Business on a bike

In October, Investec Private Banking, in partnership with Qhubeka and enke: Make Your Mark, handed over 40 bikes to 36 aspiring South African entrepreneurs, who will be starting up small businesses within the Kagiso community, west of Johannesburg. 

This forms part of the Young Professionals Revolution, an event Investec Private Banking launched in celebration of Human Rights Day on 21 March. On the night, 192 young professionals, in 40 teams, came together at Investec in Sandton for a marathon 18-hour session to pool their skills and talents to envision and map out scalable business ideas that could run on a Qhubeka utility bike.

A total of 36 business ideas were pitched to the local entrepreneurs, who have now finessed and adapted these business plans to the needs of the community as they take ownership of their brand new Qhubeka bikes.

“The passion and innovation that we’ve seen throughout this project have been inspiring,”  says Cumesh Moodliar, head of Private Bank SA at Investec. “It was an honour for us to hand over the bikes, seed funding, and business plans to each start-up. We have partnered with enke: Make Your Mark who will be providing monthly support and training for the first 12 months of running their business.”