Rayleen Brown has conquered many hurdles to set up a small catering business, and now she may face one of her biggest yet: getting a loan from Australia’s private finance sector.
“I’ve always been a bit afraid to go into that space,” she says.
The Arrernte and Ngangiwumirri woman started out many years ago with a business that pioneered bush foods in the Northern Territory.
Knowing many people’s reluctance to native ingredients, Rayleen and her co-founder Gina infused baked goods with desert quandong and found ways to use marinade recipes passed down by her father’s kin.
“We wanted to introduce people to these beautiful flavours that we love so much,” she says.
“People thought we were crazy. It was more of a novelty back then.”
Their business, Kungas Can Cook, flourished to include a cafe in Mparntwe (Alice Springs) and catering for the town’s events. They hired other Indigenous people and funnelled cash back into community.
It was a huge achievement for Rayleen, who “grew up in public housing”.
“It’s self determination in a way really,” she says.
After a pandemic setback, the now-grandmother is today trying to build up her business again. She wants to set up a commercial kitchen in Mparntwe to make pre-packaged bush food infusions to sell in shops and supermarkets.
To do this, Rayleen needs an injection of cash. And it’s here that experts in First Nations finance say she’ll face many entrenched and institutional hurdles.
How many Indigenous entrepreneurs are there in Australia?
There’s little reliable data on the size of Australia’s First Nations business sector.
ABS data compiled from the last Census in 2021 shows there are almost 18,000 registered Indigenous “owner managers”, which isn’t a wholly representative way to count the true extent of the sector’s entrepreneurs.
There’s also around 19,000 people registered as directors of Indigenous corporations, however again this isn’t a widely agreed measurement.
Researchers recently noted in a paper for the Reserve Bank of Australia about the lack of data.
“The best available evidence suggests that the number of registered Indigenous businesses and corporations grew at around 4 per cent per year between 2006 and 2018,” Michelle Evans and Cain Polidano from the University of Melbourne wrote.
“The contributions of First Nations businesses and corporations have seldom been mentioned in the discourse of the Australian economy.”
The researchers noted that one of the big factors pushing growth in the sector has been the Commonwealth’s Indigenous procurements policy, which was brought in last decade to encourage the federal government to source from First Nations business.
In the 2020-21 financial year, it led to 10,920 contracts worth $1.1 billion. The next year’s data is due shortly.
Meanwhile, separate data from Indigenous business organisation Supply Nation shows that last financial year its 700 members spent $3.8 billion with verified First Nations suppliers. That was a 62 per cent increase from the previous financial year and it includes spend from government, not-for-profits and corporate buyers.
Major bank NAB projects Indigenous business volume will continue to grow at a rate of 4 per cent to 2026, which is double projections for the broader economy.
NAB is positioning itself as a leader in lending for the space, and along with this many venture capital firms are also creating funding streams for Indigenous entrepreneurs.
However, First Nations business experts who have spoken to ABC News are warning the finance sector to shape up and to focus on targeting those who really need the help.
Naomi Anstess is a business consultant who coaches First Nations entrepreneurs and small business owners, including Rayleen Brown.
The Erub and Gumroi woman, who was born and raised on Larrakia country (Darwin), has a painful memory of her own interaction with the finance sector.
“It’s really stuck with me,” Naomi says.
Her memory involves going to a bank for a $5,000 personal loan to buy her first car. She had a university degree and a job, and was initially told that she was “good to go”.
Then she went to fill out the application forms and ticked the box saying she is Indigenous Australian. The bank asked about this and denied the loan.
It took Naomi going back into the bank’s office — with her “fairer-skinned” father — to get the lender to change its mind.
“I felt this application of a stereotype that I wouldn’t be able to pay the loan back,” she says.
That was two decades ago. But Naomi believes her clients still face a watered down version of this institutional racism when approaching the finance sector.
“It’s a white boys club,” she says.
The first barrier Naomi often sees for Indigenous entrepreneurs is not coming from wealth to begin with. It’s enormously difficult to get a loan or approach lenders for financing, if you don’t have capital or assets to put up as collateral.
Take the example of a Darwin-based concrete start-up that Naomi is currently mentoring. They need $1.4 million to buy new equipment and grow.
“They are finding it really difficult to access any capital,” she says.
“Aboriginal people generally don’t have any inter-generational wealth, and that’s due to dispossession. It creates an inability to grow.”
This has been the experience of Morgan Coleman, a tech entrepreneur with Torres Strait Islander heritage who grew up on Dja Dja Wurrung and Taungurung country (Bendigo).
He recalls a saying in the start-up world.
“Your first bit of money comes from the three Fs: friends, family and fools. Well, I don’t know any fools. I have friends and family, and they lack inter-generational wealth.”
Despite this, he built up an app that helped pet-owners access veterinarians at short notice. At its peak, Vets On Call was turning over more than $500,000 a year.
To grow the app, Morgan needed cash. He never went to traditional lenders as he knew he had no collateral. So he tried the route of venture capital (VC) instead.
VC is where funds invest money into promising young-starts. Morgan pitched to around 80 and was knocked back.
Achieving VC is difficult for all entrepreneurs, but Morgan especially felt a lack of a “wealth network” to open doors for him, and believes those who did open them “with good intentions” didn’t understand cultural differences.
For instance, he says, he felt many boardroom members didn’t understand that some Indigenous Australians mightn’t feel comfortable crowing about their idea’s future when they’ve “been conditioned not to do that for our entire lives”.
Without capital, Morgan sold Vets On Call. He is now working on another app.
ABC News approached one VC firm, Blackbird, who supported Morgan and several other Indigenous entrepreneurs through a mentoring subsidiary StartMate.
“There are more Indigenous Australian entrepreneurs than ever (but) the funding they receive hasn’t kept step with this rate of innovation,” Blackbird’s co-founder Rick Baker noted.
“It is clear there is more to be done by VCs and the startup sector in general to help Indigenous-founded businesses succeed.”
So what about the major banks?
Just like with venture capital, there’s little data on how many traditional lenders like banks are supporting Indigenous Australian business. The ABC approached the big four and none would or could disclose data about financing rates.
NAB’s positioning itself as the market leader. It recently appointed its first Indigenous business and banking specialist, Adam Fletcher.
The Gringai man of the Wonnarua Nation (the Hunter Valley) is acutely aware of all the barriers his people face before coming to the $97 billion bank for finance.
“We’ve historically been systemically locked out of the finance industry,” he says.
He wants to work more with start-ups, but says it’s tough for a bank or equity firm to back any sort of business that comes to it for a loan without collateral.
One example that NAB gave to ABC News of an entity it has given finance to recently shows the route many Indigenous corporations have to take to grow.
Bawrunga Medical Service was set up in regional NSW several decades ago and is run as a not-for-profit. It originally received government funding before self-funding itself through a bulk-billing method.
Bawrunga recently went to a Commonwealth body set up to fund Indigenous business, IBA, for a loan to open a new building. However, its chief executive Leavina Reid says they were knocked back.
Data from the IBA shows it’s given out $280 million in business finance to First Nations businesses and entrepreneurs in the last 5 years.
In a statement, IBA told ABC News that “it’s important that businesses we invest with are at a stage where they are ready”.
Eventually, Bawrunga was put onto NAB’s Indigenous banking team. It’s here that they eventually got the $1.2 million they needed to grow.
Leavina, an elder of Kamilaroi (northern NSW to southern Queensland coast) descent, says the bank “untangled a lot of the red tape” for an Aboriginal organisation like theirs and they were culturally appropriate.
“It gives me great pleasure to be able to sit here and to be able to talk about our journey,” she says.
Other larger Indigenous corporations that ABC News have spoken to are hopeful for a similar journey.
Andrea Jackson heads up another not-for-profit, Maraway, that has built itself up through grants.
Andrea is thankful for government support but says it can be limiting, fraught by changes in federal or state leadership, and come with strings attached.
“Funding doesn’t let you build up cash or physical assets that can then get you financed. And so you’re basically stuck in existential poverty as an organisation,” she says.
Maraway used Commonwealth Bank a few years ago to refinance a property loan and is hopeful the bank can do more.
Andrea’s sentiments are echoed by Alastair King.
The chief executive of ALPA believes Indigenous business has had so many years locked out of major financial institutions, that a mindset has developed that growth can’t come without government.
Alastair has worked to steer ALPA away from that route. It’s managed to build up 15 remote stores with limited help, but it’s taken five decades.
The Indigenous corporation was only given it’s first loan from a bank a decade ago. The $15 million loan from NAB let it build a warehouse in Darwin. It’s since paid it off.
He believes the finance sector is getting better at helping the country’s first people succeed.
“The change that we’ve seen over the last decade is welcome. Let’s keep it going. Be proactive, not reactive,” Alastair says.
From a small kitchen granted to her by a university in Mparntwe, Kungkas Can Cook’s Rayleen Brown hopes she will somehow land a loan to go further.
After being knocked back by an Indigenous funding body for a loan, Rayleen believes her last hope is to work on a further business plan with Naomi Anstess and go for the private sector’s cash.
“There’s just so much for our next generation to look forward to, and I really believe those private enterprises and banks should really give us a chance,” she says.