Innovation pumps up sanitiser entrepreneur

not needed, the stand can be filled with any brand of liquid soap.

“I started the business because I saw that COVID-19 will be with us for a long time to come and that means sanitisers will be in demand for a while,” he says.

Ngwenya, who is the sole owner of Geza, has outsourced the producing of the stands to a local company. “Instead of importing the stands, I created my own design and outsourced the production to a local company,” he says.

The stands have helped Ngwenya create two new jobs while also keeping five employees from his old business. In the first month of the lockdown, Ngwenya says that he was only able to pay half of his staff’s salaries. “This made it clear that I needed to find different streams of income. We suffered

adhere to social distancing.

Murungweni says they are helping businesses adapt to the new workplace procedures.

Uni Network was affected at the start of the lockdown because its core function is physical installations. However, it adapted and offered advisory services to clients, which resulted in a few income opportunities, such as creating or updating clients’ databases.

The company, which was started in 2014 by a group of 10 technicians, employs six people who have been with them from the start. An additional four people also work for the company on a part-time basis and when needed, more people are contracted in.

According to Murungweni, the technicians had been working individually on an informal level before deciding to combine their skills and offer a one-stop shop for all ICT-related projects.

He says they helped each most due to outstanding payments and cancelled contracts.”

Ngwenya says that in the first six weeks of operation, Geza sold 30 stands to a school and several to privately-owned businesses. Made from high-quality material that enables it to withstand wear and tear, the stands are sold pre-filled and cost R1 690. They are free-standing.

He is in the process of setting up an online store.

Ngwenya says his peers who have grown up in a democratic South Africa are the empire builders of the future. “As children of the 90s who have spent our lives in a free and democratic society, we have had access to resources.”

A FOOT-OPERATED

other grow as entrepreneurs while maintaining the flexibility needed for them to continue pursuing other business interests.

“Entrepreneurship was the principal reason for starting Uni Networks. After gaining some experience, we felt that there were market gaps that we could tap into as young entrepreneurs. The organisation we were working for was not keen on diversifying their services, hence limiting the growth of individuals,” he says.

Murungweni says that young people should be in charge of the ICT sector because they already possess the basic skills of the industry. “ICT is a broad sector and most youth have basic ICT skills.”

He says that big ICT companies and the government need to deepen their efforts to develop the youth’s skills in emerging technologies like online 3D production, robotics, and e-health.