Sea Monster expands global impact in entrepreneurship education with King’s Trust International

As a small business development specialist, Edge Growth invests capital and provides post-investment support to unlock the growth of high-potential SMEs across South Africa. As an investee, Sea Monster develops games, simulations, and interactive digital experiences that equip future entrepreneurs with the mindset and skills to get started.

Glenn Gillis - Co-founder and CEO of Sea Monster

Edge Growth and Sea Monster share a commitment to scaling entrepreneurship, a deep conviction that it is one of the most powerful levers for economic change in Southern Africa and recognising that the biggest challenge is not identifying entrepreneurs, but equipping them.

Sea Monster is certainly establishing itself as one of the world's leading voices on using game-based learning to build entrepreneurial skills at scale, judging by these great achievements.

Sea Monster has been announced by The King's Trust International as its partner to redesign and build its large-scale Enterprise Game. This will be deployed across six Commonwealth countries, bringing Sea Monster's distinctly African approach to game-based entrepreneurship education to a genuinely global stage.

“We couldn’t be more delighted with our collaboration with Sea Monster. From the outset, they invested the time to truly understand not only the goals of the project and the ambition of the charity, but crucially the lived realities of the young people this game is designed to empower. They brought creativity, pace and real energy to the process, and we’re excited to see the transformational impact the game will have when it goes live,” says Jo Parsons, director of delivery and impact at the Kings International Trust.

The King's Trust is one of the world's most prominent impact organisations, for which entrepreneurship is a central mission.

South Africa's youth unemployment rate sits at approximately 45.5% - one of the highest in the world. Traditional education systems have not kept pace with the scale of the problem, and conventional business training remains theoretical, expensive, and frequently inaccessible to the communities that need it most. Sea Monster was built on the belief that games are uniquely positioned to change this.

Games work as an entrepreneurship tool because they are:

• Data-driven: Every interaction generates measurable learning outcomes, allowing educators and partners to track real skill development rather than relying on test scores alone

• Deeply engaging: Players spend extended, voluntary time inside the learning environment - not because they have to, but because they want to

• A safe space to fail: In a game, failure has no real-world consequences. Players can test strategies, make mistakes, learn from them, and try again - a freedom that is particularly valuable for young people from communities where the cost of failure in real life is extremely high

• Systems thinkers: Good games teach players to understand cause-and-effect, resource management, and strategic decision-making - precisely the systems thinking that entrepreneurship demands

In much of Africa, the choice of entrepreneurship is often driven by necessity, with limited support system, higher barriers to entry, and restricted access to funding and networks. Because of this, entrepreneurship education tools cannot simply be adapted from Western models. They need to be designed for local realities, mobile-first, able to work offline, culturally relevant, and affordable. This is the design approach that underpins how Sea Monster builds its solutions.

When first founded, using games as a practical catalyst for change was still quite a new idea. But Sea Monster, backed by funding partner Edge Growth, believed that they could compete with the best in the world, with a mission to scale and unlock the potential of Sea Monster’s solutions globally. And this is exactly what they have done.

Sea Monster's work in the entrepreneurship education space spans financial services, non-profit, and global partnership - each project demonstrating what is possible when game design meets genuine social intent.

Some of their other impressive and ‘game changing’ partnerships include:

• In partnership with the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation, Sea Monster developed AGEC, a mobile-first business simulation game that reached over 10,800 players across four countries, achieved a 74.4% completion rate, boosted business valuation knowledge by 448%, and earned international awards

• With Nedbank, the team created Chow Town on Roblox, the first African banking experience on the platform, attracting 1.5 million young South Africans, earning an 81% positive rating, and introducing multiplayer gameplay

• For Lemonade Day USA, Sea Monster built My Lemonade Day, a digital companion app that transforms the youth entrepreneurship programme for ages 5–13, supporting financial literacy and enabling scalable programme delivery

The King’s Trust International partnership is a milestone, but it also signals something broader: entrepreneurship education is a global challenge, and solutions can be developed locally.

About Sea Monster

Sea Monster is a South African impact games studio specialising in games for learning and games for marketing. The studio designs and builds interactive digital experiences for financial services institutions, non-profit organisations, and global impact partners. Sea Monster's work spans Roblox, mobile-first browser games, and mobile apps, with a particular focus on entrepreneurship education, financial literacy, and behaviour change at scale.

About Edge Growth

Edge Growth is one of South Africa's leading venture capital and SME fund managers, with over R2 billion in assets under management. Founded in 2007, the firm manages a portfolio of SME development and enterprise supplier development funds on behalf of major corporate and institutional investors, providing both capital and post-investment support to high-growth businesses across South Africa. Edge Growth's mission is to drive inclusive economic growth and job creation by backing entrepreneurs who are building the businesses of tomorrow.