Some people are born entrepreneurs, some learn it and others have it thrust on them, says Ziggy Owei, who describes herself as ‘a living example†that entrepreneurship can be taught.
The owner of a medical tourism business based in Pinelands, Cape Town, Owei learned entrepreneurship in the most formal way possible — through an MBA at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business.
With an honours in management science, Owei had been a banker for eight years before spending four years as a full-time mother of four. She saw the MBA as an opportunity to get back into banking.
Owei enrolled and at the same time started a job at Cadiz, the local financial services group that was looking to expand its Africa desk. Even though she liked her job, she felt uncomfortable about pursuing a career in fund management.
A month into her new position she resigned, confused about her next step. She hoped to salvage some return on her investment in the expensive MBA and decided to choose the university’s new-venture-creation module, ‘just to seeâ€. ‘I’ve never seen myself as running my own business. I’ve always been in the corporate type of field,†she says.
The course taught her ways of identifying and evaluating business ideas, and planning their execution. ‘While I was doing that course it was like the scales fell from my eyes and I could see exactly what I wanted to do and how to go about it.â€
As part of her coursework, she wrote a business plan for starting a West African restaurant. There was a clear gap in the market, but the process showed her that she would find running a restaurant ‘tedious and hecticâ€.
She changed tack, and started working on a plan to bring Nigerians in need of medical treatment to Cape Town. The target market Owei identified is deep and large.
Specialised medical care in Nigeria is still in its infancy, and patients are regularly sent to Europe, the US and Dubai for urgent procedures. ‘These are people who have real medical problems, who don’t have good facilities and who need to come out for expert medical care,†she says. The demand is not only limited to the rich.
In Nigeria, health is considered wealth and extended families club together — sometimes with the support of an employer, NGO and the odd government subsidy — to fund the patient’s foreign travel.
The trick is to convince Nigerian doctors to refer their patients to South Africa. ‘Even now, we still have to do a lot of marketing to change the mind-set. The concern is that [South Africa] is still Africa — They can’t imagine that another African country is just as developed as Europe.â€
Owei offers a full package with a single bill (payable upfront), which includes visa facilitation, accommodation, transport to and from consultations, visits during hospitalisation and even a two-day tour of the city.
Being a cautious and schooled entrepreneur, she made sure that her business was up and running three months before the end of her MBA, so that she still had full access to the expertise during its launch.
Like most owner-managed businesses, she started hers with the minimum of infrastructure — a PC, placing patients at various guest-houses throughout the city.
But as soon as she was sure that the idea was viable she set up her own guest-house as a home-away-from-home for Nigerians, who tend to be a little too boisterous for the average Capetonian B&B, says Owei.
It’s been three successful but tough years, she says, which strengthened her conviction that entrepreneurship — at least in its practical application — has to be taught.
Even born entrepreneurs have to learn the mechanics of business, but they tend to do it the hard way. ‘They get beaten, they lose money, they rise again,” says Owei.