COVER STORY
BUSINESS LEADER’S
PEARLS OF WISDOM
Ajay Lalu is the Managing Director of Black Lite Consulting, a company that specialises in BBBEE consulting. Incub8 Magazine spoke to him about his journey as a business leader and some of the lessons that have helped him build his Group.
P
lease give us your background including your lessons and experiences. I grew up in one of the more impoverished areas of the Cape Flats in the Western Cape. I spent my teenage years at Rylands High School where I was one of the youngest chairpersons of the Student Representative Council (SRC). One of my mentors was former struggle hero Dullah Omar who was the first Minister of Justice in President Nelson Mandela’s cabinet. Com D encouraged us to study and further our studies which prompted me to enrol at the University of Western Cape where I did a Bcom and Bcompt Honours and eventually qualified as a Chartered Accountant (CA). You are in the B-BBEE space, what are your views regarding business incubation, and how important is it for upcoming entrepreneurs to seek this for their start-ups? A lot of companies have attempted to enter and make a mark in the business incubation space with varying degrees of success. These companies have faced several challenges because firstly finding a good entrepreneur is hard and secondly I believe these companies adopt a very cookie cutter approach to development of black owned companies.
They design the same programme while varying entrepreneurs find themselves in different stages in their growth strategy and personal development phase. I believe it is futile to adopt a standardized approach because we need to understand that different entrepreneurs face different challenges and need different interventions. Moving into Black Lite Consulting, tell us about the history, how it came about and what it seeks to achieve? Black Lite Consulting was formed 7 years ago while SA was grappling with a recession, my mentors, family and friends actually thought I was crazy to start a business in the middle of the 2010 World Cup. We started out in my dining room where the team included my personal assistant, one employee and myself. Today we are 8 employees strong and I believe this is one of those success stories I will include in my memoir when I am older one day. The company has a large corporate clientele which include the likes of CocaCola Beverages SA and AB InBev, so we work with blue chip companies. We have built a good reputation in the B-BBEE space as a result of the knowledge we possess which has actually resulted in us having very loyal clients.
20 www.incub8mag.co.za · Volume 1 · 2017
Please unpack your target market and how did you define this target market? Our target market is clearly defined as large corporates. As a small workforce, servicing a large number of clients outside of our target market would render us inefficient thus the decision to have a small team servicing a small number of blue chip clientele. Our clients receive great personalized service with bespoke and strategic solutions. Please take us through the growth of Black Lite Group? Was the company funded if so by whom? We are self-funded. I was involved in the Deutshe Bank BEE deal and I used the proceeds of the deal on my exit as capital to start Black Lite Group. I was inspired by former State President Thabo Mbeki’s comments when he said we needed to create productive assets and desist from being passive shareholders in other entities. The need to create jobs for young Black people was a major driving force for us. What programs or services do you guys offer to corporates and SMMEs? At Black Lite Consulting we specifically develop bespoke BEE strategies for businesses by efficiently and effectively moving them from their current score to
