Still time to enter entrepreneurship competition

Entrepreneurs still have time to enter the Entrepreneur of the Year competition sponsored by Sanlam and BUSINESS/PARTNERS.

Entries close on 31 May 2018.

Now in its 30th year, the competition offers the opportunity for local businesses to win prizes, including R70 000 per category winner and R200 000 for the overall winner, as well as business mentorship prizes and national media exposure.

BUSINESS/PARTNERS pointed out that, through their businesses, entrepreneurs also create employment and skills development opportunities within their own micro-economies. That is why it regards it as critically important to reward local entrepreneurs.    

Entrepreneur Mpodumo Doubada and business-duo Sizwe Nzima and Siraaj Adams are such examples. They were category winners in the 2017 Entrepreneur of the Year Competition.  

Doubada, founding CEO of Pimp my Book, won the category Innovator of the Year in the 2017 Entrepreneur of the Year competition. He began an informal business from his dorm room while studying at the University of Cape Town (UCT).

Today, his business employs 17 full-time staff members and operates a chain of five stores with e-commerce capabilities. Students country-wide are able to buy and sell second-hand text books, thereby helping to ease the burden of the high cost of tertiary education in SA.

Nzima and Adams, owners of Iyeza Health, won the Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year category in the same competition. They started their business in 2013 as a bicycle courier service delivering chronic medication from health clinics in Khayelitsha to just one client, Sizwe’s grandmother.
The business quickly grew into a fully-fledged specialist health logistics company directly servicing 1 000 patients in the same area.

More information about entering the competition can be found here.

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