Breaking entrepreneurial ground sometimes requires exploring and visiting foreign countries, identifying products that can have impact and be a solution to a need back home. Teboho Twala, serial entrepreneur and founder of hang over curing drink, Zzero hangover did exactly that.
The Qwaqwa born entrepreneur says during his working days as a chemical engineer, he got the opportunity to experience other countries, learning about new tools and tricks that could be utilised back home.
“I worked for Impala platinum, one of the biggest platinum producers. After that I had the opportunity to work for a German company and they took me to Nigeria, Germany, Slovakia, Belgium and other countries. Upon my return that’s when I decided that I’m going to venture into entrepreneurship.” During this process and globe trotting, Twala got to learn about machines and tools that are vital in the mining industry that were being used in the countries he was visiting. “When I was in Germany I knew about something called hydraulics which is highly used in South African mining for trackless mining.”
Twala identified a gap and knowing the foreign mining arena in which these tools were being used; he then decided to infiltrate the local market. “We import the hoses from Europe and I have a workshop that actually cuts and re-assembles these hose. It is a re-assembling plant, where we re-assemble, cut and fit according to the specifications required by the mines .” The revenue obtained through this venture has allowed Twala to explore other entrepreneurial ventures. These ventures include his infiltration of the beverage industry with Revo beer, Zzero Hangover and elements vodka. “Revo beer is something that I conceptualised in 2015 and we brought it to life in 2016. The brand is still there, it’s still alive, the concept came about when we heard talks that SAB is selling to Ab InBev. We thought there is an opportunity for a new dawn for new entries to develop a new proudly South African beer. It may not pick up today but down the road it will pick up and be known that it’s a proudly South African beer.”
Twala is very keen on the beverage industry; this shows with the other products he has developed recently. “I developed elements vodka. I have not produced it on a bigger scale but I have the recipes and I have tasted. I have done everything that I need to do on the research and development and the only thing that is left is the production part.” Out of the three beverages, Zzero hangover is the one that seems to be hitting great leaps. “Zzero-Hangover is listed with Engen nationwide.” Twala says their main focus now is on Zzero Hangover “which fortunately caught fire if you want to call it that mainly because it’s a unique product and there is no product like it. The formulation is a proudly South African formulation; I practically spent a year and a half developing the formulation with a nutritionist who knew what she was doing and who I knew could produce what I was looking for”. Even with this, Twala still believes that infiltrating the beverage market is hard. Stating that when he tried to find out why it is difficult for new products to be listed in major distribution channels and avenues, “one of the things they mentioned was they work on categories, categories in the terms of which market is the product meant for and that they look at categorising products according to market segregation or segmentation”.
Twala states the reason distributors do this market segregation is because they find that a number of people launch similar products at the same time and this becomes a challenge for distributors. “Sometimes you find that there is a number of people that launch products almost at the same time and they are the same product so it becomes a challenge for distributors to say we can take the products, at the end of the day the distributors are in business. So they are looking for what sells."
Soul African Group Vital Stats
Start-up: R100 000
Turnover: R14Mil
Key Players: Teboho Twala