo platform.
Kusini Water fuses nanotechnology and macadamia nut shells to create solar-powered water filtration units for underserved communities. With Nedbank’s backing, the company has delivered over 11 000 000 kilolitres of clean water and creating more than 200 jobs and enabling the growth of micro-enterprises. Fetola’s Hloolo platform, meanwhile, acts as a digital accelerator for green SMEs, connecting them to funding, markets, and mentorship. Featuring investment readiness scorecards, online learning modules, and curated webinars, Hloolo builds a living knowledge ecosystem that scales alongside the entrepreneurs it supports.
The Ecosystem of Empowerment: A Blueprint for Africa’s Green Growth
Nedbank’s strategic intent, backed by Poovi, is to be a powerhouse of inclusive economic participation and long-term resilience, rooted in a view that links environmental sustainability, social justice, and economic equity. This perspective is shaped by the continent’s realities, water scarcity, food insecurity, energy access, and waste mismanagement, which serve not only as challenges but also as entry points for systemic reinvention.
By co-creating scalable, replicable green ecosystems, Nedbank advances community upliftment and enterprise development while offering a global model for how financial institutions can implant purpose at the core of their strategy. As Poovi emphasizes, their ecosystem-based approach is a synergy of catalytic funding, robust capacity development, strategic market access, and vital partnerships, which serve as a blueprint. This commitment zeroes in on rural and semi-urban areas, where the potential for transformative, sustainable growth is immense.
It ensures that enterprises move beyond survival to develop viable models that not only create jobs and drive innovation but also deliver profound social and environmental benefits, securing a truly green and equitable future.
Nedbank’s ambition, as articulated by Poovi, is to reimagine finance as a lever for systemic renewal. With its vision extending beyond South Africa’s borders, the bank is cultivating regenerative enterprise zones that seed opportunity, strengthen climate resilience, and foster shared prosperity. At the heart of this lies a new financial archetype, one that channels capital into ventures that serve both economic and environmental goals. In this model, green enterprises are not central to Africa’s economic transformation but rather a niche.
Beyond Philanthropy: Nedbank’s SIU Powers Inclusive, Strategic Change
For Poovi, the creation of Nedbank’s Social Impact Unit (SIU) quietly marked a turning point. It wasn’t just a strategic move; it was a power shift. By consolidating CSI, enterprise development, and shared value efforts into a single, cohesive engine, the SIU made social investment a core component of how Nedbank grows.
It’s a data-led, outcomes-driven platform that prioritizes those left out of economic participation. Every initiative is tracked, whether it involves creating jobs, scaling enterprises, developing skills, or reducing emissions. What Poovi set in motion is a transformation from one-off interventions to sustained empowerment at scale. The SIU is Nedbank’s proof that when the impact is intentional and measurable, doing good becomes a competitive advantage.
Advice to Africa’s Empowering Leaders
To the aspiring business leaders in Africa who aim to build empowering and impactful organizations, Poovi’s advice is incunabular, start early, infuse purpose at the genesis, and let impact shape the roadmap.
He believes it begins with anchoring the business in a purpose that unites profit with social and environmental good, especially in Africa, where inclusive growth is a pressing need.
The next imperative is investing in people through skills development, mentorship, and meaningful partnerships. “Skills development, mentorship and partnerships are vital, not just within your own organization, but across the value chains and communities you touch,” he emphasizes.
Impact, he reminds them, is never instant. It requires resilience, patience, and careful measurement. Understanding one’s impact, he advises, is essential to refining and strengthening a business model. Ultimately, he urges leaders to focus on building legacy-driven organizations that empower future generations and embed systems for sustained positive change. The most impactful leaders, he concludes, are those who empower others and leave behind long-lasting ecosystems.