Violet Lupuwana started her transport business as a micro enterprise where was the sole employee in 2012. Within nine years she has grown and diversified the company to a transport, freight and logistics company, with R9 million worth of assets.
Lupuwana, 35, who is an industrial engineer by training started with no assets, now her company boasts a fleet that includes minibuses and trucks, employing 45 people.
“We have grown our business from being an SMME to a mini-corporate. We operate nationally and have multinational clients. We now have an asset value of over R9 million and in 2012 we did have any assets. Our turnover has grown exponentially, and we own all our vehicles, 60% of our trucks for our freight and logistics arm are self-funded by our business. We have seven big contracts with international organisations as well as a government organisation,” said Lupuwana.
The company started in Lupuwana's lounge at home now has offices in Port Elizabeth and another in Bryanston, as well as satellite offices in Cape Town, Durban, Mahikeng, Polokwane and Bloemfontein.
In 2018, she was recognised by the SAB Kickstart programme as the most persistent entrepreneur of the year and third runner up nationally.
Chumile Holdings started with Chumile Transport Services, offering transport services contract for staff to universities, schools, manufacturing, and hospitality clients. It also provides chauffeuring and airport transfers services, and for hotels, corporate clients, tour operators and government sector clients.
The company later diversified with Chumile Freight and Logistics, a subsidiary company that moves goods for manufacturing and other clients. Lupuwana said she had her ear on the ground about frustrations of clients, which sparked the idea to expand into freight and logistics services.
“I started getting requests for trucking services from clients in procurement and manufacturing companies that needed to boost their BBBEE scores. I decided to respond with a solution. I realised that there were opportunities for me to solve this problem of transformation for businesses seeking a compliant, reliable and Black-owned transportation service provider,” said Lupuwana.
Lupuwana has experience as an industrial engineer at Volkswagen Group of South Africa (VWSA) and Cadbury, which she said taught her the value of delivering reliable service to her clients.
The objective of industrial engineering is to optimise productivity, improve quality and reduce costs, she said.
“One of the principles we learnt as students is that time is money. My firsthand experience as an industrial engineer was very instrumental in giving me insight on the impact of the transport providers in our production scheduling,” said Lupuwana.
“It is very important to me to know that we are value adding as a service provider. So, the logistics, productivity improvement, a customer-centric approach to adding value and understanding of what quality is to each customer, plays in our favour. I like to say that entrepreneurship is like engineering, we are both here to solve problems and add value to others.”
Lupuwana said her work teaching BBBEE Codes of Good Practice during her career also prepared her to see opportunities to grow her business.
At the age of 24 she served as the chairperson of Uviwe Child and Youth Services over two terms, where she ensured the non-profit organisation (NPO) became more proactive, instead of the reactive model. She was the youngest and the first black chairperson for the Uviwe board.
During her tenure, Uviwe was able to withstand funding cuts by the Department of Social Development (DSD) to NPOs. “A few years before the drastic change in support from DSD, I had already started consultations with the director on moving from a dependency model to a social enterprising model, where the organisation can start mobilizing resources and generating income for themselves.”
Lupuwana said Uviwe started moving towards that model of social enterprising, which is more self-sustaining. “I also contributed my BBBEE expertise in an advisory role to help the organisation to position itself for BBBEE Socio economic development funding as part of the strategies to obtaining unrestricted funding.”
PICTURES: Supplied by Violet Lupuwana/ Gomen Studios Photography
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