Recruiters, leadership experts and board directors say the path to the top job, and the skills needed to succeed in it, has changed.



The mission of a CEO used to be fairly straightforward. Set the vision and strategy of your company and make sure the right people are in the right roles. Be sensitive to the needs of employees, customers, suppliers and others in your orbit but make shareholders your top priority. Above all else, grow as fast and as big as you can.&nbsp;



But as the world has changed, so have the demands of the CEO job— and the skills needed to succeed in it. Between the pandemic and polarization, climate change and cancel culture, the role has evolved in ways that few would have imagined a few years ago. CEO contenders lack a clear grasp on how the jobs they’re pursuing will change while those at the helm can offer only limited guidance.&nbsp;



What many CEOs increasingly realize is that the change has to start from within. Dick Patton, who co-leads the global CEO practice for recruitment firm Egon Zehnder, detected a mood of deep reflection among the 972 global CEOs they&nbsp;<a href="https://www.egonzehnder.com/it-starts-with-the-ceo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">surveyed in a study</a>last year. Nearly 80% of CEO participants said they needed to transform themselves as well as their organizations, and be more adaptive and self-aware.



Part of what’s fueling a new mindset is the recognition that trust and transparency have become vital to business success. Stephen Miles, an executive coach and founder of the Miles Group, argues that the CEO has gone from being the leader who runs the company to the person who must also promote the company’s purpose, impact and credentials as an employer of choice. In short, they must defend the company’s license to operate. That requires “more influence-building, team-building, people-related skills,” says Miles, not to mention the courage to initiate change on weak signals and be open about their own struggles to connect with people.&nbsp;



Emotional intelligence becomes more critical as the demands for CEOs to engage in political hot-button topics mount. “You have to anticipate whether someone will have the instincts and the intestinal fortitude,” says Jane Stevenson, a vice chair at Korn Ferry who leads its global CEO succession practice. “The expectation of CEOs to take a stand—and to know when to take the stand and when to be quiet—is huge. It&#8217;s always been about who the person is. Now it’s who the person is, squared.”&nbsp;



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<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-need-for-bolder-boards">A Need For Bolder Boards&nbsp;</h3>



Boards are starting—slowly—to think more broadly about the skills and profile needed to succeed as a CEO in this environment. Experience in operating and running a business is still essential—but a wider range of resumes and roles is under consideration. Diversity candidates are in higher demand, as are traits such as agility, resilience and political judgment.&nbsp;



“Boards are bucking conventional wisdom a bit more,” says Tim Conti, managing partner of executive search firm ON Partners. “The best boards recognize a CEO is just one member of an executive team, and if complemented properly, can come from a lot of new backgrounds.”&nbsp;



That doesn’t mean directors are rushing to take risks. CEO turnover dropped during the pandemic, as many boards put a premium on stability and familiarity to get through the crisis. While CEO openings among Fortune 500 and S&amp;P 500 companies have picked up, most of those slots are filled through internal promotions, according to the latest Crist Kolder Volatility Report of America’s Leading Companies. Only 18.9% of new CEO hires through July were external candidates, versus 30.7% in 2019.&nbsp;That could indicate more robust succession planning and leadership development—or a lack of imagination at a time when companies need it most.



Jim Citrin, who leads Spencer Stuart’s CEO practice, argues that many boards are being too conservative at a time when they need the courage to make bold choices. “Some of the best-performing CEOs were not the obvious choices,” says Citrin. “Boards basically define success as an internal promotion; failure as having to go outside. In this moment of change and dramatic stakes, all of us need to be creative and courageous.”



While the usual route to the CEO’s office is through the president’s or COO’s job, that is not always the best path. A recent report from Spencer Stuart found that over the past 20 years, 85 percent of S&amp;P 500 CEOs have come from one of four “last mile” roles: chief operating officer, a division-level CEO role, chief financial officer and “leapfrog” leaders who held executive jobs another rung or two from the top. The most successful CEOs were those promoted from a few levels down; the least were CEOs who came from the CFO function. While the latter group knew how to turn a profit, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.spencerstuart.com/research-and-insight/the-cfos-last-mile-building-towards-success-as-ceo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>&nbsp;found they weren’t as strong at driving top-line growth.&nbsp;



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“Some of the best-performing CEOs were not the obvious choices &#8230; In this moment of change and dramatic stakes, all of us need to be creative and courageous.”Jim Citrin, Spencer Stuart



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The message is not to discount the value of leading the finance function but rather to supplement it with other responsibilities and C-suite roles. Bonnie Gwin, co-managing partner of the global CEO and board practice at Heidrick &amp; Struggles, says there is demand “for CFOs who are strategic and have played really strategic thought partner roles with their CEO.”&nbsp;



There’s a growing appreciation for experience in other C-suite roles, too. A stint as a chief marketing officer or chief customer officer can be essential for running consumer-facing companies. The chief product officer is also gaining ground as a stepping stone to the CEO job, according to Mark Oppenheimer, CEO of Modern Executive Solutions, as it often “brings together sales, product, strategy and operational responsibilities.” Jeff Christian, who leads the search firm Christian &amp; Timbers, agrees, adding that “product people are becoming the next generation CEOs.”&nbsp;



Perhaps the most common resume builder that indicates a CEO could be destined for the corner office is experience on a high-profile public board of directors. “Getting on some of these major boards is a very interesting corollary to someone getting CEO calls,” says Jana Rich, founder and CEO of the San Francisco-based Rich Talent Group. “You’re networked in a different way. You’re getting incredible exposure to people in the boardroom.”&nbsp;



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<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-premium-but-limited-progress-on-diversity">A Premium—But Limited Progress—On Diversity</h3>



Whatever their background, one promising sign is that new CEOs are more likely to be women or people of color. Of the 682 CEOs tracked in the Crist Kolder report, 7.3% were women as of July 31 – up from 6.9% last year and 1.9% in 2010. Heidrick &amp; Struggles took an even broader look at 1,095 CEOs in 24 countries and found women accounted for 13% of new CEOs during the first half of last year, about double from six months earlier. Racial diversity is a slower climb, although Indian-born leaders continue to ascend to CEO roles, most recently at companies like Starbucks and FedEx.&nbsp;



When it comes to the skills in demand for CEOs, some measures of potential remain constant. After studying data from thousands of CEO assessments, Elena Botelho, a partner at leadership advisory ghSMART, distilled the core behaviors for success to the acronym DARE – decisive, adaptable, reliable and engaging for impact. While the framework is unchanged, Botelho says “adaptability became really paramount” amid the pandemic, which is less about the ability to spot a shift than to immediately respond to it.



Resilience is critical. For current CEOs, the exhaustion of the last two years is real, despite it being a job where the median pay was a record-high $14.5 million last year for S&amp;P 500 CEOs, according to an Equilar/Associated Press study. The rinse-and-repeat series of crises and the dizzying rate of technological change is shifting how CEOs lead, how quickly they’re ready to pass the baton, and what their ambitions may be.&nbsp;



While the current generation of CEO-ready leaders has arguably lived through more booms, busts and industry-shattering innovations than the people who came before them, many still feel unprepared. Faced with the prospect of added stress and scrutiny, some recruiters say a lot of candidates also want the job less and less. They can earn millions through other C-suite roles without the constant scrutiny and stress.



Still, for as long as there have been ambitious people, there have been people ambitious to lead. Increasingly, the brass ring is likely to go to those who are ambitious to learn. As Matthew Smith, an executive coach and former chief learning officer at McKinsey puts it: “Leaders who adapt and pivot with speed in the face of opportunities will outperform those who are over-reliant on the skills and habits that got them to the top.”



By Diane Brady and Jena McGregor, Forbes Staff

Black businessman working in new office

The CEO’s Role Is Changing. What It Takes To Get The Top Job Now

On Thursday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed Tanzanian businessman and MeTL Group Chief Executive Mohammed Dewji as one of his advisors on investment issues. Dewji will sit on the investment advisory council for a period of three years.&nbsp;



MeTL, one of Tanzania&#8217;s largest companies, provides logistic services and is active in textile manufacturing, flour milling, beverages and edible oils in eastern, southern and central Africa, and aims to expand in more African markets.



As per a statement released by MeTL, Dewji will be responsible for the development and implementation of strategies and programs to attract and retain domestic and foreign direct investment to South Africa. “The appointment takes into consideration the role that Mo Dewji has played through his investments in a number of countries in Africa where his companies have created a lot of jobs,” reads the statement. Dewji, better known as &#8216;Mo&#8217;, who has been MeTL CEO for over two decades now, told FORBES AFRICA that he is both honored and humbled to accept Ramaphosa&#8217;s appointment on the advisory council in South Africa.



“As the second-largest economy on the continent, South Africa has impressive industrial, geographic and technological potential. I look forward to joining economic experts from across the continent as we work to strengthen South Africa’s investment environment and spur economic development across the region,” he said.&nbsp;&#8220;I will share insights on investment challenges and solutions to help guide South Africa&#8217;s indigenous business sector.&#8221;&nbsp;



Dewji&#8217;s estimated net worth is $1.6 billion, according to&nbsp;Forbes, and he is Africa&#8217;s youngest billionaire.&nbsp;

TANZANIA-KENYA-KIDNAPPING

Tanzanian Billionaire To Share Insights With South Africa On Investment

After more than a decade of trying to persuade authorities of the value of teaching entrepreneurship in schools, Lydia Zingoni, founder of the Teen Entrepreneur concept, is starting to make some headway.



By Nick Said



South Africa has targeted the creation of one million new entrepreneurs by 2030, but a schooling system, says Lydia Zingoni, weighed down by a lack of resources, infrastructure and a curriculum that focuses on traditional subject matter makes that seemingly a pipe dream.



Zingoni, founder of the Teen Entrepreneur concept, is hoping to change that and after more than a decade of trying to persuade authorities of the value of teaching entrepreneurship in schools, is starting to make some headway.



“The person you want in 2030 to be creating a business is likely in school at this time somewhere in South Africa,” Zingoni tells FORBES AFRICA. “You need to reach them now in order to create that mindset and begin to build the support structure around them.”&nbsp;



Zingoni, who was born in Zimbabwe but has lived and worked in London and now Cape Town for almost three decades, is hoping to revolutionize this space in South Africa and beyond its borders to across the African continent. &nbsp;



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Lydia4.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-50758" width="414" height="276" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Lydia4.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Lydia4-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Lydia4-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 414px) 100vw, 414px" /></figure></div>



“I came to realize this need when I was working for CPUT [Cape Peninsula University of Technology] as the director of information and libraries, and four young people came to my office and said, ‘look, we know we are not going to get jobs, we want information [on opening their own business].



“This was back in 2006 when internet resources and opportunities [for online learning] were obviously far less developed.”



Zingoni recognized a growing desire among young people to cut their own path in business, but there was little practical support from institutions.&nbsp;



She also believed these learnings should start much earlier, before tertiary education, and that schools would be an essential breeding ground for entrepreneurs.



She stepped up her plans in 2009 to form Teen Entrepreneur, a non-profit organization, and went to the Department of Education to push for a program in schools that would expose learners to the idea of entrepreneurship and help them develop their concepts.



“They were not really interested, they said, ‘science and maths is really what is important, entrepreneurship is not what we are focussing on’. So I decided to go it alone and left CPUT to create Teen Entrepreneur, which has involved advocating and creating programs to support young people in developing business ideas and skills.”



The plan is to create entrepreneur ‘societies’ in schools where learners can develop their own ideas and get the support they need to turn them into practical businesses.



“It is easier said than done,” Zingoni admits. “You can go to a school and talk to the kids for 10 minutes in assembly, but then what? You are not going to convince them that way.”



Zingoni instead approached schools to create a lesson outside of normal hours with up to 50 learners taking part. But it has been painstaking work.&nbsp;



“We have a program that has 11 modules, but the core is how do you come up with a business idea. If you are in Khayelitsha [a township in South Africa’s Western Cape province] or wherever, it is not just in major centers where entrepreneurship is an option.&nbsp;



“Look within your local community, use your passion and talent to see how you can solve your own community’s problems. Obviously, there is a social element to it, but it must have a financial gain to convince young people that entrepreneurship is an option.”



Teen Entrepreneur also hosts weekend programs, monthly indabas and conferences that are in addition to the work they do in schools.



“It has been a slow process. Very slow in fact. The hardest thing has been convincing policy-makers that we need to expose young people to an entrepreneurial mindset and culture.



But we are getting to where we want to be, although obviously the Covid-19 pandemic has set us back this past year,” Zingoni says.



“We are now working with the Eastern Cape government, who love our program. The Department of Education is also now finally running what they call the E3 program [Entrepreneurship, Education, Employability] and they have partnered with us on this. That has given us access to all South African [government] schools. If there was no Covid, we would have already rolled out that program.”



But the reach into schools across the country presents a massive logistical challenge, and that is where Teen Entrepreneur has turned to technology.



“If we went into every school, it would mean I am in charge of 27,000 teachers who will present the program,” Zingoni says. “Then multiply that by may be 50 learners in each program… it is a massive reach.



“In 2016, we decided to create a digital platform for the program, where we could refer the teachers to the portal [to get the information they need]. It took until 2019 to find a partner to assist us, and that was the University of Cape Town’s computer department.



“Schools can now get all the information they need online and create their own entrepreneurship societies in that environment.”



Zingoni says the program grapples with topics very much relevant to the world of today. &nbsp;&nbsp;



“Sustainability, the environment and climate change are factors we delve into, and it is about creating businesses that are cognizant of these issues.”



She adds they have already received interest from outside of South Africa in their program, and the decision to go digital has opened other doors.



“This is not just a South African issue, it is an African problem,” she says. “We have had interest from Tanzania, Kenya, Togo… now you can learn online, it is possible to have the program in these countries and it costs nothing to take part.”

Lydia3

How To Become A CEO At 16

TOPLINE Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced Tuesday he will step aside as CEO of the e-commerce giant to serve as executive chairman, a move he said will give him more time to focus on his other “passions.” Here are the causes Bezos said he’ll dedicate time to.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h4>



In a Tuesday&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/email-from-jeff-bezos-to-employees" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">letter to Amazon employees</a>, Bezos said said he’ll use his new free time to focus on The Day One Fund, the $2 billion fund he&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2018/09/13/jeff-bezos-amazon-philanthropy-giving-billion-dollar-fund/?sh=743df02d1570">established in 2018</a>&nbsp;aimed at opening full-scholarship, Montessori-influenced preschools in underserved communities and funding nonprofits that support homeless families.



He also said he’ll work on the Bezos Earth Fund, which he kicked off a year ago with a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2018/09/13/jeff-bezos-amazon-philanthropy-giving-billion-dollar-fund/?sh=743df02d1570">$10 billion pledge</a>&nbsp;(almost 10% of his net worth at the time) to combat climate change by issuing grants to “scientists, activists, NGOs—any effort that offers a real possibility to help&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/02/17/jeff-bezos-pledges-to-fight-climate-change-with-10-billion-earth-fund/?sh=79b4fb8b523b">preserve and protect the natural world</a>,” Bezos said.



Bezos also has Blue Origin, his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2021/01/14/blue-origin-launches-and-lands-its-first-space-tourism-rocket-of-the-year-with-human-flights-in-sight/?sh=12878c37283e">private spaceflight company</a>, which is developing rockets for commercial space tourism that he hinted could help NASA&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2019/05/09/jeff-bezos-unveils-blue-origins-lunar-lander-announces-new-glenn-first-launch-for-2021/?sh=224700a7435a">take humans to the Moon</a>.



The billionaire said he’ll also dedicate more time to&nbsp;The Washington Post,&nbsp;which he purchased for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2013/08/05/jeff-bezos-buys-washington-post-for-250-million-less-than-1-of-his-net-worth/?sh=39ccde84331b">$250 million</a>&nbsp;in 2013, and helped to expand its digital presence and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/16/media/jeff-bezos-donald-graham/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ramp up revenue</a>.



Crucial quote



“I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on &#8230; my other passions. I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring. I’m super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have,” Bezos said in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/email-from-jeff-bezos-to-employees" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the letter</a>&nbsp;Tuesday.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h4>



Bezos founded Amazon, which started out as an online bookstore, in 1994 out of his garage in Seattle. Now Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world, and operates ventures in streaming, entertainment, groceries, delivery and more. Bezos is worth&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2021/02/02/jeff-bezos-to-step-down-as-amazon-ceo/?sh=394328711e5d">$196.4 billion</a>, according to Forbes. Amazon announced Tuesday Bezo would&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2021/02/02/jeff-bezos-to-step-down-as-amazon-ceo/?sh=394328711e5d">step down as CEO</a>&nbsp;and be replaced by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/02/02/what-you-need-to-know-about-andy-jassy-amazons-new-ceo/">Andy Jassy</a>, who leads Amazon Web Services.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h4>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2021/02/02/jeff-bezos-to-step-down-as-amazon-ceo/?sh=394328711e5d">Jeff Bezos To Step Down As Amazon CEO</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/02/02/what-you-need-to-know-about-andy-jassy-amazons-new-ceo/">What You Need To Know About Andy Jassy, Amazon’s New CEO</a> (Forbes)



By Carlie Porterfield, Forbes Staff

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Attends Amazon’s Annual Smbhav Event In Delhi

Here’s What’s Next For Jeff Bezos After He Steps Down As Amazon CEO

At the 2020 FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit in Durban on March 6, for the first time on the same stage, South Africa’s minister Dr Naledi Pandor and her entrepreneur-daughter Dr Aisha Pandor revealed their secrets to continued success.



It’s not often we get to witness a famous mother and daughter on the same stage sharing their lessons on success and legacy. And this duo was certainly doing so for the first time.



At the 2020 FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit in Durban, South Africa, on March 6, Dr Naledi Pandor, the country’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, and Dr Aisha Pandor, CEO and Co-founder of SweepSouth, engaged in a stimulating and thought-provoking panel discussion titled ‘How To Raise A CEO’.



“Thank you very much to FORBES WOMAN AFRICA for the opportunity to be here with Aisha. I don’t often get a chance to see her. So it’s lovely to see you Aisha,” opened the much-loved minister, to laughter from the audience in the large ballroom at the international convention center in Durban.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="517" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2778-e1586614377306-1024x517.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44166" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2778-e1586614377306-1024x517.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2778-e1586614377306-300x151.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2778-e1586614377306-600x303.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2778-e1586614377306-768x388.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2778-e1586614377306-1536x775.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2778-e1586614377306.jpg 1623w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Gugu Mfuphi, Dr Aisha Pandor, and Dr Naledi Pandor </figcaption></figure>



The panel’s moderator Gugu Mfuphi began with a comic disclaimer that Dr Naledi has four children and that Dr Aisha is certainly “not the favorite”. As the audience lapped up the moment, the minister, with a broad smile, shook her head in disagreement, saying: “They are all my favorite!”



<figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote>“It was very clear – just nurture them in a wide range of things. That’s really important.”<cite>&#8211; Dr Naledi Pandor</cite></blockquote></figure>



There was more laughter and life lessons in store, as the audience got to see the lighter side of the minister.



“As a mother, what I tried to do is nurture her where she wished to grow, but also, to encourage her to have as much experience in a range of areas as possible. We would encourage academic work. We also encouraged sport, creativity; all my kids had to do speech and drama at school, it was very clear – just nurture them in a wide range of things. I think that’s really important,” said the senior Pandor.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="711" height="883" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2806-cropped.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44176" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2806-cropped.jpg 711w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2806-cropped-300x373.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2806-cropped-600x745.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2806-cropped-242x300.jpg 242w" sizes="(max-width: 711px) 100vw, 711px" /></figure>



While she mapped out her daughter’s career path, she later came to an important realization.



“She was really good in science. I love science but I’m bad at it. So I thought ‘God gave me Aisha, she’s going to achieve you know, because she was good at math and science’. And so she did very well at school, and went into the science faculty, did very well at the undergraduate level, was invited to carry on with an honors degree. She did very well and was asked to proceed to her Masters prior to finishing the honors. So, I was over the moon. It’s my dream, right? She continues from Masters into the PhD track, and completes her PhD with much fanfare and celebration on our part because now I’m thinking ‘here’s our senior research partner’. All these things I’ve been talking about science and technology, my child is going to live the example. Well lo and behold…”



The minister went on to offer more life-changing anecdotes about her daughter.



“One day, Aisha comes with her husband – who happens to be a software engineer – they tell us about this plan they’ve cooked up; that they’re going to start this tech start-up. And so I say to her ‘what about your research career?”. And she goes ‘this is what I want to do”. I say ‘what, but you’ve got a PhD, you could be a professor at the University of Cape Town, what are you talking about?’ And she says, ‘no mom, we’ve designed this program, we’ve started our company’. They began to tell me and her father all about it. Both of us were livid. I must tell you we thought ‘these kids are going to be a problem for us, they’ll be coming to beg for money and everything’. Few years down the line, and here we are! I’m very proud of her. I’ve learned my lesson. Let your children go where they wish to go!”



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="681" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2807-1024x681.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44169" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2807-1024x681.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2807-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2807-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2807-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2807-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2807.jpg 1623w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Dr Aisha Pandor</figcaption></figure>



Aisha, along with her husband, learned quickly that being a CEO will require significant sacrifice.



“I lived with my parents for probably four years after starting our business. We eventually ended up selling everything we had, to fund the business,” she said.



“Our parents brought us up to have the right moral compass. Education and the idea of learning and knowledge have been very important. My parents gave us freedom in the decisions we made based on the fact that they knew they had given us that grounding.”  



Watch the full panel discussion below: 



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<iframe loading="lazy" title="#LWS2020KZN: Mother &amp; Daughter - How To Raise A CEO" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kqJiWcLTgGY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></figure>

Forbes LWS2020KZN-2791

How To Raise A CEO: A Mother And Daughter Share Lessons

Jack Welch was an extraordinarily successful CEO, who in two decades made GE—a legacy company if ever there was one—the most valuable company on Earth, and then lived long enough to see it all fall apart. When Welch stepped down, GE was the envy of the business world and had a reputation for training superb managers and being a giant with the agility of a ballerina. By the time Welch died, the company had become a stunning symbol of gargantuan strategic mistakes and executive incompetence.



But the fall of GE doesn’t diminish Welch’s achievements during his years in the corner office. His failure wasn’t in how he ran his ever-expanding, ever more profitable kingdom but, to be blunt, in who he picked as his successor. This was tragic, as Welch had a number of capable choices, many of whom went on to manage other major corporations. My grandfather, B.C. Forbes, founder of our company, always said that you’ll learn more about a business’s prospects by accurately sizing up its CEO—what he liked to call “the head knocker”—than by studying its balance sheet.



 



When Welch took the reins in 1981, GE, like the U.S. economy, was tired and underperforming. The company was in scores of businesses; in a sense, it was a mutual fund that also actively managed the operations of its holdings. Welch was a driven, high-energy leader, who shook up GE from day one and never stopped. Being around him was a bracing experience, as you visibly felt his almost superhuman focus and intensity. He was also refreshingly outspoken. I had several chats with him about the Federal Reserve and its belief that prosperity causes inflation, a mistaken notion that Welch ripped into with gusto.&nbsp;



Under Welch, GE remained a multidimensional outfit but one that relentlessly shed underperforming operations, as well as “unproductive” employees. Promising entities and industries were actively pursued. Deals were done at a dizzying pace.&nbsp;



The most notable pursuit of opportunity lay in finance. The booming 1980s and 1990s saw the creation of an array of new instruments to finance new and existing businesses and shake up stodgy, underperforming ones. GE didn’t let its industrial legacy get in the way of aggressively expanding in this arena. GE Capital became a colossus and a profit machine.



PICTURE



The booming global economy was a helpful tailwind during Welch’s reign, but make no mistake, GE was at the forefront of events. Its total return to investors easily outpaced the broad stock market. Despite the firings and layoffs, GE’s payroll expanded, as did revenues.&nbsp;



The economic crisis of 2008, seven years after Welch retired, nearly sank GE, because GE Capital was dependent on short-term financing, which just about dried up during the panic that fall. GE Capital had also not been closely or skeptically managed, as other parts of GE traditionally had been. These blunders lay with Welch’s successors.



But there was a bigger mistake. Unlike it had done with finance, GE failed to see high tech as a ripe field with enormous long-term potential so didn’t go for it aggressively and nimbly. Its high-tech forays were too late and stultifyingly bureaucratic.&nbsp;



GE’s story in this century is a textbook example of the fact that in free markets, today’s success doesn’t guarantee tomorrow’s. It’s a lesson that too many people overlook, particularly regarding the seemingly unassailable power and position of our high-tech biggies. 



&#8211; Steve Forbes, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media.

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Jack Welch: Managerial Genius Who Made One Disastrous Mistake

Uber&#8217;s divided board managed to agree on one thing over the weekend: Expedia&#8217;s Dara Khosrowshahi <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2017/08/27/uber-names-expedias-dara-khosrowshahi-as-its-new-ceo/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">should be the company&#8217;s new CEO</a>. An official announcement is expected soon.
As of now, there are no signs that a bitter lawsuit pitting two of Uber&#8217;s largest shareholders &#8211; both of them board members &#8211; against each other, is nearing resolution. And that is odd, since it seems unlikely that Khosrowshahi, who is said to be <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1324424/000132442417000042/a8-k8282017.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ready to accept the job</a>, would want to jump into the middle of a war for control of the company.
Yet on Monday, the dispute between Uber&#8217;s former CEO Travis Kalanick and venture capital firm Benchmark showed no signs of abating. In a new court filing, Kalanick accused Benchmark of drawing out its lawsuit only to &#8220;publicly slander&#8221; his character.
&#8220;Benchmark desires to publicly attack Mr. Kalanick, and to peddle its allegations to the media, but that conduct is directly contrary to the interest of Uber, as announced by its Board of Directors,&#8221; the court filing said.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2015/10/01/luck-uber-bucks/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">From Down On His Luck To Uber Bucks</a>
On August 10, Benchmark sued Kalanick for fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty and breaches of contractual obligations.
As part of the suit, Benchmark wants the court to nullify a June 2016 agreement that created three additional board seats. It also wants the former CEO to be removed from the board and banned from participating in the search for his replacement.
While the two sides are still fighting over whether or not the case should be sent to arbitration, Benchmark&#8217;s argument that Kalanick is interfering in the CEO search is now a mute point.
Khosrowshahi will already have his hands full with Uber&#8217;s other litany of problems, from repairing an internal culture to a <a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2017/08/18/judge-tells-uber-misled-court-slams-waymo-greedy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lawsuit against Waymo</a> over self-driving car technology that&#8217;s scheduled to go to court in a month. Having to clean up the board mess would be an unwelcome distraction.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/08/25/amazon-lays-whole-foods-strategy-shakes-wall-street-anew/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Amazon Lays Out Whole Food Strategy And Shakes Up Wall Street Anew</a>
Also on Monday, Travis Kalanick ally and early Uber investor Shervin Pishevar, who on Friday <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2017/08/24/uber-investor-shervin-pishevar-seeks-to-intervene-in-legal-case-between-benchmark-and-kalanick/#40d1578b34d8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">decided to insert himself in the legal case</a>, celebrated Khosrowshahi with a dig at Benchmark.
&#8220;I applaud the Board’s decision to make Dara Khosrowshahi the next CEO of Uber, and we are gratified that Benchmark did not succeed in subverting the CEO selection process,&#8221; Pishevar said in an statement. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/bizcarson/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Biz Carson</a>, FORBES STAFF

Uber’s CEO Pick Adds Pressure To Resolve Boardroom Brawl

A colorful display of Simply Green Juices’ latest products, arranged neatly in the fridge, is hard to miss at the company’s store in Victoria Island, Lagos.
As the May sun streams through the balcony, a gleaming display of the popular juice – with the names Funky Beet, Pick Me Up, Cleanse Intense, Refresh and Get Naked –sparkle in the light. As a leader in Nigeria’s cold pressed juice market, Simply Green is a story born of tragedy.
“When I lost my brother, I told myself ‘you need to go back and do what you love doing’. I said to myself ‘why do you have to do something just for money, why don’t you do something you enjoy?’ I know a lot about farming so I thought to myself, ‘what is the one thing that you cannot find in Lagos?’” says Adeshola Ladoja, the Chief Executive Officer of Simply Green Juices.
The answer came from Ladoja’s childhood dream of being in the field.
“I always wanted to retire as a farmer on a rocking chair, just chilling. I went to my dad’s farm, which was rundown and had been closed, and I got some seeds and planted them and it started growing after some weeks. I said ‘ok, this is what I would like to do at 50 so why not start now’,” he says.
Ladoja’s journey has taken him on many paths. At the New York Institute of Technology he studied aeronautic engineering after which he worked as a systems integrator with Nortel Networks in New York. Following a four-year stint working with his dad on his farm, Ladoja decided to part ways to cut his teeth in yet another field.
“My dad and I didn’t have the same goal or plan towards the farm. He wanted something different from me; I got very frustrated and I decided to leave. I had nothing to do and became very broke and then I got a job at Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company. At this point I was thinking this is not my life. I want something better for my future,” says Ladoja.
It is this eye on the future saw hi buy his own farm in Ido, Oyo State, that has seen Simply Green Juices grow from a one-man business to a leader in the cold pressed juice market. From near anonymity two years ago when Ladoja started out, to a strong presence in Nigeria’s cosmopolitan city of Lagos, Ladoja will never forget the hard work it took to build his brand.
“I started off with a juicer that I used my dad’s credit card to pay for. It was $300.
I would wake up early in the morning to get the fruits, then I would use the juicer to blend it and by 6AM it’s in my trunk driving around Lekki ready to be dropped off for customers. Then I would go back and do the next shift. So I would do the morning shift from 12 midnight and then the afternoon shift will start from 2PM to 6PM.”
Traditional centrifugal juice extractors typically use a fast spinning metal blade, which generates heat and destroys some of the enzymes in the fruits and vegetables. Ladoja opted for cold pressed juicers, which first crush and then press the fruit and vegetables for the highest juice yield. According to him, Simply Green Juices was the first to market with this new trend.
The early days were full of ups and downs. Firstly, there was the issue of manpower.
“Staffing was a big problem. I had a challenge finding the right team. There were a lot of financial problems also because I had no money and I had to really grow the company from scratch.”
Then came battling Nigeria’s erratic power supply.
“There was no power to produce my juices so I had to use the little money I had to buy fuel to turn on my generator so I could work. Without money, it was very difficult also trying to push the product into the market. We were competing with 5Alive juice and other well-known brands already in the market with bigger budgets.”
“I started to understand why most farmers do not have money and why most farmers in Nigeria are broke and I knew the only way I could be successful was to add value and show how to make money from farming,” says Ladoja.
Ladoja decided to buck the trend. Instead of focusing on profits he turned his attention to expansion.
“I never thought about the money, I just thought I need to give my clients what they wanted until one day I realized that we had money in the bank account to actually expand. So we decided to expand, I got one staff member and I got a bike for delivery so I didn’t have to do it myself and then it just grew from there,” he says.
When Simply Green Juices started, it produced six bottles a day. By the end of the first month of business, that figure had increased to over 100 bottles. The company averages about 60 bottles a day and has launched a new range of products called Today’s Harvest. Ladoja isn’t resting on his laurels though; he wants to change Nigerian agriculture.
“We plan to reduce the importation of greens we bring into the country. The reason we import a lot of things, like vegetables, into Nigeria is because we don’t add value to what we grow and that is a big problem. So we are starting with vegetables and also milk, cheese, butter and everything to do with dairy. We are creating the first organic farm-to-table concept in Nigeria,” says Ladoja.
Ladoja is finally realizing his purpose, quenching the thirst of Nigeria while spending his days in the fields of his farm.

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A Bitter Vine Bearing Fruit

I’ve never been paid a salary; I became an entrepreneur straight after college,’’ says Jenny Miller, CEO and Creative Director of MIGLIO jewelry in Cape Town.
The self-taught designer entered the tough, challenging world of business at the age of 21, when most girls her age were still contemplating a career, whether to have one or not.
Born and bred in Somerset West in the Western Cape province of South Africa, Miller attended high school in Stellenbosch and completed her degree in English and Latin from the University of Cape Town.
In the early 80s, Miller partnered with her husband, an IT specialist at the time, to start a jewelry company. They both had creative genes in them, so they began handcrafting bracelets and selling them to people directly.
“Jewelry doesn’t sell itself if lying inside the store’s glass cupboard. It needs a woman’s personality to bring it to life,” says Miller.
Whilst setting up the company, Miller lived with her parents in Somerset West, as she did not have a paying job on the side.
“I was lucky because I had my parents and I could still get a plate of food,’’ says Miller.
Besides selling jewelry door-to-door, Miller used trunk shows or sale events for showcasing her products to targeted customers. The shows did well, and in a few months, the brand drew the attention of local retailers. Its first lease of life was when Miller landed an order to supply 350 pieces of jewelry to The Foschini Group.
Miller acknowledges this as one of her bravest business decisions; and believes you are never too young to start.
“If you’ve got a business idea, you’ve got to do it while you’re still young, before you’ve got the comfort and security of a salary.’’
A couple of years later, Miller managed to partner with more major retailers, such as Woolworths, Stuttafords, Truworths and Edgars, supplying them with her accessories while operating under their labels.
Clearly, Miller has had a lot to learn during the 30 years of her entrepreneurial journey. When MIGLIO expanded overseas, the environment, cultural differences and time zones were challenges in establishing the brand.
MIGLIO operates over 80 multi-jewelry stores overseas, including 11 in South Africa, 18 in Australia, 10 in New Zealand, 40 in Germany and a few in London and the United Kingdom.
At her factory in Somerset West, Miller employs over 150 skilled craftsmen.
When we meet her, in Sandton in Johannesburg, on the sidelines of the SA Fashion Week in October, she excitedly shares news about her daughter winning an award.
Clearly, creativity runs in the family for the Millers.

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‘I Have Never Been Paid A Salary’

Luis von Ahn looks like a tech-guru who has made millions – casually-dressed, subtle and polite.
I meet the inventor and CEO of the world’s largest language app, Duolingo, the day before the launch of the app’s first African language, Swahili.
For Von Ahn, the road to introducing Swahili to the 150 million users of his educational language app has been long, and has taken him around the world since leaving his homeland Guatemala.
A son of two medical doctors, graduating from Guatemala City’s international school, Von Ahn had to look outside the Central American country to find education – a university that offered math degrees – perhaps inspiring him to create a universal educational tool later in life.
During the first year of his PhD studies at the prestigious Duke University in the United States, a particular talk would influence and shape his life.
“The chief scientist of Yahoo came to give a talk about 10 things they needed solutions for. They struggled with people creating Yahoo email accounts to send spam. That led me to do a test recognizing humans: CAPTCHA. We were online within six months,” says Von Ahn.
This stroke of genius did not make Von Ahn a dime, he says.
“I don´t regret it, because everyone started using it; all kinds of people started approaching me.”
As tech giants lined up to court the CAPTCHA inventor, then 29-year-old Von Ahn was thinking about his next step.
“Two hundred million CAPTCHAs were typed a day, it takes about 10 seconds, that’s 500,000 hours of typing every day, how could I use that?” he asks, revealing how he turned the thousands of hours into an efficient digitalization tool.
Digitalizing books were trending, but no one had cracked the code on how to efficiently publish them yet.
“Google was trying to do this,” says Von Ahn.
“A computer scans a page that needs deciphering, which computers could not do at that time.”
Pictures of words from books are put online as CAPTCHAs, humans then decipher it, and the computer then saves it.
“Today, we call this crowdsourcing,” Von Ahn says, smiling.
“It worked. We were probably doing a year of the New York Times in a week. Then Google bought it, and today CAPTCHA digitalizes 100 million words a day, which is two million books a year,” says Von Ahn, explaining how, if you have filled in a CAPTCHA since 2007, you are probably among the billion people who have helped.
The sale of the CAPTCHA business has never been disclosed, but Von Ahn admits that it did make him millions. After that adventure, 37-year-old Von Ahn wanted to focus on education.
“I wanted to work on something passion-driven, and we decided on languages because there are 1.2 billion people learning languages, and language has impact: learn English, and you can immediately make more money.”
Eyeing a massive hole in the market, Von Ahn threw himself into making Duolingo.
Alongside Swiss PhD student Severin Hacker (that is his real name), Von Ahn started creating a website.
“That’s what people did,” he says.
The app market was only just launching in 2011, but that was all about to change.
“We raised $3 million of funding and launched in 2012. A few months later we launched apps, and now there are more than 150 million using it,” Von Ahn says proudly.
The main income generator is the app’s online language tests, an alternative to the traditional TOEFL tests that measure your ability to use and understand English.
“The TOEFL tests are expensive, slow and have to be done manually at centers. This is much cheaper,” says Von Ahn, offering tests at $50, whereas a TOEFL is about $250.
“We have already got about 30 universities on board,” he says.
Targeting Africa seems like a good idea, as the number of smartphone connections has almost doubled since 2014, and the cost of buying a smartphone has dropped by more than 25% since 2012. According to reports, more than 500 million on the continent currently subscribe to mobile services, with mobile operators expecting numbers to reach 725 million in 2020.
“The lack of smartphones is the main challenge, but everyone is trying to grow here, like Facebook, so that will change,” says Von Ahn.
Founder of numerous African tech start-ups, Ndubuisi Ekekwe, has stayed clear of any app-based business.
“Most smartphones sold in Africa fail to download and install apps from apps stores,” he says, explaining how in Africa, phones are used for a longer period of time before being replaced, making the phones unable to handle many apps.
“Americans can upgrade their phones annually and that is in line with most app upgrades. But in Africa, people use their phones for more than three years,” says Ekekwe. “We do not see a roadmap for how that can be closed, and that is why I do not see a market for apps in Africa for a long time.”
Von Ahn is not too worried though.
“I recognize that in six years apps might not even exist, but right now I think we’re okay,” he says, convinced of his, and Duolingo’s, ability to adapt.
The app’s current mission is to introduce Swahili to its 150 million users. Judging by the waiting list of 45,000 users, he is probably right.

The Tech Wizard Who Wants The World To Learn Swahili

The cool highveld breeze snaps the corner of her neon-yellow safety waistcoat as she steps out of the office building into the yard, the white hard hat sitting comfortably on her head.
Fortunate Mdanda takes confident strides in the male-dominated world of metal and machines. There are other women visible through the workshop doors, setting off sparks as they wield welders and grinders.
Under Mdanda’s watchful eye as CEO of Smith Capital Equipment, there is an internship program for women, and the company actively recruits female engineers.
Her background is not in engineering, but her corporate experience in business strategy, process and finance has amply equipped her for the position. If you have a mind for business, there is no need to feel restricted to more traditionally female pursuits.
“I’ve never looked at industries based on gender. I’ve looked at what one can contribute. So it’s a consolidated effort of all the right skills within the business that makes it successful,” she says.
When she with her husband Sipho took ownership of Smith Capital Equipment on November 2, 2015, the management and workforce were in for a major culture change.
After over two decades of democratic governance in South Africa, the company was still caught up in an apartheid time warp, with separate amenities for the races.
With racial and gender barriers swept aside, there was yet another sweeping change. The company’s 84 employees became shareholders.
“We created a shareholding for both management and staff, across race, across gender, so it’s inclusive, it’s a very exciting space for all of us at Smith Capital,” says Mdanda.
But change always comes with some growing pains.
“I must admit at the beginning it is a new concept when people are told they are shareholders. It comes with excitement, but they’re sort of sceptical. What does that bring? Is there money into our pocket immediately? So it took us a while to communicate the upside of being a shareholder and the responsibilities that come with being a shareholder,” she says.
“But now we’re at a space where we all really understand and are excited about being shareholders. People don’t just come in, do their work and walk out. There is transparency, there is excitement in terms of where the business is going, everyone shares in everything, the strategies of the business, the prospects, and we all share in the excitement and the challenges that we face as a business.”
The core business of this 43-year-old company is the manufacturing of on-road aerial platforms and drilling rigs used for water well and hard rock surface drilling in the mining industry and pole planting for new infrastructure. Equipment is locally designed and manufactured, with drilling rigs and aerial platforms boasting over 90% local content.
Then there is the import side of the business, with truck-mounted cranes brought in from Italy, as well as the ongoing service aspect of the business.
Through a recently-introduced rental division, the company encourages local contractors, who experience financial barriers to entry and cannot afford upfront procurement of the necessary capital equipment they need to deliver on contracts they obtain.
Repairs and maintenance as well as regular load-testing are other important facets of the business.
More black industrialists are emerging with encouragement from the government. The biggest barrier to entry has been funding.
“Now with the DFI [development finance institutions] being open to assisting entrepreneurs growing into being industrialists, I see endless opportunities being presented,” she says.
What is important here is that it goes beyond more than purely facilitating funding, but in providing support in skills-training, and opening business opportunities and new markets.
“Sometimes you find you have the best product but you can’t put it out there, you can’t export it because you find every process when it comes to structured processes that you need to go through are actually barriers to making one successful.”
The Gauteng Provincial Government and the City of Ekurhuleni, where Smith Capital Equipment is headquartered in South Africa, have made efforts to make it easier to do business.
Although the company had been exporting for years, it hadn’t been a major strategy.
“Now we’re turning that around, we’re sending units into Africa, which is very impressive. We’re getting enquiries, a lot as well, because our products are African products, not South African products. They are designed for the African terrain. It is different to sending a product anywhere in the world. So we understand what Africa is about, we understand the terrain and we understand our neighboring countries as well, so doing business with them is quite interesting and exciting and there is actually an increase in opportunities that are being presented.”
Smith Capital Equipment falls under the umbrella of Isipho Capital Holdings, which is wholly owned by the husband-wife duo. Their first acquisition was Kholeka Engineering, a manufacturer of truck bodies and trailers, based in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa.
“We funded it from our own savings. All we wanted to do was to have the skin in the game and to ensure that we can prove to ourselves that we can work hard and turn the business around. That happened and then came the Smith Capital deal. A few other deals are in the pipeline, so it’s quite exciting,” says Mdanda.
Because Smith Capital Equipment required considerable investment, the Mdandas secured a loan of R41 million (around $3 million) through the National Empowerment Fund (NEF). The company has since been identified as one of the 100 Black Industrialists by the Department of Trade and Industry, has established strong BEE credentials and is ISO 9001 registered.
Looking at the day-to-day operations of Smith Capital and the commitment and enthusiasm of their 84 shareholders, the dreams and plans for an expanding Isipho Capital Holdings seem bright and achievable. The future will tell if this is the birth of a new African business dynasty.
While there is much to do in running the business and creating and building an inclusive culture, there is much industry networking to be done as well.
“Sadly, engineer-run businesses are inward looking, that’s how Smith Capital was. But, with our experiences from corporate, you learn that business doesn’t come to you, you go look for business. You go make your presence felt.”
While she has achieved much in the business arena, she defines as her biggest achievement her and Sipho’s two teenage children – 18-year-old son Luyanda and 15-year-old daughter Noluthando.
No doubt Mdanda is a great role model to Noluthando, as she actively supports the development of women in her industry. Her advice for young women wanting to break into any previously male-dominated industry is to be positive and prepared to learn.
“Open yourself to learning and embrace the opportunities. With anything you do there will be challenges, but if you’re open-minded and positive about it and put in the hours in terms of the hard work, it works out well,” says the CEO who has proven this mantra for success, time and again.

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Lifting  Hurdles Even A Crane Can’t

They are new, blue and as powerful as eight Ferraris; these are the 232 train engines to be built by Rolls-Royce’s MTU South Africa (MTU SA) ready to roll out of Cape Town in South Africa and onto Africa’s railways.
“There are 7.2 billion people in the world, just in Africa, in 2010, we had estimates of 1 billion. By 2040, it will be double. By 2030, we will already need 50% more energy, 40% more water and 30% more food. How will you transport all that? We’re going to see mega cities especially in Asia and Africa. We need power and we need fuel efficiency and this is where rail comes in.”
So says Andrea Nono, CEO of MTU SA, at their refurbished offices in Montague Gardens, Cape Town. Here, MTU SA forked out R50 million ($3.53 million) to upgrade their factory to lay the foundation for expansion into Africa; their next big target.
“The message is simple and clear. We are changing Africa and hope to make a positive difference. It is a big moment for local manufacturing in South Africa. Let’s not forget the successes and the success stories. It is huge that an international company has been localized.”
It means MTU SA can now assemble, test and paint engines destined for anything from warships to mine trucks. The 232 engines are destined for Durban and run at a powerful 3,300kW and weigh 9.7 tonnes. This makes them lighter and cheaper than the Ferraris, jokes Nono.
<div id="attachment_32116" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32116" class="wp-image-32116 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/MTU_JC-8-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MTU_JC-8.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MTU_JC-8-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MTU_JC-8-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MTU_JC-8-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Andrea Nono and a completed engine</div>
The engines come straight out of a £1.2billion investment into research and development made by Rolls-Royce in 2015, a business worth £76.4 billion.
One of those working on the engines is Pamela Tebogo Maphanga, a technician at MTU SA.
Maphanga, remarkably, grew up in Zebediela, a small rural area in Limpopo, without any electricity at all.
“I was very young. The fact that you could switch on a stove, it was something so amazing. There was no electricity, so we used to go into the field, get wood, make fire and then cook and cook. I had to fetch water because there were no taps,” she says.
“Everyone at my house, my mom, my aunties they are all nurses. I said no I wasn’t going to be a nurse. It has to stop somewhere.”
The 30-year-old Maphanga, started here as an apprentice and worked her way up. She is now an electrical technician as well as dyno tester, responsible for testing the fleet.
“It makes a huge noise when the engine is running. No one is allowed to go in.”
Maphanga also knows too well South Africa’s overburdened train system having had to take them while studying at college in Pretoria.
“The fun of running for a train, that excitement, always when you go home you run for the train going back after college you have to run for the train. I know them very well. The trucks [transporting goods that should be on trains] mess up our roads, they are too heavy for them.”
In 10 years’ time, Maphanga sees herself as a manager and wants to make a change.
“We need more women. I’ve proved that it can be done. April is going to be my fifth year being at MTU. There’s been a couple of challenges, that I’ve overcome. But I am here now and proud to be part of this male-dominated workplace. I am showing them how to do it. Especially since now I am a technician. I’ve grown, I used to be this shy little girl, now I’ve grown up and even have my own small project that I am working on,” says Maphanga.
These days, Maphanga doesn’t even notice the smell of diesel and grease on her overalls, even though the people she comes across when walking home from work do.
“It gets so normal it’s part of the daily bread. There are women and men stopping me on the side of the street asking where I work. They ask me how did I get here. They’ve got their own daughters who want to go to college and get here. To be like me.
“When I [started], everything was hard. Everything was too big for me, everything was too difficult for me, but I fought and fought. I asked questions when I didn’t understand and I learned.”
On this day, Maphanga’s story leaves as large an impression as the massive white engine, still to be painted in the fashion forward MTU blue, she stands behind. Like Maphanga, the boss Nono, also started working as an apprentice.
“I’ve been in this industry for almost 20 years. I grew up in it. For me personally, it’s great to actually have the impact as CEO having the liberty and pushing the diversity agenda even more in the business. The means also giving women the chance to shine in this industry even more,” says Nono.
MTU SA estimates there are 120,000 industrial engines in Africa alone, leaving plenty of work for the factory once the rail engines are complete.
Two women whose lives have changed thanks to engines that are more powerful than Ferraris and will certainly carry more goods than can fit into their boots.

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The Smell Of Diesel,  Grease And Success

Sprinting across the globe in her Chuck Taylor sneakers with her headphones on, 28-year-old Zim Ugochukwu is not what you would call travel-weary – she’s travel-wealthy.
As founder and CEO of Travel Noire, a digital publishing platform for travelers of color, her passport is a diary of her life, of her many immersions into cultures other than her own.
But before we dwell on what Ugochukwu actually does, it’s important to know what she has done before: she cloned a gene at the age of 19 as a biology major in college, helped open a civil rights museum, led an anti-tobacco drive in the United States (US), worked on the Barack Obama presidential campaign in 2008, and lived in a train in India for two weeks with 400 other young people traveling the length and breadth of the subcontinent.
Ugochukwu appeared on FORBES’ 30 Under 30 list in 2016 for “being at the forefront of what is being called the Black Travel Movement”; was named one of Glamour magazine’s Young Women Changing the World; and more recently, Travel Noire was named one of the Most Innovative Companies in the World by Fast Company.
Born in Mankato, Minnesota, to Nigerian immigrants, Ugochukwu is going the extra mile “using technology to empower people of color to lead more global lives”.
“Whenever I travel I kind of spend time getting lost and not necessarily having any plans, but letting serendipity kind of guide me,” says Ugochukwu.
She was in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2016, when she found she had made Oprah Winfrey’s SuperSoul 100 list and had 48 hours to get to Los Angeles to meet Winfrey and her team.
When FORBES WOMAN AFRICA e-meets her on FaceTime, for once, Ugochukwu is sitting still, at Filter Café, a coffee house near downtown Chicago; it’s just after 4PM on a Sunday in the Windy City where she is based.
<div id="attachment_32107" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32107" class="wp-image-32107 size-full" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2016/12/zim-oprah-in-L.A.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="439" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/zim-oprah-in-L.A.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/zim-oprah-in-L.A-300x220.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />Zim and Oprah Winfrey</div>
This mode of communication is quite fitting for Ugochukwu. Judging by the constant banter in the background, punctuated by the sounds of coffee dispensers and clinking cups, the café is packed.
Ugochukwu says she is still jet-lagged after a vacation in Thailand.
“I just wanted to kind of get away, I went with some friends, it was really fun,” says Ugochukwu, who was to return to Thailand to speak at a conference but couldn’t on account of a bout of food poisoning.
“The amount of stress that you can put on your body when you have to travel so much can be a lot, but this is the life that I asked for, if I wasn’t doing this, I don’t know what I would be doing.”
Her first international trip was at the age of 16, when her mother took her and her brother to visit Nigeria, their home country.
Her travels today have taken her to five continents, and she has paid rent in places like Greensboro, New Delhi, Dharamsala, Bengaluru and San Francisco. Chicago has been her home since mid-2016.
While in college, she was Vice President of national anti-tobacco organization, Forget Tobacco, which gave her the opportunity to travel across America. She also founded Ignite Greensboro, a campaign to raise awareness about the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. She in turn galvanized thousands of students to help bring awareness of the museum. She deems this to be the cornerstone of her career.
Her love for science saw her majoring in biology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She cloned a gene “discovering a link between cells found in the digestive system of a tiny fruit fly and a rare genetic disorder whilst examining a region called the superior Cupric autonomic system or sCans”.
She further elaborates in a language few understand: “Within this region lies a cluster of neuron-like cells called lettuce head cells, they function as pacemaker cells controlling muscle contractions, in the gut. These cells express a number of genes found in nervous system tissue.” One of these genes, Cg16972, Ugochukwu claims, was founded by her.
Whilst she majored in biology, her minor subjects were political science and sociology and as part of her course requirements, she worked as an organizer for Obama’s campaign. While still in college, she says she was also the youngest appointed precinct judge for North Carolina’s Board of Elections.
“I was responsible for the conduct of the election in the precinct polling station, the backbone of the electoral process.”
Ugochukwu speaks Hindi, a language she picked up during her time living in India, an experience that changed her life. Right before finishing college in the US, she won the Henry Luce scholarship, and moved to India for a year.
During this time, she lived in the Jagriti Yatra train, an initiative promoting entrepreneurship, as she traveled across India with other youth and 50 international participants, stopping in a new Indian city every day to follow social entrepreneurs.
For the rest of that year, she worked helping connect young business owners with resources, doing work for various organizations, as well as helping farmers get grants. This experience allowed her to see at least 75% of India, and later led to her abiding love for Asia.
It was during her time in India she realized there weren’t many black tourists.
“If you picked up any magazine, you typically didn’t see people of color,” says Ugochukwu.
She wanted to change that, and create a space for black people to talk about their travel experiences and connect with others.
After returning to the US after her year in India, with limited funds and no career plans, yet, she moved to Southern California to live with her mother.
“Often parents have a different idea of what a fulfilling life should be. You are either a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer or a failure.”
Her mother, a nurse, wanted Ugochukwu to become a doctor, and when she decided not to, didn’t understand it.
Soon, she packed up and headed to San Francisco with $300 to live with her “fairy godmother”, who opened the doors of her home, free of charge.
Ugochukwu worked as producer for the Digital Health Summit, discovering ways technology can create change in developing countries. She launched Travel Noire while still working there in 2013 with only $50, enough to buy a domain. In June 2014, three days before her 26th birthday, Ugochukwu was fired from her job as her heart was not in it anymore; up until this time, she had run Travel Noire on a part-time basis.
With no job, Travel Noire became her main focus and she took her $17,000 in savings and began to put her business blueprint into action. She spent 18 months building up the community before selling any product. Many people volunteered their time to build the brand that Travel Noire is today.
The company offers group travel experiences to young people of color who hail from different walks of life, to explore various international destinations together. It has over 50 on-the-ground partners and offers travel experiences in different time zones.
“It could’ve been so easy for us to get a brown stone office in New York City, but I wanted people to have the flexibility, to work wherever they felt the most happy; we can live and work just about  anywhere in the world where there is a Wi-Fi connection,” says Ugochukwu.
Today, Travel Noire has a strong social media presence; with an audience of over 300,000 on Instagram alone. Her mother has since become a proud supporter of Travel Noire.
Her advice for budding entrepreneurs? She warns it’s not all as rosy as it may appear and that behind the glamor, are long 14-hour days, and times when there is not enough money, especially in the beginning.
“You need to be willing to put everything on the line and be comfortable with the possibility of not having enough money for rent at times,” says Ugochukwu.
“I didn’t ever think that [my business] would be this big, but people told me that I had to think bigger.”
Clearly, the world is not enough for this millennial.

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Obama,  Oprah And The World On Her CV

It is a tragedy that business opportunities are missed because entrepreneurs overanalyse risk factors. This is the very reason businesses grow at a slow pace, while others are phased out.
I’m not encouraging ignorance; I’m just disappointed by entrepreneurs blinded by small details rather than being decisive.
The same applies to investors who, thinking they knew too much, did not invest in Uber when their founders approached them.
In an ever-changing world, you can’t make decisions that are only informed by the past. Rather than dismissing what you don’t yet understand, consult those who do to help you make an informed decision.
A gigantic problem faced by most of us entrepreneurs at some point in our businesses is analysis paralysis. Basically, it is over-analysing, or overthinking, an opportunity. It often results in a decision not being taken, and can lead to your business underperforming.
Analysis paralysis is worse than red tape. With analysis paralysis, things don’t move slowly, rather not at all. Decision makers are paralysed by their inability to make a decision, afraid of what could or could not come to pass. Ultimately, not deciding is the same as deciding against.
As an entrepreneur, you have probably dealt with corporate clients and stakeholders. This disease is within their structures, whether it is the personnel dealing with your proposition not being entrepreneurial in their approach, or the committee under-evaluating your proposal.
<ol>
<li>Harv Eker, the author of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, says it better: “One step in the right direction is worth 100 years of thinking about it.”</li>
</ol>
One of the reasons Nokia went down the way it did, after a decade of leading the mobile sector, was due to analysis paralysis creeping as the company was getting complacent. Around 2006, Nokia was more concerned with staying where it was, instead of pursuing new opportunities.
It’s not as if Nokia wasn’t working on new stuff, they just lacked a sense of urgency. Developing cutting-edge new products was put on the backburner. Former employees observed that Nokia’s operating system team split into two and started to battle for the attention of top executives, resulting in internal politics. In 2008, Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm, also voiced concern that Nokia devoted too much time to strategy.
From one decade to another, we have seen how the mighty have fallen. Now we are aware of the danger of analysis paralysis.
Entrepreneurs can learn a thing or two from a married couple. A husband comes back from few meetings, excited about a business opportunity. He tells his wife that the family’s finance could improve, but, because the wife was not in the meeting, she will do the responsible thing of interrogating the validity of the offer.
Often, with many businesses, these opportunities are not discussed and considered in the same manner. This should be compared to the processes at successful start-ups. Here the co-founders will debate the merits of each deal.
There is a danger of approving every offer that is made; it will likely end up in bankruptcy. I’m an advocate of being cautiously optimistic.
In a competitive business environment, analysis paralysis is the worst thing that can be allowed to emerge; it is a culture that needs to be kicked out of the system.
No matter how big a company becomes, it need to maintain an entrepreneurial approach. Don’t become a big truck that turns around after driving two blocks down the road.

Optimism  Is Better Than  Paralysis

The year was 1980. Ramachandran ‘Ram’ Ottapathu and his classmates would frequently boycott college and take to the streets holding ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ placards, appealing for the release of the jailed anti-apartheid hero. Mandela’s fight was their fight too, and his freedom, their freedom.
Except that this street protest was not in South Africa, in fact not anywhere in Africa, but in Kerala, 4,200 miles from Johannesburg.
Kerala, that leafy green state in the south of India, famously known in tourism brochures and puff travel pieces as ‘God’s own country’, was where Ottapathu, the man who would one day become a retail king in Africa, grew up. His home is in Ollur in Kerala’s Thrissur district.
Ollur, a small town with quaint little churches, is known for its entrepreneurial energy and commercial bustle. It boasts ubiquitous saw mills, side shops selling rolled gold ornaments, and factories making endless wooden packing cases.
It is said that during the First World War, it was here in Ollur that the wooden packing cases were crafted, for military use. The locals are so enterprising and the town, so filled with entrepreneurs that if a young man left Ollur for a job overseas, he was brushed off as useless, never to return.
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But not Ottapathu, the now famous ‘O’ of Ollur, who changed this narrative for good. Known to his neighbors as ‘Kannan’, an endearing name in Malayalam (language spoken in Kerala), even now, when he left Ollur for Botswana in 1992, in time, he also took Ollur with him.
It would seem that Ottapathu, the CEO of Choppies, Botswana’s biggest retailer, has employed almost half of Ollur.
More than 500 qualified men and women in his hometown have made the crossover to Gaborone, he says.
“Earlier, they didn’t know what I was doing in Africa,” says Ottapathu. “It was a distant place.”
Even before he arrived on African shores, Africa was on his mind.
In 1980, when Zimbabwe gained independence, a young Ottapathu featured the country on the cover of his college magazine. He wrote the words: “You must be loyal to your past, otherwise, you will go back to your past again and again.”
The Africa affinity was in his destiny, somehow, by default.
“My friends and I used to closely observe what was going on in Africa, because of the struggles in those days,” Ottapathu tells me, a fellow Keralite, in chaste Malayalam, when we meet at his plush duplex apartment at The Regent in Johannesburg on one of his many visits to the city from Gaborone.
While in college, studying for a commerce degree, he admits he was unabashedly leftist, and with his friends, always searching for a cause célèbre. For the uninitiated, communism features heavily in Kerala’s political history.
“At the age of 20, if you are not a communist, you are not a human being,” chuckles Ottapathu. “There are a lot of qualities you possess when you are an ideologist. It’s always helpful going forward.”
Evenings in Thrissur as a student were spent with friends by the busy town square, ironically called ‘The Round’, near the Vadakkumnathan Kshetram (a famous Shiva temple in Kerala), devouring the left-leaning Kerala Kaumudi and Deshabhimani publications and discussing the politics of the day. They also played cricket.
“We would always be on the look-out for a theme [to espouse]… We used to have a sort of defiance to everything, we had totally rebellious thinking at the time,” says Ottapathu.
“I tell South Africans the number of days I have spent on the streets in Kerala demanding the release of Nelson Mandela is much more than what an average South African would have done. I must have boycotted more than 100 academic days [to the cause] in the five years of my college life.”
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However, that life, and his thinking, changed when Ottapathu enrolled for his articleship training as part of his chartered accountancy course.
For one, the hours were very demanding. Whilst in college he enjoyed the freedom of bunking classes, he found it difficult to sit for hours hunched over accounting books. He quit in a week. A close friend forced him to return, saying “you don’t have a choice, if you don’t become a professional, your life will be doomed”. Ottapathu is grateful he took his advice and returned to focus on his career. In three years, he passed his chartered accountancy exams in the very first attempt, and “there was no looking back”.
The first son of five children, Ottapathu was born to “a working class family”. His father was a handloom weaver and his mother a housewife who did odd part-time jobs at a construction company. The family was deplorably poor, and from a young age, there was pressure on Ottapathu to make money, so he undertook various part-time accounting jobs.
“We suffered a lot. We were never able to make ends meet. The family had three full meals only about once a year,” says Ottapathu.
“My aim was to get a job, it didn’t matter what job, to earn any income, and take care of the family. For me, everything revolves around family. There is nothing beyond giving a decent living to one’s parents and siblings.”
Ottapathu toiled to lift the family out of poverty, marrying off his sisters, finding jobs for his brother and cousins in the years that followed. His first decent job was in Kochi, a metropolis in Kerala, as a chartered accountant with Apollo Tyres. Soon, he got promoted and transferred to Baroda in the Indian state of Gujarat, further north. It was around this time that the first chapter of his Africa story was written.
While on holiday in Kerala, it was a chance meeting with the managing director of a medical company he visited that launched his career in a completely different geography.
“I had gone there to meet my cousin, and the managing director, seeing me, asked what I was doing and said he had a brother who owned an accounting firm in Botswana and was looking for qualified accountants and if I would like to go. He asked me to send him my CV, which I did and I promptly forgot all about it.”
Ottapathu returned to his regular nine-to-five job in Baroda. The envelope that arrived soon after containing a visa and work permit to Botswana completely took him by surprise. At the time, all he knew about Botswana was it was an African country, and that it had “a lot of diamonds and elephants”.
“I knew it was one elephant for every 50 people,” he says.
On December 18, 1992, Ottapathu left his wife Jalaja and boarded the plane from Mumbai to Gaborone via Nairobi and Harare. On the Air Zimbabwe flight to Gaborone from Harare, his co-passenger was the son of the then Indian High Commissioner of Botswana. His prophetic words still ring in Ottapathu’s ears.
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“I was feeling very gloomy leaving my family. But he told me ‘don’t be sad, you are an accountant, and you are going to paradise, you will be a multi-millionaire one day, because that is the opportunity Botswana offers’,” recalls Ottapathu, who arrived in Gaborone with $20 in his pocket, all that was left after giving away $20 to the immigration officer in Nairobi.
Ottapathu joined the Mazars accounting firm on a dour December day. His first assignment was handling the ailing finances of Choppies’ fledgling predecessor, the Wayside supermarket, in Lobatse, in southeastern Botswana, roughly 70 kilometers from the capital Gaborone and close to the South African border.
To Ottapathu, it was the middle of nowhere, far from the bustling temple precincts of his hometown in Kerala.
The company had huge financial issues. Founded by Farouk Ismail of the Chopdat family (of Gujarati origin) in 1986, the Wayside supermarket was largely a shopping destination for Zambians and Zimbabweans not allowed access to South Africa during apartheid. There were regular train services that terminated in Lobatse, where they would buy goods such as watches, radios and sewing machines, and return.
“When apartheid ended, the train services stopped and the business just collapsed,” says Ottapathu. “But the one good thing about it all was that I could experiment. Anything we attempted was an improvement. The business slowly started turning around.”
By 1997, things were looking better, much better. Ottapathu had managed to steer the company out of its financial quagmire. In 1999, the company opened its first superstore in Gaborone West, which still exists. Ottapathu was appointed CEO in 2000.
“It opened our eyes to the potential of the business,” he says.
But the real turnaround was yet to come, in 2002, when Choppies’ first hyperstore opened in Gaborone.
“That store was the biggest success. It gave us an address and identity. It is still one of the biggest trading stores turnover-wise, in Botswana, doing almost BWP200 million (about $18 million) a year,” says Ottapathu.
The Choppies model was providing high-quality retail products at good value to the lower and middle LSM in smaller towns, through acquisitions of smaller franchises, but also effecting Botswana’s switch from informal to formal retail.
In Botswana, 20% of Choppies’ revenue is from its own branded products, about 50 of them, including sugar, flour, rice, juice, maize and cooking oil.
“In 2004, when the first devaluation of the pula came, all the [informal] Indian traders got a shock. So that gave us an opportunity to buy out a lot of stores from them at very good prices. They were running franchises. In 2003, we were operating Friendly Grocers, OK Foods and Spar. In 2003, we started doing well, so they wanted us to buy more from them, and started putting pressure, so we said ‘we are going alone, you can take your franchise’. That’s when the turnaround happened. That’s when we changed the name to Choppies [after the Chopdat founders].”
That’s not all. Between 2002 and 2007, the company “grew seven times”.
“We have never since had any financial issues. When we started talking to the banks for finance, and projected our financials in 2003, that we were going to have a BWP1 billion ($89 million) turnover, the bank manager would tease me saying ‘you are not normal’. He said ‘even bigger South African companies won’t get half of that, so where will you get it’? And we achieved it in 2004-2005.”
Festus Mogae, the former president of Botswana, was appointed Choppies’ chairman in 2008.
The company’s turnover in 2015 was BWP6 billion ($533 million).
Today, Choppies runs 170 stores across Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe. West Africa is not being considered for the moment, but Choppies is entering new and underserved markets in Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia; even Rwanda is on the cards. It is on course to roll out 200 stores by the end of 2016. The company is growing at 25% every year, and Ottapathu says Choppies is cash-plus.
“We need to grow at 50% to get to 200 stores, and we can see it,” he says.
Listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange in 2012, Choppies’ secondary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Africa’s biggest stock exchange, from May 2015, is doing well. Choppies is expecting to eventually get “$700 million that will be put into the Africa expansion”.
Choppies entered South Africa in 2008 with a distribution center in Rustenburg, located strategically on the transport route to Botswana. It currently operates more than 60 stores in the country, and that number is growing every month. In an intensely competitive retail environment, with majors such as Shoprite and Pick n Pay, Choppies targets Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns, and says it’s doing extremely well in Limpopo, North West province, northern Free State and Mpumalanga.
“We have been competing with South Africa for a long time. Our market share is over 36 percent. There is no other African retailer with that kind of market share in any market,” says Ottapathu, who became a shareholder in 1999, and currently owns 20% of the company.
And his personal net worth, considering he came to Africa with $20 in his pocket?
“I haven’t counted,” he laughs. “I normally don’t.”
Prod him further, and he reluctantly says it could be $300 million.
At heart, he is a simple man who has not forgotten the poverty, pain and hunger that defined his youth.
He says he wears suits only when he meets Botswana president Ian Khama, and displays few trappings of wealth, although he owns two private planes, a Beechcraft and Embraer, parked at Lanseria airport when in Johannesburg.
“It’s quicker connecting to Africa that way,” he says.
It may seem that Ottapathu’s destiny was a foregone conclusion to many. Misty-eyed, he recalls the words of his mother’s sister, an aunt he truly loved, who had no children and passed away before he made that first trip to Africa. His greatest regret to this day is she didn’t live to see him successful.
“She used to like me very much, and often told me, the way you are growing up, you will even one day own a plane, and I would laugh. My regret is I couldn’t look after her.”
Ottapathu lost his father in 2002, but is grateful both his parents saw his success, visiting him several times in Botswana. His 80-year-old mother lives in his family home in Kerala.
He says the true value of wealth is beyond money, it’s enjoying what you do, and never losing focus. After he first arrived in Africa, it took him four years to visit Kerala &#8211; he was that involved in his work. From 1992 to 2003, he says he may have visited India only for 30 days in all.
“I don’t have any aim to achieve so much wealth. I would rather have ambitions relating to the business. My immediate aim for Choppies is to get a billion-dollar turnover. And increase the number of employees from 11,000 to 25,000,” says Ottapathu.
He is known to be a shrewd businessman, never mincing words, but his enterprise and clean reputation have won him admirers on the continent.
“The most remarkable thing about him is the sort of speed and ease with which he moved from working for this accounting agency to taking the opportunity to turn entrepreneurial; the ease with which he saw how parochial we tend to be in big businesses in South Africa and by extension in Botswana, that the approach is local, and he saw that was the niche, in the process explaining how he managed to quickly move into new markets. That sort of global outlook makes him a true citizen of the world,” says Luke Spiropoulos, who met Ottapathu three times as part of his master’s degree research on the migration and mobility of Indian communities in Southern Africa, with the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa and University of the Witwatersrand.
“When he came here, he didn’t have a lot of options at the time but his professional advantage over the others seems to be a particularly sharp knowledge of tertiary education in India, by bringing people in with high-end qualifications. He has a good feel for the human resources market in India,” says Spiropoulos.
Ottapathu says his humble upbringing shaped his belief-systems.
“I am a strong believer in karma. I always say my two hands are my God. Whatever I do the right way, I always get it back. Being a knowledge worker, you use your brain and your hands.”
And not for him ephemeral success.
“Have a long-term view. Don’t look at fortune created overnight. It’s a long-term process rather than an accident,” says Ottapathu.
This is the advice he constantly gives his 23-year-old son Balram, a finance and economics graduate from Wharton, currently studying in Princeton in the United States. His daughter, Bhagyasree, is only 10.
Will his son take to retail like him?
“My father didn’t give me anything,” says Ottapathu. “So he must decide what he wants to be. Sachin Tendulkar [Indian cricketer] said about his son, ‘I can put cricket into his brain, but not into his heart’. Likewise, it has to come from his heart. Eventually, he may take to retail consultancy.”
And the future of Africa?
The future of retail, he says, is smaller stores, given that “hypermarkets are shrinking around the world”.
“The politics is what is putting Africa behind. At Choppies, we try to be neutral, and not align with anything, and work with official channels. Africa is certainly open for business. The growth opportunities here are much better. One day, companies like Walmart will do much better; it will start flexing its muscles. But it will be good for retail in general.”
Will he ever take Choppies to India, just like M.A. Yousuf Ali, the Dubai-based billionaire from his hometown in Kerala, did? Ali opened the gargantuan LuLu Mall in Kerala after a slew of hypermarket-successes across the Middle East.
No, says Ottapathu.
“Currently, we have better returns for our capital here in Africa. We don’t want to lose focus on what we are doing here, if we start doing things in many places.”
But he just might forge the Africa-Kerala connection on celluloid though.
“I have been approached to produce films. I just may. If it happens, the movie will be shot in Kerala and Botswana, linking both countries.”
You just cannot take Africa out of him.
“Africa is an addiction,” concludes Ottapathu. “I don’t even want my dead body to go out.”

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