MAHLANGU’S TECHNICAL STRIDES FOR EMPLOYMENT CREATION AND WOMEN EMPOWERMENT

Synergy Trading and Projects founder Nompumelelo Mahlangu’s relationship with Innovator Trust dates back to 2020 when she submitted an application that she did not in her wildest dreams imagine would be approved

The training of staff around health and safety is the biggest cost in the technical spaces within which Synergy is rooted, and the support from Innovator Trust in this regard was most welcome to Mpumi and her team.

The training budget offered by Innovator Trust is to the effect of R30 000’s worth of support which also comprises Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

Mpumi is also a beneficiary of Innovator Trust’s Ithuba Program for the year 2023. This program is centered around equipping the beneficiaries with skills in sales, branding and marketing, and social media. They go so far as to assist their beneficiaries in the production of promotional videos and in these times when the entire world is all but digital, promotional videos are fast becoming some of the most widely used marketing tools

In 2022 alone Nompumelelo won four of Innovator Trusts’s prestigious awards, positioning herself as one of the biggest brains in South African entrepreneurship today Among those awards was Best Employment Creator, which is a huge deal considering the spike in unemployment statistics in our country over recent years Through Synergy Trading and Projects’ happy and successful relationship with Innovator Trust, Nompulelo’s company has embarked on a business relationship with Vodacom as one of the telecommunications giant’s top service providers.

At its inception back in 2015, Mpumi's company was known as Synergy Telecommunications and was initially the brainchild of Mpumi and her then-partner Unpredictable as life has always been known to be, the business partnership turned sour within a matter of months with Mpumi’s partner deciding to become an employee as opposed to part owner prior to his subsequent permanent exit from the business.

Still being in corporate spaces herself, Mpumi felt that emotionally and psychologically at the time she was not ready to take the business bull by its horns and opted to remain a corporate Sister.

However, in 2020, a much stronger and even more determined Mpumi came to the resolve that it was time to shut her then employer’s laptop down for good and embark on a journey to rebrand and give what was to become Synergy Trading and Projects a hundred percent of her time and attention and once her eyes were on the ball there was no stopping Mpumi.

Rebranding meant also moving with the times Technology made massive advances between 2015 and 2020 and if Mpumi was going to make a success of Synergy, she would have to steer the company towards other verticals within ICT as opposed to just supplying batteries and being a solely telecommunications-based entity. She now installs equipment for Vodacom’s private as well as corporate clients, offers maintenance services, and also supplies cables and network material. “The greatest lesson out of the Covid pandemic was how the point of technology is to make things more effective.

“The greatest challenge for me was wearing the HR, accountant, operations, administration hat among many others in the beginning and outsourcing eventually became my best friend. This helped me grow immensely both professionally and personally because now when I outsource the skills that I do not possess I know exactly what to look for, and my selfconfidence has also grown to a point where I am no longer apologetic when speaking about the success of my business. The fact that I have achieved so much is evidence that I am doing something right” concludes the founder of a company that has grown to be a trusted brand because of Mpumi and her team’s ability to listen attentively to client feedback.

By: Mbali Mbatha