IMBE Enterprise Incubator
Client: Yellowwoods and Hollard Foundation Trust
Period: 2021
Education & knowledge
Banking & finance
01 — The sneak-peek
Bringing seed funding to fruit
BBA Liminal renamed and reimagined an early childhood development (ECD) enterprise incubator as IMBE — after a lost crop of Africa, an ancient fruit tree — and gave it the strategy, identity and digital home to launch a new funding product for the women who run South Africa's early-learning centres.
02 — The liminal moment
Founded in 2015 by Yellowwoods and the Kago Ya Bana programme within the Hollard Foundation Trust, the KYB Enterprise Incubator existed to raise and disperse start-up capital for new early childhood development enterprises. By 2021 it had outgrown that first form. A new product was ready — the Growth Accelerator, designed not only to seed ECD micro-enterprises but to grow them, through financing, business workshops, coaching, custom digital tools and property development.
The incubator came to BBA Liminal to strategise that launch. The deeper problem was one of meaning. A funding vehicle named for its mechanism now needed to speak, warmly, to the women who run ECD centres — and to keep its credibility with the funders it depends on. Its identity had to evolve to match its higher purpose. The threshold was the move from dispersing capital to nurturing enterprises built to last.
03 — The transformation
An identity informed by indigenous knowledge. We renamed the incubator IMBE, after one of the "lost crops of Africa" — an ancient fruit tree with the potential to improve nutrition, strengthen food security and support rural and sustainable development. A name that carries its higher purpose in a single word.
A mark grown from the tree. We designed a logo drawn from the imbe tree itself: its orange fruit at the centre, cradled by four green leaves. A mark built to serve the incubator's present work and its future ambitions, and to read clearly to ECD owner and funder alike.
A graphic language for the sector. We built a visual language that puts ECD entrepreneurs and the children they teach at the centre, illustrating the owners and teachers themselves and the toys of an early-learning room. We set a communications strategy to carry owners through each step of the Growth Accelerator in plain, engaging terms, and built the website to launch it.
04 — The craft
A name that carries its purpose
From a lost crop of Africa, a whole identity: the imbe fruit cradled by four leaves, a graphic language drawn from the ECD classroom, and a website to bring the Growth Accelerator to the women who run early childhood centres.
05 — The validation of purpose
A heading goes here
1 first Growth Accelerator cycle
>2,000 entrepreneurs seed-funded
>1,000 ECD investments made
Naming
Brand & communications strategy
Digital strategy
Brand identity design
Brand platform development
Positioning & narrative
Purpose architecture
