Nhlanhla Dlamini Not Only Has Guts, But Grit – In Spades An alumnus of WBS and Harvard Business School, Nhlanhla Dlamini did some soul searching when he was doing his MBA at Harvard, and knew that the corporate ladder, although tempting, was simply not going to be enough.

It takes guts to venture into entrepreneurship. And when you're in a "cushy' job with a top global auditing firm who are grooming you for partnership, it takes even more guts.

Nhlanhla Dlamini not only has guts, but grit – in spades.

An alumnus of WBS and Harvard Business School, Nhlanhla did some soul searching when he was doing his MBA at Harvard, and knew that the corporate ladder, although tempting, was simply not going to be enough.

"I started thinking, "what is the best thing I can do with my life?'", recalls Nhlanhla. "I always felt a pressing need to get involved in lowering the unemployment rate in South Africa. It's a notoriously difficult space, but entrepreneurship is the real engine of job creation and I felt compelled to rise to the challenge."

When he left his job at McKinsey in March 2015, Nhlanhla decided to explore the agricultural sector – having no idea what product or what part of the value chain he would end up in. He spent until December that year exploring the agri-food sector, gaining as much understanding as he could about the entire industry by talking to famers, co-ops, agricultural associations and various other stakeholders.

"I wanted to export products to the US and I looked at tree nuts, blueberries, dairy products or meat. Because of stringent FDA regulations, meat wasn't an option – but a friend of mine from WBS days suggested meat in the form of pet food."

Taking the entrepreneurial plunge

And so Maneli Pets was born, and Nhlanhla moved his fledgling business into a factory, which he re-purposed for meat processing, in October 2016. By June 2017, he had started operations with 30 employees on board, and by September he had 50 employees.

What makes Maneli different from other US-bound pet food products in an already saturated market? The answer is high protein meat from animals that are unique to South Africa.

"I discovered a market for the off-cuts of meat from specialist butcheries – so crocodile, warthog, ostrich etc," Nhlanhla explains. "The result is a very high quality, high protein pet snack with a difference – and US pet owners are willing to pay for the best they can get."

Under the brand name "Roam', Maneli Pets products are exported to a pet food wholesaler in Boston, US, owned by the family of Nhlanhla's former WBS classmate, who had planted the seed of the idea in the first place. Nhlanhla is now preparing to launch the products under another brand name for distribution in South Africa and export to the EU.

But pet food is only the start. Maneli Pets is an offshoot of the Maneli Group, a diversified food company which is looking ooking to build further businesses in the green energy sector, while boosting black entrepreneurship.

Becoming a trail-blazer

According to a City Press report, South Africa has relatively few black-owned food production businesses, which is why government is actively promoting agro-processing and the manufacturing sector in general to spur economic growth.

Nhlanhla has worked tirelessly to secure government funding, and was thrilled to obtain R26 million from the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC). Just last month, he received the news that Maneli Pets had been awarded grant funding of R12.5 million from the Department of Trade and Industry's Black Industrialists Scheme (BIS).

Nhlanhla, who was also a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University, considers his PDM at WBS a "superb" way of preparing a student for the real world of work. "The group dynamics was an essential learning experience in terms of delivering on a mandate with a group with entirely different skill sets."

Describing himself as a "passionate and active WBS alumnus," Nlhanhla still stays in regular contact with a core group from his PDM class, proving that one of the enduring benefits of a PDM (and an MBA) is the opportunity to connect and network with like-minded people and form life-long friendships.

Apart from what he learnt in the Entrepreneurship Management module of the PDM, such as the pillars of entrepreneurship, macro trend support and financing an idea, Nhlanhla considers the keys to success are threefold: Recognising the value of a social network, tenacity – and just a little luck!