The South African Small Business Awards recognises the tireless journey, hard work, outstanding achievements and vision of small business and entrepreneurial success.
It is a celebration of the most outstanding businesses and the exceptional business people behind these successful and growing businesses! It is the springboard to enhanced business success.
The 2020 Top 20, Special Awards & Category Winners
On 18 November 2020, at the first ever Virtual Gala Event, the Top 20 and Category winners were announced. See who made the list of South Africa's Top Small Businesses
Colin Timmis
Xero is an easy-to-use cloud-based accounting software platform for small and medium-sized businesses and their advisors. At the heart of Xero’s innovation is its goal to reduce the burden of time-consuming tasks for accountants and business owners.
Xero has created two educational outlets for people who want to know more about accounting. They are the Business Continuity Hub, a collection of free training videos and resources for small business and they have also developed Xerox Learn with the University of Johannesburg.
Shakeel Karjieker
Global Unique Fabric is a strong upcoming fabric, haberdashery and wool retailer. They focus on interior décor, knitting and crochet, and dress fabric. They believe in impact over profit and have a community called Crafting Heroes who create much-needed goods through knitting and sewing for different charities every month.
Global Unique Fabric’s company's leader, Shakeel Karjiekerr, started a free online platform called Aspiring Startups, in which he mentors other entrepreneurs regarding finance, the day-to-day running of a business.
Melita Mohlala
Kopano Creative Concepts is a construction company run by Melita Mohlala. She attributes her success in construction by being hands-on in her business, taking accountability for her actions and being firm and bold.
During the COVID pandemic, Kopano Creative Concepts launched Molobane Farms which initially was started to feed the employees of the business but has become a successful farming operation.
Gary Goldie
Tigerfish software is a software development company and they build applications for companies (from small to enterprise) whether they are standalone systems, web or mobile apps.
Starting a business during lockdown may sound ludicrous but that is what Tigerfish software did and they have managed by the end of September 2020 to create their first million rand turnover.
Mike Labuschagne
Medinox is a distributor of medical and personal care supplies to pharmacies, medical professionals and medical institutions with health at the centre of their credo. They care about people, and enriching their customers’ journey with their innovative and affordable products.
Part of their success is Medinox’s own brand, mx. Custom sourcing, packaging and marketing products is a key point of differentiation relative to other players in the surgical supplies space.
Daniel Goldberg
Bridgement is a group of data scientists and engineers with a single goal – to use technology and data science to bring a new approach to traditional business funding and to minimise the complexity and costs associated with it. One of Bridgement’s proudest achievements to date is getting funding to a first-time client’s account within 90 minutes of them landing on Bridgement’s website.
Bridgement is the only SME funder in South Africa with integration into all three of the major accounting packages (Xero, Sage, and Quickbooks).
Thabo Kgowana
ACDC Express Rustenburg is an electrical retail franchise specialising in everything electrical. Their core focus is to provide customers with quality solutions when it comes to anything to do with electricity. From 2018 to 2020 they have experienced exponential growth by doubling their revenue year on year.
During 2020, ACDC Express Rustenburg have embarked on community service projects by supplying COVID PPE to identified communities and primary healthcare mobile clinics without PPE.
Kimberly Ebersohn
The Tax Shop Hartebeespoort takes care of all your accounting needs. They ensure that you are always one step ahead and going in the right direction. They collaborate with clients to provide customized advisory, accounting, tax, payroll and other business services.
The Tax Shop Hartbeespoort are considered a mature franchise as they have been in operation for longer than five years. This is because of the service excellence that they give to clients and the professional manner in which they handle a diverse range of business skills.
Malehu Langa
TASK Interior Styling is a turn-key interior design business that not only offers interior styling but also does space planning, 3D modelling, architectural consultation, technical layouts, project management and implementation.
Malehu Anna Langa from TASK Interior Styling stands out because instead of considering others to be competition she rather views them as collaborators and uses the opportunity to uplift and work together.
Tinu Elenjical
Elenjical Solutions is a business that delivers technology and software to the African investment banking, asset management and insurance markets. They focus on hiring the cream of the crop locally and believe in continuously training their employees to keep them at the top of their game.
Elenjical Solutions are the only African partner of the world’s leading risk and trading software, Murex and they have developed their own bespoke software for the African treasury and asset management market.
Leanne Viviers
Mintor is a social enterprise that aims to impact the lives of millions of unemployed youth globally. Through their first-of-its-kind chat-based youth development and employment platform, they enable development organisations to upskill millions of youth for work, to access career opportunities, and businesses to find the right entry-level talent.
Over the last 3 years, Mintor has supported 45,000 youth via 3 million messages and build an expectional customer base with companies like BMW, Microsoft, Takealot, Old Mutual, Momentum, Pick ‘n Pay, Vodacom, and Foschini Group.
Bongani Mkhwebane
Bumba Technos is an ICT company which specialises in helping small to large businesses use information technology solutions to meet their business requirements or needs. Their solutions lead to increased productivity and overall business performance for their valued clients
Since Bumba Technos’ inception, they have grown by no less than 37% each year and they pride themselves on recruiting young talent and growing their skills in-house.
Kobus Louw
Kobus Louw is the founder of Digemy. This business was born out of his passion, purpose and conviction to change education in Africa. It is done in a way that can scalable give every student or scholar in Africa the opportunity to grow in academic excellence, entrepreneurship, personal development, financial literacy and memory, reading, and focus mastery.
By pivoting their business from B2B to B2C, Digemy also gained the attention of international investors and turned around a potentially terrible 2020 into a successful 2020.
Deirdre Mitchell
Honeycomb BEE Ratings is an nationally-based, independent SANAS-accredited verification agency that conducts professional and impartial verifications of all enterprises countrywide. They assist previously disadvantaged South African women with financial help for their studies through Honeycomb trust
Honeycomb is proud to be one of the first companies to become SANAS-accredited in 2007. An accreditation that has remained in place ensuring their clients receive unsurpassed service.
Thusile Dlamini
IKUSASA technology solutions focus on closing the gap of ICT illiteracy and need within South Africa and the continent of Africa as a whole. They steer curious individuals towards being visionaries that can bring about digital change in Africa.
IKUSASA technology solutions has had the privilege of catering for clients in their Corporate Social Investment (CSI) endeavours by teaching personnel about IT-centric topics and curriculums.
Adam Rabinowitz
ImaginImagin8 is one of 6 TransUnion Gold Partners and distributes data than can enhance businesses. They provide essential services to small businesses to help improve their cash flow and give the business owner more time at the helm to manage their business.
Imagin8 continually invests in systems and processes to improve value for the customer and in so doing, improve their process efficiency. They have done this for their own business and can do this for other businesses too.
Mo Malele
NK Innovations is a creative, dynamic and innovative marketing agency that delivers problem-solving solutions and always exceeds expectation. They are a young but experienced team of highly ambitious marketing professionals.
NK Innovations looks to make a social impact and works a lot with township businesses, young entrepreneurs, and female-owned businesses.
Cindy Norcott
Pro Talent is a specialist recruitment company owned by Cindy Norcott. Her philosophy for her work has been hard work, ethical behaviour, compassion, integrity and abundance.
Pro Talent navigated through the COVID lockdown by adding value to their clients by connecting with them and ask them how they could help.
The Zinto Marketing and Brand Activation Group (Pty) Ltd
Michelle Combrinck
The Zinto Marketing and Brand Activation Group (Pty) Ltd are mandated by their clients is to bring their clients’ brands to life, in the hearts and minds of all consumers at various touchpoints throughout South Africa and Africa using various platforms to do this.
Yaseen Theba
Vision Tactical is one of Yaseen Theba’s key focus areas and the company strives to deliver proactive and progressive security services to the communities it serves.
Yaseen’s expansive vision is to achieve large scale, systemic and sustainable social change, one venture at a time. He is a true social entrepreneur with an ardent interest in the wellbeing of humanity.
In order to enter you need to be an NSBC Member*. Once logged in to the NSBC Member Zone you will be able to access the online entry form.
Once the entry form has been completed and the required documentation collected and uploaded you can simply submit your entry online.
An experienced panel of judges then assess the entries and based on the criteria for each category select and announce the finalists.
The finalists and a prestigious guest list of big and small business decision makers are then invited to attend a glitzy online gala event where the winners are announced.
Entries are free and exclusive to NSBC Standard and Premier Members. This includes all service, commercial or industrial companies that manufacture or sell a product or service*. View criteria here.
The competition is evaluated in four categories and entrants are permitted to enter more than one category.
National Small Business Champion of the Year
Less than 250 employees.
National Entrepreneur Champion of the Year
Owners that show entrepreneurial excellence.
Woman in Business Champion of the Year
Those special ladies who believe that they have what it takes to reach the top of the game.
National Start-Up Award
Open to anyone younger than 25.
Entries open on Monday, 02 August 2021
