Meet the Absa Small Business Friday featured Small Business of the week – Sange SA.
Sange SA is a 100% black female-owned skills development organisation proudly managed by a professional team of experts in the field of learning and development. Their programmes are built to grow individuals to make an impact in the individuals’ institutions and their communities.
Nobandla Gobodo’s journey started by selling chocolate-chip cookies, ice lollies and popcorn as a means of making herself pocket money as her parents couldn’t afford that. From selling these goods she made enough money to pay back her parents for their investment in her business and was able to buy her ingredients and contribute to the electricity, milk and bread at home as well as have a little pocket money.
She has always looked for ways to be self-sufficient and not too dependent on anyone. When her father passed away in 2008. He was the breadwinner and entrepreneur in their family and also her inspiration, but at the time she hadn’t connected those dots. She started her first informal business called “Ikapa Vanity” which did promotions at events and eight businesses later she is the managing director of a growing business called Sange SA.
Nobandla Gobodo’s learning and development passion comes from working in the change management department of a bank. While working in the banking sector, recruitment space and other training providers, she found a gap.
At the time it was more of a frustration. As much as she climbed the corporate ladder and moved from being an administrator to facilitator to assessor to training manager and finally head of skills development; the vision she had for developing unemployed youth and unemployed people didn’t seem to be the focus of some of the companies she worked at.
This then led her to register her own business and start offering the services that the market needed. Sange SA started by offering tailor-made coaching and mentoring solutions then got training programmes accredited and offering customised training solutions to their clients.
It has been a six-year journey of growth, and learning. This journey required Nobandla to continue expanding on her learning into this field, as well as learning about her customers’ industry to help them more and offer the services they actually needed.
This learning has also meant staying up to date with what impacts their beneficiaries such as what is happening in their communities. What is the matric pass rate? What are the future learning trends? And what are the future job trends?
Part of this journey has also been about learning what Sange SA are good at and sticking to that, what their clients love, and doing more of that, and knowing that the entrepreneur cannot be a jack of all trades. This has then meant bringing in people into the business who are subject matter experts in their own space – thus helping the business grow.
In the future, Sange SA would like to be the preferred partner for learning and development in Africa. Through forward-thinking initiatives and innovation, they inspire transformation by empowering others with knowledge and skills. Their future goals see them moving into the greater Africa showcasing what makes South Africa great.