Johannesburg- Gabriel Mokwana, a seasoned entrepreneur and philanthropist has stepped forth to assist the majority of small businesses who are longing for financial assistance.
The founder and CEO of Siyasiza Business and Life Legacy Projects SA, an enterprise development firm that uses more effective and robust solutions to enhance business development through compliance, financial planning and access to markets.
“We fund SMEs that are exposed to procurement opportunities from both the public and private sector so as to stimulate employment through supplier development,” said Mokwana.
Mokwana is an Enterprise and Supplier Development (ESD) that has partnered with large organizations such as Nedbank, Sasol and Arcelor Mittal to render various ESD programmes for businesses in both township and mainstream economies.
“For me, it’s the realisation that small businesses play a pivotal part in our country’s economical growth and in creating employment.”
According to Mokwana, small businesses have to move from pillar to post just to get funding.
“What gives me the greatest satisfaction is seeing the companies that we would have assisted getting by to see another day, remain in operation and still manage to be sustainable. That motivates me to do even more to help a larger pool of small businesses.”
Their core role and mandate is in facilitating access to purchase order financing for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with a very small interest repayment plan, which in most cases fail to qualify as recipients of bank loans.
They are very inclusive in their approach to businesses and enterprises that are less resourced and are facing a great deal of red tape from large institutions such as banks.
We make profit through our internal model that ensures that we are running as a business and still be able to assist small businesses.
“As an entrepreneur, I have had my ups and downs, from leaving the cooperate world to being an entrepreneur by myself,” Mokwana told Sunday World.
“During those failures, I realised the importance of funding to budding businesses and my cooperate experience and the projects around enterprise development made me see first-hand the detrimental effect of businesses that lack funding and proper developmental structures. I found my biggest drive there, to push even more to be able to assist small businesses. Till today I dedicate my time to helping small businesses,” he said.
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