Finalists Announced For Premier Entrepreneurial Competition’s 30th Edition

Celebrating three full decades of discovering and cultivating the best entrepreneurial talent that South Africa has to offer, the highly esteemed Entrepreneur of the Year® competition sponsored by Sanlam and Business/Partners has announced the shortlist of 14 standout entrants who have made it through to the final round of this year’s competition.

According to Gugu Mjadu, spokesperson for the 2018 edition of the competition, the 189 entries that were received this year really upped the game in terms of entrepreneurial talent. “Every year, we think that we’ve seen it all, but each year we find ourselves being further blown away by the level of talent being exhibited by the South African entrepreneurs who enter the competition.”

In alphabetical order, the finalists for the 2018 Entrepreneur of the Year® competition sponsored by Sanlam and Business/Partners are:

Andrew and Glenn Eriksen – Cango Wildlife Ranch; Beverley Gumbi – Isivuno Containers Business; Chike and Damaris  Igwegbe – Green City Solutions, t/a Mustbuy; Christine Geldart – Marven Studios;  James Barrington-Bronwn – NewSpace Systems; Kerry and Craig Motherwell – Foxolution SE CC; Leboneng Mathebula – Gridbow Engineers; Louw Barnardt – Outsourced CFO; Muhammed Simjee and Sofiah Docrat – A2D24 Dot Com; Pepe Marais and Gareth Leck – Joe Public; Phillipa Geard – Recruit My Mom; Pravashen Naidoo – EWaste Africa; Terence Naidu – EnvisionIt Stock Lending Solutions and Tshegofatso Samuel and Motlapele Molefi – Modi Mining.

These 14 finalists operate in various sectors of the economy and are based across the country, says Mjadu. “While the majority of these finalists originate from Gauteng (47%) and the Western Cape (33%), we received entries from all provinces and KwaZulu-Natal (13%) and the North West (7%) are both also represented in the finalist list this year.”

With a wide variety of industries being represented, from mining and engineering to recycling and advertising, there is one thing that Mjadu says all 14 finalists share in common – their invaluable contribution to the South African economy. “The SME sector continues to play a vital role in the South African economy, so these trail-blazing self-starters need to be celebrated for what they are – job creators and economic change-makers,” Mjadu adds.

She explains that the next step in the independent judging process is the selection of the overall 2018 Entrepreneur of the Year® winner, as well as winners for each of the five categories, namely emerging, small business, medium business, job creator and innovator. “By running the evaluation process through three different filtering stages, we are able to ensure that every finalist is put under the microscope to avoid any human error or bias from tainting the results.”

The 2018 finalists stand the chance to win prizes worth R2 million, which include cash prizes of R70 000 per category and R200 000 for the overall winner. “Beyond monetary prices, previous finalists have benefitted greatly from the various networking opportunities and associated media exposure that the competition offers. Past winners have also gone on to win international awards and form valuable partnerships as a result of their success in the competition.”

With competition winners being announced on 5 September 2018 at the official awards breakfast in Johannesburg, Mjadu says that the judges have got their work cut out for them this year. “The calibre of entrants this year looks to be extremely high so deciding on winners will be no easy feat. We wish all finalists the best of luck – you’re all already winners in our eyes,” concludes Mjadu.