The tears running down the face of Sarah Motshwane Sebetola, when last night she won the 2024 South African Future Trust Awards (SAFT), ‘Women in Business’ category said it all: the rough road it takes for entrepreneurs to succeed, the countless hurdles one has to overcome and the courage it takes to fight for your vision to succeed.
Sebetola is the co-founder of sustainable branding innovators Tshepiso Branding Solutions.
Founded in 2018, Tshepiso Branding Solutions is on a mission to empower organisations to embrace ESG goals through the conscientious selection of sustainable branding solutions.
The Women in Business category is highlighted ahead of August, which is Women’s Month in South Africa and August 9 is celebrated annually as Women’s Day.
On Wednesday night six of South Africa’s top entrepreneurs won awards, with Sebetola being one of the category winners.
During the awards SAFT chair Jonathan Oppenheimer, while honouring South African entrepreneurs, whom had “the power to change the course of our country’s future”, gave an insight into his business philosophy, the Oom (the optimised operating model) manifesto, that he believes powers sustainable growth for business. (https://opp-gen.com/insights/oom-manifesto/)
This is based on three principles:
– Removing frictional costs
– Engage those in your organisation
– Harness the power of information
Oppenheimer encouraged entrepreneurs to follow Oom for future business success.
In a side conversation after the awards, Oppenheimer shared a bit more about Oom.
He said generally 50% of one’s work time was not fruitful and one needed to look at Oom to prioritise how it was spent to grow a business.
In an example, while talking about De Beers, and the above global average wear and tear on its haul trucks’ tyres (a frictional cost in Oom), it cost a huge amount of money to replace the tyres amounting to millions of rands. The assumption was that this couldn’t be avoided.
But after a study was conducted, a practical low cost solution was found saving millions of rands. This is the power of Oom.
Other SAFT Entrepreneur winner were:
– In the ‘Tech Entrepreneur’ category, the winner was Engage Mx, an intelligent platform that recalls patients to their doctor for screening and chronic disease management based on their unique health profile.
– RLabs won the ‘Social Entrepreneur’ category. RLabs is a pioneering South African social enterprise focused on empowering communities through innovative technology solutions and skills training.
– The ’Youth Entrepreneur’ category was won by online entry-level job search platform JOBJACK.
– Bento Technologies - winners in the ‘Most Innovative Idea’ category - gave employers an easy and digital solution to cost-effectively offer modern employee benefits to their employees.
– The winner in the ‘Best Implementation of 2023 SAFT Summit Playbook’ category was specialist furniture manufacturer for the restaurant and hospitality industries, Woodlam.
BUSINESS REPORT