Lufefe Nomjana is a 28-year-old South African entrepreneur who made his fortune from the ground up. “Intellectual capital beats financial capital,” he insisted. He founded Espinaca Innovations, a bakery business that markets bread, muffins and spinach sandwiches.
It all started in 2012. Lufefe Nomjana then volunteered for a community garden and noticed a large amount of spinach. His entrepreneurial spirit drives him to seize this opportunity and start his own business. Having only 40 rand, the equivalent of $ 2.60, he started producing bread. He asks for help from his neighbor who allows him to use his oven at night, in exchange for paying the costs of electricity and the supply of spinach bread.
He started by baking 4 loaves per night, then 8, then 16 and sold the unit for 10 rand ($ 0.65) during the day. In 2013, he approached Spar, a local grocery store, and obtained an agreement for the full-time use of their oven, provided he supplied the grocer. With this new agreement, its production increases to 200 per day.
Today, his company produces around 500 loaves a day and plans to expand it to 2,000. In 2014 Nomjana won the SAB Innovation Prize, with an endowment of 90,000 rand (about $ 6,000).
ecceafrica
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