The Developer Placement Programme, an initiative by the UK-South Africa Tech Hub, together with the Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative, aims to provide work-readiness opportunities to youth with digital skills. The programme does this by placing developer interns at entrepreneurial businesses for 6 months.
One of the entrepreneurial businesses participating in the initiative is Ngaphaya Y2K10, who shared their journey with us.
“Having the developer interns from the Developer Placement Programme has been a blessing. They have developed systems which we are going to use to control our stock and ordering of goods,” shares Jennifer ‘Jenny’ Classen who founded the business in 2008.
Ngaphaya Y2K10 is a proudly South African, 100% black female-owned company that specialises in the procurement and sourcing of a diverse range of industrial equipment and related products. The company is Level 1 B-BBEE, with a management system that is ISO9001:2015 certified.
“Our scalable business model, which focuses on the client’s needs and service levels, has enabled us to grow a sustainable business over the past 10 years. Our company deals with a select few clients and our products offered are tactical and specific to our client’s needs. We pride ourselves on our customer service which has allowed us to build a great track record with our clients. Our ‘Beyond a Box’ value proposition reflects our no compromise on quality approach. Having our ISO 9001:2015 certificate indicates that our processes are established to deal with any size business.”
Jennifer, an entrepreneur with diverse experience in supply chain management and procurement processes, shares the origin of her passion for business.
“In the last six year of my career at a SA Blue Chip company, I worked as a Franchise Executive. This meant developing and growing business within SA and in Africa. The main output of the job was to help the Franchisee grow their business.”
She adds that she then started to start her business after an unfortunate life event.
“The business was started by experiencing ‘pain’. I was retrenched and decided to start a business using my skills and passion.”
Now, a decade later, Ngaphaya Y2K10 has established itself as a leading, Black-empowered procurement company with a strong mission and vision.
“Ngaphaya Y2K10’s mission is to help our clients achieve their supply chain mandate and targets. Our vision is to be the sourcing and procurement Partner of Choice. Our business processes and outputs are heavily based on IoT and this has also encouraged us to develop our own Order Management System. This system is user friendly and has improved our efficiency and output. This is evidenced in the orders we are receiving. We are now ready to develop this as an APP which can then be commercialised.”
Over the past decade, Ngaphaya Y2K10 has enjoyed several highlights and successes.
“I developed and procured a specialized buckle – gold plated buckle – for one of our state-owned entities. This in itself was a BIG task as no manufacturer in SA could do this. I had a South African supplier who then sourced the goods and I could deliver. I finally got the goods BUT after 8 months the gold was rubbing off on the buckle. This meant I had to start over again. This was very painful and stressful. I started again. I decided to do this by myself and I eventually found a supplier in China and managed to get the replacement buckle from China without having to go to China. Now, this buckle is my IP.”
Although like many businesses around the world, she’s experienced the negative impact of the coronavirus, there’s also been a positive side.
“I have added COVID-19 related products to our product offering and sales on these products has helped to keep the doors open. The next big item for us is our collaboration with a company as we will be offering COVID-19 Rapid Test Kits. We’re in the final stages and just awaiting our SAHPRA certificate. Along with this, we developed an app – which is in the final stages- to manage the selling and control of regulatory documents for the Rapid Test Kits.”
The procurement company has also started a decanting plant and are decanting hand sanitizer into small volume bottles for re-sale.
“Due to the impact of COVID-19, hand sanitizer has become very important. We were selling the hand sanitizer in bulk i.e. 1000L and 25L containers. We soon realised that smaller volume bottles are required. This led to the decanting plant. We have a distributor’s agreement with the manufacturer and the sanitizer is NRCS Certified.
