Charmaine Padayachy

Charmaine is a Chartered Accountant with a Masters Degree in Financial Management, and has over 20 years broad financial services experience in various sectors and spheres including general investing, private equity, leveraged finance and venture capital across Sub Saharan Africa, South Africa, the UK and Europe. This experience includes portfolio management, company re-organisations and balance sheet restructuring.

She currently holds a senior position as Deal Executive at African Rainbow Capital, where she is primarily responsible for structuring and managing of some of the most important transactions that ARC is considering. Charmaine also occupies various Board positions within the ARC portfolio and has also done so in her prior roles at both Absa Capital Private Equity and the Omidyar Network.

After completing her articles at PWC, Charmaine moved onto Leveraged Finance at Standard Bank, and since then has worked for Ernst & Young’s United Kingdom Transaction Advisory Private Equity practice, which saw her relocate to London, as well as Absa Capital Private Equity. Her role prior to ARC was at the Omidyar Network, a Silicon Valley social impact and venture capital Fund with a global mandate, where she focused on the firms efforts on Sub Saharan Africa, particularly in the areas of Fintech, Agri-Tech, Consumer Tech and Edu-tech. This included significant exposure to the cutting edge of venture capital and tech investments on the West Coast of the US.

Charmaine is also devoting some of her time to working on the SA governments initiatives in developing the early stage investing ecosystem in South African and coaching SA investing talent by participating on the Investment Committees of a technology seed and growth capital Fund established by the SA SME Fund.