Local Transformation and BEE consultancy, BEE Novation has earned a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join the business accelerator Top40 Programme, created by business mogul Vusi Thembekwayo of MyGrowthFund. The Programme will nurture 40 high-growth potential SMMEs through funding, skills and enterprise development. Thembekwayo is an in-demand public speaker and the youngest CEO of a JSE-listed company.
BEE Novation, founded by Lee du Preez of Pietermaritzburg, is one of very few 100% black-owned Transformation and BEE organisations in South Africa. The transformation field has been under media spotlight for its lack of transformation. BEE Novation assists a range of clients, including JSE-listed companies, better understand and comply with B-BBEE, Employment Equity and Skills Development. The consultancy was interested in Thembekwayo’s global business experience to refine its own approach to solving multi-national corporates’ transformation-related problems.
BEE Novation founder Lee du Preez
‘We cover and go “beyond BEE” because transformation is a politically-loaded and far-reaching socio-economic concept that, despite looking different from BEE in other countries, speaks to those places’ news headlines,’ du Preez explained. ‘We treat transformation as more than a one-size-fits-all box-ticking exercise. This holistic approach takes a diverse team. I’m an aviator who engineers corporate solutions with a corporate management consultant, a political analyst, and an economist, among others. We look at the impact of clients’ transformational needs and strategies on their bottom lines from a variety of angles.’
BEE Novation’s foray into international waters follows du Preez’s experience as a 2015 Mandela-Washington Fellow through the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), a flagship programme founded during US President Obama’s term to invest in the next generation of African leaders. ‘I’ve seen what’s over the horizon, but my business has only started catching up. With Vusi behind it and its entrance criteria being so gruelling, I am certain MyGrowthFund will equip mine and other businesses compete and contribute on a global scale.’
The 18-month accelerator Programme selects 40 out of about 3000 applicants from across South Africa. It exposes the chosen entrepreneurs to networking and supply-chain opportunities. Thembekwayo observes small business tend to die at the growth phase or within a year into operation. The Programme aims to catapult them past this stage into prosperity. One indicator of BEE Novation’s viability was that it was in its fourth year, and growing.
Released on behalf of BEE Novation. For more information contact Palesa Mokomele on: 082 904 1908.
Web: www.BEEnovation.co.za