The adage two heads are better than one fits like a glove when it comes to childhood friends turned business partners Kurhula Mkansi and Vutlhari Mavundza.
The two started a lucrative cleaning and manufacturing business, VKM Dynamix in 2017 in Giyani, Limpopo, when they saw an opportunity to provide cleaning services and manufacture cleaning detergents for industrial, commercial and household use.
Mkansi, 36, who was born in Mamitwa village in Tzaneen, and Mavundza, 34, who was born in Ka-Ngove village in Giyani, put their heads together and unleashed their potential to start VKM Dynamix.
Mkansi, who is the CEO of the business, said they had the idea of starting a cleaning and manufacturing company while she was working at Exarro NBC mine in Belfast, Mpumalanga, where she held the position of contractors administrator, while Mavundza was worked at a bank in Giyani.
Despite having their business registered, it was not an easy ride for the Limpopo duo to make things work as it was a huge challenge to access clients.
“We had a huge mountain to climb to make this business work. We experienced challenges towards getting the business off the ground as we had very little capital.
“We started our business in Vutlhari’s garage. This is where we manufactured our first batch of cleaning detergent, which we sold to the people in our village,” said Mkansi.
Mkansi then attended a short course at the University of Johannesburg, which was funded by the Chemical Industries Education and Training Authority and the South African Chemical Technology Incubator in 2019.
She says she was fortunate to be given the opportunity to learn more about manufacturing.
“As Covid-19 started to ravage the country, our business started booming due to the demand for sanitisers, anti-bacteria chemicals and fumigation services.”
Thanks to her training, the duo were able to grow their business during that period, and realised the business was going somewhere. “It was the beginning of greater things to follow, and now we are doing bigger projects,” Mkansi said.
They started to grow their business outside Limpopo, expanding to Gauteng where they have got more corporate, industrial and government projects.
“Our success inspired many companies and government to use our services. Though resilience and hard work we managed to create employment for many,” said Mavundza.
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