Pitch and Polish announces winner of the annual entrepreneurship competition

The ninth annual Engen Pitch and Polish workshop and competition came to a conclusion at Melrose Arch, with an elated Khanyo Langa being announced the winner.

The competition, which is a Raizcorp initiative, has Engen as its headline sponsor including gold sponsor Nedbank. Caxton Local Media is proud to be a media partner for such an inspiring initiative.

The team has travelled around the country to teach thousands of budding entrepreneurs essential skills to pitch their business. Impressive business pitches enabled contestants to progress through a series of rounds before the top three were selected to give their final pitch on 8 November.

The three final contestants, Khanyo Langa, Robert Owen and Letshego Maele have been polishing their pitches for the past few months and used the skills they learned during the workshops to better present their business and ask for the necessary funding.

Owen’s environmentally friendly business, which focuses on removing invasive plants was praised by the judges for contributing to a better environment and Maele, who has a sports apparel business, was praised for his introduction and for using a model to showcase his products.

Judges Grace Govender, the head of new business development and sales support at Nedbank, Allon Raiz, the CEO and founder of Raizcorp, head of transformation at Engen, Kholekile Dlakiya and Caxton Local Media board member Inus Prinsloo offered some tough criticism to the contestants and explained how they could improve their pitch.

However, in the end, Langa impressed the judges with his mechanical engineering background, for his want to grow his trailer making business and his well thought out goals.

Langa has attended previous Engen Pitch and Polish workshops and his determination to keep learning also impressed the judges. Langa hoped to receive a R600 000 investment in his company to purchase equipment to help him manufacture trailers.

The R60 000 he won, as well as a R20 000 advertising campaign from Caxton Local Media, will go toward helping his business grow.

Following his win, an emotional Langa thanked Raizcorp for creating this opportunity for entrepreneurs and asked that they continue to take the competition to his home province, the Eastern Cape, to help budding entrepreneurs like him. “This is for every entrepreneur in the Eastern Cape who is trying to create employment, who are trying to make sure that the Eastern Cape is on the map.”

Unathi Njokweni-Magida, the head of transformation and stakeholder engagement at Engen said,”It’s so important that companies that operate in South Africa understand that we have a huge level of unemployment and poverty in this country and if you don’t do things like this, we’re never going to grow as a country.”

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