Meet the bright young minds who are inspiring their generation

Building an empire, one vehicle at a time 

When Munei Budeli spots an opportunity, he acts on it.

The 24-year-old final-year civil engineering student at Nelson Mandela University (NMU) was in his first year in 2018 when he started an e-hailing business.

Five years later, he runs a fleet of cars and trucks and a driving school, and employs five people.

Budeli, from Limpopo, had dreamt of studying near the ocean. He was accepted for biokinetics at NMU in Gqeberha, and was funded by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas).

Since his classes often ended early, he had a lot of time to explore the city, using e-hailing services to get around.

“I started doing research ... on the profits and what cars are needed and the requirements.”

Budeli asked his parents to use the stipend they sent him every month to pay for a car for him.

By the second semester, he had his first car and hired a driver. “The market wasn’t flooded at the time in [Gqeberha], so it was great.”

In a short time, he and his driver were each earning R10,000 a month. Budeli took care of the car’s maintenance and insurance, while the driver paid for fuel.

In 2019, he changed courses and registered to study civil engineering. He eventually also signed up for NMU’s entrepreneurial training programme.

He started working on building a good credit score through clothing accounts and a cellphone contract, and was soon approved for another car, doubling his monthly income.

“I did not have a car. I was still walking to campus. I also started to buy and sell cars at a mark-up. Just before Covid, I applied for another car and was approved. I decided to drive one myself, registered it as an e-hailing vehicle and worked between 3pm and 7pm,” he said.

Budeli had to return home during the pandemic, where he worked on his parents’ farm. He left his vehicles with the drivers, telling them to keep the earnings and take care of the cars.

It occurred to him that many students at NMU did not know how to drive, so he decided to use one of his vehicles to start a driving school.

He identified a demand for code C licences and used his savings, a credit card and a favour from a friend to buy his first truck. After buying an automatic car, he started offering driving lessons to students with disabilities.

Budeli also noticed that students required furniture removal services when moving from their accommodation at the end of the academic year. He used his truck for removals and provided storage space in his two-bedroom flat. Nowadays, he has office space in the form of containers on campus.

Budeli is expected to graduate in 2024 and hopes to find formal employment, though he feels he already earns enough from his business.

“Even people who have finished their studies and are working are not earning what I earn, and I worry employment won’t give me that. I feel I should keep running my business and studying further.”

Soshanguve teen’s prototype of self-charging electric car

A young innovator from Soshanguve has developed a way for electric cars to self-charge while in motion to avoid the frustration of trying to find a charging station.

Matric pupil Amogelang Mampane, 18, left his home in Thembisa and moved to Soshanguve as he wanted to attend the Soshanguve Automotive School of Specialisation from grade 10 to pursue his passion in the electric vehicle (EV) industry.

Over six months, Mampane developed a system which enables EVs to charge while in motion through wireless energy transfer, facilitated by two coils which have mutual inductance.

Mampane explains his project by comparing it to a cellphone that uses a wireless charger, which he said made him wonder if the same could work for electric cars.

“It is two coils — one in the vehicle and the other in the road. These coils mounted in the road produce a magnetic field that creates electrical energy which travels back into the car and charges it. It eliminates the need to go to charging stations and insert cables. It saves time as well. The road should have transmitter coils as the vehicle needs to be on the road to charge,” he said. The drawback is that roads will have to be dug up for these coils to be inserted.

Mampane won the Best Development Project Award at the Eskom Expo International Science Fair last month, which he said he did not expect as the competition was tight.

“I was so nervous at the awards ceremony. I am the last born and my family is proud of me. I am the first in the family to do this kind of thing.”

The matric pupil has dreams of building an electric hypercar and making it commercially available.

How to make a meal from food waste

Vaal University of Technology (VUT) student Tumisho Thobejane is making a meal out of food waste.

The fourth-year biomedical technology student launched a company, Foodable, as a social enterprise project aimed at reducing food waste and feeding the hungry.

There is more food in the value chain than we use. A third of all good, healthy food is wasted.

“We looked at food waste and found that the biggest contributor to the problem is the fast-food industry. So for eight months we researched and explored ideas. We looked at what ingredients are excessively used before the final idea took shape,” Thobejane, 24, told the Sunday Times.

The Foodable concept, which she set up in the Vanderbijlpark area, involves taking excess waste that would have been thrown away to create healthy meals.

“Restaurants have to pay to dispose of waste food. We came up with a way for restaurants to save on their disposal expenses while serving affordable meals.”

Foodable is a cashless business.

Thobejane and her team worked with a team at the VUT Southern Gauteng Science and Technology Park to 3D-print tokens that can be redeemed from Foodable partner restaurants for a full meal made of excess ingredients.

“You can use the token yourself or donate it to someone in need. The tokens cost R20, with R15 going to the restaurant and R5 coming to us once the token has been redeemed.”

Foodable has two partner restaurants — Glamour Magic Takeaway and Pizza Mobile in the Vanderbijlpark area.

Each token has a unique QR code on the back, helping Thobejane and her team to better understand customer trends.

“We are able to tell when and where the token has been sold and how long it has been in circulation before being redeemed. We developed an app that the restaurant can use to scan the token. Since March, we have sold 135 tokens, generating an income of R2,700 in sales, which amounts to 78 meals for people who need them.”

The project had been successful in reducing food waste while helping people in need.

“Our aim is to feed people, not garbage bins, one token at a time while reducing food waste in our country.”

Last month she he won the social impact category of the Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education intervarsity finals.

Turning plastic into something fantastic

In her first year of a PhD in crop science and microbiology at Stellenbosch University, Dominique Rocher is making waves with her company, Urobo Biotech, which uses enzymatic and microbial processes to transform bioplastic waste into “a high-value commodity”.

She and final-year PhD student Wessel Myburgh — who was recently scouting for investors at COP28 in Dubai — came up with the idea as a possible answer for waste management companies battling to deal with bioplastics, which generally end up in landfills or incinerators.

“Without bioplastics waste management, the plastics pollution crisis will continue to intensify and contribute to the complete destruction of Earth,” she said.

“At Urobo Biotech our customers’ problems include organic waste that causes processing problems and leads to removal and disposal costs ... so our vision is to take this low-value, problematic waste and transform it into a high-value commodity.”

They will be filing a patent application at regional level early next year.

“Our project plan includes piloting our technology in 2025 with our industrial partner Etra, in Italy, followed by industrial-scale process design with our international partner BTS in 2026.”

Rocher, 28, is part of a global team that include Myburgh and two professors from Stellenbosch and Padua, Italy, and they have attracted funding and won several awards.

“We have a five-year budget of $300,000 (about R5.5m) or $500 000 depending on whether you want the Rolls-Royce or Volkswagen version. We already have funding from Italy and American organisation Founder.org that invests in student entrepreneurs.” 

Riding a wave of success in Langa

Just because a business concept is already out there doesn’t mean it can’t be tweaked to open new doors of opportunity.

Colin Mkosi, 26, realised this in 2019, when he was studying at home in Langa, Cape Town, and needed something from the shop but didn’t have time to go get it.

“For efficiency reasons I thought of deliveries using bicycles, and saw it as a way to employ young people,” said Mkosi, a fourth-year LLB student at the University of the Western Cape.

This light-bulb moment eventually led to the development of a system that has customers uploading their shopping list to WhatsApp, where a bot processes it, and the goods are delivered to the customer by someone on a bicycle.

His business, Cloudy Deliveries, is limited to Langa for now, but Mkosi said more than 10,000 bike deliveries had been completed.

“We have 15 delivery men and six management staff, and we split the delivery fee 60/40,” he told The Sunday Times. He said the business brings in about R60,000 a month.

He has plans to expand across the Western Cape soon.

“Our business is like a bicycle; it has two pedals — social impact and profit. Social impact allows us to change the lives of the young people we work with.

“We sustain our business through charging a delivery rate of between R20 and R60. We also have an in-house mechanic who maintains the bicycles, and partner with organisations that help us generate income.”