Seeding opportunity: How one leap of faith grew into a thriving business for Umzinto entrepreneur
An unexpected show of faith was the confidence boost Senzo Shozi needed to leap from the comfort of a monthly call centre salary to pursue a business idea that had been incubating for some time.
Tuning into a radio station by chance changed the course of Senzo Shozi’s life.
He was listening with half an ear to a business show on KwaZulu-Natal’s Gagasi FM when he heard property developer Phakama Nassengoh talk about major development projects he was about to embark on.
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At 24-years-old and working at a call centre after graduating with a degree in Landscape Technology at Durban University of Technology (DUT), Shozi decided to take a wild chance.
“I reached out to Phakama Nassengoh for a possible job opportunity. It turned out that he was in the middle of building his private home in Hillcrest and was in need of a landscaper and a project manager. I think he liked my tenacity because he hired me for the job. I left my call centre job immediately and started to work on his home.”
This unexpected show of faith was the confidence boost Shozi needed to leap from the comfort of a monthly call centre salary to pursue a business idea that had been incubating for some time.
“I formally registered my business in 2014 when I entered my idea at an SAB kick-start event in Musgrave. But my big break happened when I tuned into that radio show and then plucked up the courage to reach out to Mr Nassengoh and pitch him.”
And so Ghabisa Concepts – a landscaping company that designs opulent but environmentally savvy landscaping solutions – entered the KZN market, offering landscaping consulting, surveying, design and maintenance.
But Shozi’s love of all things green started long before that.
“I grew up in Umzinto on the South Coast of KZN and my early childhood life was filled with planting and growing cash crops, thanks to my mother who works for the Department of Agriculture and has always been passionate about planting and growing vegetables,” he recalls.
His high school passion was drawing, which led to him to want to study architecture, but when Shozi was accepted to the Landscape Technology at DUT it instinctually made sense: “I look back now and see how the dots between my love of planting things and design and drawing were all connected by landscape design.”
He named his fledgling company after his family clan name, Gabhisa, because “landscaping is in our blood, so it’s only fitting that I use our family name”.
Everything seemed to fall into place after he took that spontaneous chance after listening to a radio show, but Shozi soon realised it takes more than serendipity to make a business profitable.
Struggling to scale his business beyond subsistence level, he applied to the SAB Foundation Tholoana programme run by business incubator Fetola. “It was an entrepreneur’s dream,” he says of the course. “Through it I was able to see where and how I should strategically grown my business.”
Gabhisa Concepts has since expanded to high-yield maintenance contracts for municipalities, schools and body corporates but still specialises in environmentally friendly landscaping designs for high-end clients in Hillcrest, Westville, Umhlanga and Durban North, and the business has grown to employ four permanent and four part-time staff.
Recently, working around the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 lockdown has proved challenging, but Shozi believes he has weathered the worst of it by “focusing on strategic goals and keeping a positive mind-set”.
Asked what fuels this optimistic mind-set, Shozi is quick and confident to respond: “I believe that my purpose in life is to enhance the environment around me, or at least to enhance the way people use the environments around them, so that internally they live better lives.”
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