Aspiring entrepreneurs honoured at SME Toolkit awards ceremony
AUCKLAND PARK – The competition aims to help, manage and grow emerging small businesses, and a ceremony was held to announce the national winner.
SME Toolkit South Africa hosted their annual award ceremony to reward one young aspiring entrepreneur.
The winner, Khomotso Malakalaka, was chosen from the regional winners from the nine provinces, and the ceremony was held at the Johannesburg Country Club with all the attendees gathering together to celebrate the nominated entrepreneurs.
Petro Bothma, group enterprise development manager at Business/Partners opened the ceremony as she explained what the SME event was all about.
The competition for young entrepreneurs was started nine years ago and has been going strong since, with over 800 entries this year.
There were 11 regional winners who were picked from that selection of entries, who were then interviewed by the competition’s judges to pick a winner.
Bothma explained how the competition works, “On youth day we launch a business plan competition for young aspiring entrepreneurs.
Everyone that enters the competition gets invited to a workshop where we teach and train them to do a business plan.
They then use what they have learnt to submit a business plan and that is phase two of the competition.
It is then assessed and all through the country and a regional winner is announced. For phase three the regional winners enter the national competition which integrates to this event today in which we are announcing the national winner.”
Executive director at Business/Partners, Christo Botes also came to the podium and shared what key things all entrepreneurs should know.
“Starting with a purpose. Be the expert and always to seek professional advice.”
Before Botes announced the national winner, Gugu Mjadu, who was on the judging panel of the competition said, “I am very excited again this year to be able to work with young aspiring entrepreneurs.”
The national winner for this year’s SME Toolkit competition, Khomotso Malakalaka, is from Limpopo.
She is the founder and owner of The Good Grocer – an online grocery shopping and delivery start-up based in Polokwane which will begin trading in 2019.
Malakalaka accepted the price and thanked SME and Business/Partners for the opportunity.
