At the age of 41, Daveyton-born Dineo Mosili Ntsika left her job as a sergeant in the South African Police Service, where she had been a law enforcement officer for 13 years, and try her hand at business.
Ntsika runs two business entities, InterGlass Aluminium, a business she started after she hung up her boots at the SAPS in 2018. She went on to establish another company, Cheetah Fire Services two years later.
Her businesses’ head office is in Bloemfontein, Free State, but operates on a national scale as both entities provide a variety of services.
At InterGlass Aluminium, Ntsika does manufacturing and installation of aluminium and glass products for the public and private sector, while Cheetah Fire Services installs and supplies new fire equipment and smoke detection systems.
Coming from a family of entrepreneurs on her maternal side, who were in retail, she remembers that her business zest was inspired by the small roles she was given to learn the ropes.
“I started working as a public servant, then my husband asked me to take a leap of faith and join him at one of the businesses he had started,” recalls Ntsika.
“I kept giving my husband the runaround on his request, which he had made in 2013. However, in 2018 after my two-year-old son passed away, I decided to quit my job to start my first business.
“Starting a business from scratch is a big challenge because there is no readily available finance and clientele; so one needs to go out there and search for clients.
“There was no capital or funding at the time, so my husband’s existing businesses had to boost my start-up and push sales and orders.”
InterGlass Aluminium managed to secure a big project from a property development
company building townhouse complexes in Bloemfontein, as well as at a Bloemspruit development.
Since 2020, her second company, Cheetah Fire Services, has managed to secure big projects in the public sector, supplying and servicing fire equipment and smoke detection systems to hospitals and clinics in the Free State.
Ntsika says she had to be brave to venture into business spaces where it was not fashionable for women to play a role, and she believes if she had not shown her feisty character, she would not have made it as a role player of note.
“Like any other small business, you are bound to step on toes by offering better and reasonably priced services against your competitors.
“Private sector clients are the most difficult to handle because they are either brand loyal or shop for cheaper offers. So, my sales teams had to put in more effort and maintain good relationships,” she says.
“The public sector is an even bigger challenge because there are a million other service providers, even worse, we sometimes find ourselves competing with companies that have less capacity to deliver.”
Ntsika believes women face the worst challenges in business because no one believes they are capable to run an enterprise successfully.
“Most women have good administrative skills and are financially disciplined. Our youth need to be mentored well to survive in the tough world of running a business.
“That is how they can get their heads out of the clouds and start building a bright future for themselves.”
Both entities have a total workforce of 50 employees and Ntsika aims to expand into other parts of the country and create more job opportunities.
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