LIMPOPO – “I have realised that the unemployment rate is very high in South Africa and it hurts me to see how people fail to support their families, that is why I decided to create jobs for them.”
These are the words of a young entrepreneur and the founder of Mahandana Engineering, Rofhiwa Gundo Mahandana who wants to create jobs for the local people.
The 21-year-old from Thohoyandou started his company last year and thus far has 27 employees of which eight are from Venda. “I was not really good in mathematics at school and my maths teacher used to tell me that I will never be anything in life without maths.
“Those words used to hurt me until I thought of something I could do to make a living since. I realised that there are so many people who are very wealthy and successful in life and most of them never went to school and some of them are drop-outs, I got motivated to be an entrepreneur.”
Mahandana studied mechanical: fitting and turning at Tshwane South College and aims to employ at least 1 500 young, semi-skilled and skilled employees across the country. Mahandana said to start the company was not easy. ”
There were many challenges I faced such as capital. I remember when I had my first client but I faced difficulties on rendering the service because I did not have capital. I ran around with all the funding entities but I did not have any luck until I got a potential investor who understood what I wanted to do and helped me with capital,” Mahandana said.
His message to those who aspire to be entrepreneurs is to do their research before they start their business.
“You must have all the information about what you are getting yourself into. These days our youth start companies without having adequate information and they end up wasting the little money they had when their business faces liquidity, because they had no skills on running certain companies.”
