The top three winners of the recent national ‘Pitch & Polish’ entrepreneurship competition have business plans that will not only be profitable, but will also improve the lives of their communities and customers.
David Mphuti from Welkom, in the Free State, proposed to start an egg farming business that will employ 225 families in an impoverished rural community.
Ntombenhle Khathwane already produces toxic-free organic ethnic hair products and wants to expand her enterprise, and Zamandlovu Makola launched a time-saving service that helps citizens fill out forms for grants needed from the Department of Labour.
Since winning top honours in November, all three entrepreneurs have participated in entrepreneurship workshops that have harnessed their business acumen.
‘Pitch & Polish’ founder, Allon Raiz, wanted to stimulate business growth in South Africa and the competition was started to contribute towards this.
Winners also met established business leaders at an Entrepreneurs Organisation conference held in Cape Town in November.
Khathwane won a trip to Dallas, in the USA, to be mentored by a successful entrepreneur in the same industry.
Mphuti’s plan to financially empower households in Qwa-Qwa earned him mentorship trips to India and Germany.
Khathwane launched her ‘Afro Botanic’ ethnic hair products business in Nelspruit, in Mpumalanga, last August but hasn’t been able to grow without access to capital. She said ‘Pitch & Polish’ exposed her to possible European investors.
Kathwane said she currently markets her hair products directly to customers at local hair salons. She manufactures a range of 15 products that
includes hair food, oil, spray, softeners, shampoos, leave-in treatments and conditioners for men and women.
“At the moment the cheapest marketing route is via hair salons. This involves talking to the salon owners and their customers. We demonstrate what the products are and we leave samples that salons can test on consumers.
We also leave products that can be sold at the salons,” said Kathwane. She had responded to “an emerging market that is demanding a higher quality of hair products”. I was looking for a hair care product that was good for my hair.”
Mphuti said his idea is to “produce one million chicken eggs a month by working with a rural community in Qwa-Qwa”. He’s been a vegetable, maize meal and animal feed farmer for the past six years and wants to assist the villagers where he was raised.
“I want to work with the community. It’s a big rural area. People who live there are mostly unemployed and I need capital to start a project that can assist them with the egg business. I already have contact with the community because it’s where I was born,” said Mphuti.
“He had already conceptualised a brand and packaging for the eggs that he wants to sell via retailers. Zamandlovu Makola from Cape Town, in the Western Cape, meanwhile knows what it feels like to deal with the Department of Labour when one needs to access unemployment funds or other grants.
She said that this was a “tedious” process for most people and launched her ‘My Claim Mate’ service as an interface between citizens and the labour department.
“I had a baby last year and have been practicing in the area of human resources for almost ten years. I had a lot of dealings with the Department of Labour. I also had two friends that got pregnant and they struggled so much with the process of claiming funds during their pregnancy that they gave up,” said Makola.
Makola explained that her service guides citizens through the forms and process. She’s currently running her business from a home office and her website www.myclaimmate.co.za is the first point of call for now. She said her plan is to sell the user packs with all relevant claim forms at a national retailer.
‘Pitch & Polish’ will run from May 2011. All information will be available on the website www.pitchandpolish.com