Going through hard times ignited the hunger that drives this young entrepreneur to succeed despite the odds, writes Esther Lewis
|||Cape Town - ONE computer, one client and R600 may not sound like a recipe for business success, but it’s worked for young Gugulethu entrepreneur Bheki Kunene.
He started his creative design company with only that, and four years later he employs four full-time staff, has international clients, and is being recognised for being an inspirational youth.
Fresh out of school, Kunene studied web and graphic design at Concept Interactive School of Communication. In 2009, the then 19-year-old was tasked with finding a three-month internship, but instead of finding a job at a corporate company like the rest of his classmates, he decided to start his own business.
This is how Mind Trix Media was born: in his bedroom in the Khayelitsha house he shared with his mother.
Without any business management experience, Kunene found that things were difficult.
After his required internship period ended, he tried to get rid of his one client and close his business.
But the client continued commissioning work and told his friends about Mind Trix Media, and soon Kunene had to start hiring to keep up with the work.
Four years later, Kunene – now 24, and living and working – has the only creative design agency in the township. It specialises in web development and design, printing, marketing material and developing apps.
“The bigger picture is to develop the township’s first web and creative design academy, a hub of success and a go-to point for any previously disadvantaged individual wanting to change their lives via education,” says Kunene.
He describes himself as a go-getter and dreamer, and a social entrepreneur.
“My hunger for success has kept me going. I was born into poverty. I couldn’t grow up and be poor. It’s something I couldn’t accept,” says Kunene.
He has been on several courses and in his office is a shelf with several books. Whenever he comes across a problem or situation he’s not familiar with, Kunene researches it thoroughly. And while he and his employees have had formal training, many of their skills are self-taught.
Kunene now has clients in Minneapolis and Chicago in the US, Angola and across South Africa. This year, he is pushing a six to seven figure net profit.
But it isn’t all about the bottom line for Kunene. He believes in uplifting those around him.
Using his business contacts, he has put two people through tertiary education.
One is now his permanent employee, while the other was placed at an associate’s company.
Kunene’s company has given 18 people the opportunity to pursue a tertiary education, but his success didn’t come easily. Speaking of his early teenage years, Kunene says: “I was an outsider, a misfit, the menace who didn’t belong in society.”
He was expelled from school, spent time in juvenile detention and believed he would die “a loser or a jailbird”.
Many members of his immediate family started dying. When he went to the bush for circumcision, he nearly lost his life, too.
While his next-door neighbour died, Kunene survived. Then his personal life began to unravel. In 2010, he was wrongfully arrested for murder. Kunene says he was picked up from his home, taken to a police station and held for seven days. On the eighth day he was released, as the real culprit had been arrested.
After his ordeal, he drew strength from his mother’s and grandmother’s words: “Keep going. As long as you can breathe, there is hope.”
In 2011, Kunene found himself on the verge of homelessness.
“That’s when I learned how to strive and push hard. That is when I had to make it one way or another.
“I had no choice but to hustle hard, and to this day I remain hungry for success because of the realness of my pain, depression, failures and traumatic experiences,” he says.
Stellenbosch University Africa Centre’s director of educational theatre and creative arts, Professor Jimmie Perry, selected Kunene as the recipient of this year’s Youth Recognition Award.
He will receive the award at the centre’s annual South African Artists for Aids Awareness concert on Sunday.
The title of this year’s production is Lets Beat It, and it will be staged at Artscape.
Perry says the award is presented to someone who has faced many challenges but managed to develop themselves.
“His story is compelling. For someone that came through all of that, to this, is the major aspect (of why he was selected),” says Perry.
Cape Argus