EY Southern Africa World Entrepreneur Award announces winners

© Cathy Yeulet via 123RF

Mountford will go on to represent Southern Africa at the EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards in Monte Carlo in June 2017, where he will compete with over 50 leading entrepreneurs from across the globe. He was appointed in 2009 as CEO of Super Group, which is leading transport logistics and mobility group providing end-to-end supply chain solutions, fleet management and dealership services to a diversified global customer base.

After his appointment, he realised the group had lost a large portion of its customer base, marketing capability and new business capability. The group had made a loss of R1.3bn and there was a talk of a takeover. Within eighteen months, he already started the turnaround strategy by disposing of all noncore and loss making businesses within the group. The business showed a profit of R230m in just six years. Today the group is worth R10bn. To this day, he believes this type of small business culture with a decisive business capability is key to its success.

Lifetime achievement

The Lifetime achievement award was presented to Mabuza for his continuous dedication and achievement of business excellence. Coming from humble beginnings, he gained his entrepreneurial ‘zeal’ with a start in the taxi industry. His passion, self-belief and an extraordinary ability to keep going when others would give up has led him to holding a number of leadership roles across a multitude of industries.

Exceptional category winner

Group co-CEOs and serial entrepreneurs, Gil Oved and Ran Neu-Ner founded TCC in 2001 after a failed business venture during the internet boom and bust. They have since pioneered the world of activations in South Africa building what started as a two-man band doing promotions, into the country’s largest agency group.

TCC Activations is the biggest through-the-line marketing agency in South Africa with an impressive list of clients from diverse sectors including cellular networks, financial service providers, fast movable consumer goods and medical health. The agency has grown and evolved exponentially to offer innovative and out of the-box solutions and campaigns for the brands it partners with.

Emerging category winner

After gaining 11 years of experience in financial services, Vawda founded 27four Investment Managers in 2007, which is South Africa’s first black owned and woman managed institutional multi-manager. It offers a comprehensive and innovative range of expertly constructed multi-manager product solutions to cater for the varying needs of South African and global retirement funds, corporate institutions, not-for-profit organisations, endowments as well as individual investors. Its offering includes mainstream multi-manager products, alternative fund of hedge funds, Africa fund of funds and a suite of Shari’ah compliant products.

Job creation

The panel of judges, which included previous winners of the award, CEOs and regional business leaders, evaluated the 2016 finalists, who represent a wide range of industries and, as a group, contribute 17,000 jobs to the economy with combined revenues of approximately R30bn.

The evaluation criteria were based on their entrepreneurial spirit, financial performance, strategic direction, community/global impact, innovation, personal integrity and influence.