DAY 1 – Friday, 11 July 2025
In line with the innobiz DUT Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation’s steadfast belief in the
power of collaboration, forging new entrepreneurial relationships and strengthening existing
ones, the Centre over the past weekend hosted the innobiz DUT Alumni Engagement.
The event, which has seen close to 50 alumni student entrepreneurs participating, forms part of
the Centre’s efforts to reconnect with and continue supporting our alumni student entrepreneurs
through site visits and business development discussions.

The event spanned over two days, Friday 11 July and Saturday 12 July 2025 in Durban, with a
programme packed with activities for the alumni student entrepreneurs and guests to engage in
a variety of discussions including a presentation on fundraising and investment opportunities
from Mr. Thato Ntseare, an Investment Manager at E Squared Investments. Another interesting topic of engagement that was deliberated upon at length over the two-day event included the power of leadership in shaping entrepreneurial success by Mr. Zakheni Ngubo, a mentor and strategy partner for the SAB Foundation, Business Mentor and Coach who is also the Founding Director for the Innovation and Research Commercialisation Agency.

A presentation on enterprise development, Intellectual Property and commercialisation was also
shared to the cohort by Mr. Sipho Dikweni, a Strategic Advisor on Entrepreneurship at the
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). From the University, the alumni student entrepreneurs received an opportunity to learn of the supplier development pathways, procurement opportunities and supplier database registration at DUT through a presentation from Ms. Nirupa “Nicky” Kemraj, a Sourcing Manager at DUT Procurement.

Welcoming the alumni cohort and guests, Ms. Nontokozo Ngcobo, innobiz Centre Manager, said
that the event had been long in planning with the idea being to gauge the distance the
entrepreneurs had traversed in the entrepreneurial space. “There has so much that has happened in the past two to three years, but today I don’t want us to dwell on the past, I want us to chart a way forward on how we can best support each other and how best we can continue with the platform that we’ve established as you know that DUT will always be your home,” Ms. Ngcobo alluded in her welcoming address.

Furthermore, she said that it was incredible to reconnect with so many of the Centre’s alumni
student entrepreneurs and further strengthen the relationship between the Centre and those
who have gone on to bigger things in entrepreneurship having passed through its doors.
“This is the beginning of a new, exciting journey, with each and everyone of you. We have
designed the session to be highly impactful and we’ve brought in specific business people that
are at your level to assist you based on an outline and overview to check where you are, what
you need and for them to accelerate you from whatever level you are in,” Ms. Ngcobo shared.
She further implored the cohort to use their experience in the entrepreneurship space to
become mentors to those still navigating their way through the Centre’s intensive three year
programme.

“We want to also touch on how you guys can also maybe give back to support this work that we
are doing as a Centre, how you can assist those that are still upcoming because you’ve
experienced business and its challenges as young people. “Today we are also connecting with some from the big network of like-minded people in the entrepreneurship space that we’ve established over the years, to come and support. We are privileged to be joined by key partners that are strategic to your growth going forward, these partners are specifically here to empower your growth,” Ms. Ngcobo explained.

Mr. Dikweni shared that at the CSIR they were responsible for, amongst others, building new
companies and ensuring that they become sustainable. “It is nice to be meeting with you and it will be interesting to see how we can help you guys grow as we do provide a lot of support to SMMEs, especially core technical support while we also have a lot of facilities that we make available for your development,” Mr. Dikweni said.

Mr. Ngubo, who is also an adjudicator and advisory board member for SAB, CSRI,
Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (EDHE), shared that he was passionate
about mentorship and assisting companies to commercialise and get their product market fit,
and how to take them from where they are to raising money. “I am looking forward to getting to know you guys and what sort of opportunities are there in the ecosystem and how you can access those for your organisations,” Mr. Ngubo said. He advised the cohort that leadership and entrepreneurship were about two things; the entrepreneur as an individual because while building the business they were building the most valuable commodity, themselves, their skills, character.

Further advice was for them to use every opportunity that they received while developing their
business as an opportunity to develop themselves. “Entrepreneurship is not easy, you build and you grind and it becomes a very personal journey. People often say ‘it’s not personal, it’s business’, but it’s always personal because it’s your heart, your soul, your energy poured into building the business and mostly importantly building
yourself,” Mr. Ngubo shared.

Ms. Kemraj shared that their job at DUT Procurement was not just to protect DUT’s interests,
but to protect the suppliers’ interests. “As everyone in this room knows of DUT’s Envision2030, it starts off with stewardship and ends up with society, even in procurement we still have to follow that because every single thing has an end game and our end game is how improve lives and livelihoods,” Ms. Kemraj explained. Mr. Ntseare, shared with the alumni student entrepreneurs that at E Squared Investments their
focus was on fast growing businesses, largely in the technological sector, although they also
looked at businesses that displayed rapid growth and had both an impact purpose and a
financial return.

DAY 2 – Saturday, 12 July 2025

As the Incubation Alumni Engagement hosted by the innobiz DUT Centre for Entrepreneurship
and Innovation entered its second day, the main focus centred on creating sustainable
businesses and ensuring that the impact created by alumni business was tracked consistently.
Ms. Nontokozo Ngcobo, the innobiz DUT Centre Manager, shared that the Centre wanted to
ensure that the ENVISION2030 call for producing adaptive graduates continued and that the
legacy of the ENVISION2030 roadmap, the adaptability of the graduates, is traceable, trackable
and sustainable.

“This is aligns with us producing sustainable business, and as we re-engage with the first group
that we started with we want to ensure that they are sustainable and if get stuck they must know
that innobiz is their home, DUT is their home, and we are here to support them,” Ms. Ngcobo
asserted. Ms. Ngcobo explained that the main goal of the Incubation Alumni Engagement was to ensure
that the cohort gets to know that business grows, and that there were different levels of
business. “We wanted to introduce them to the real side of business, yes we understand that they’re
making money and we appreciate that but they need to know that there is growth beyond, for
example, the R5 million they are making or the R10 million contract that they. We want them to
ask themselves, “What’s next?”

Another key aspect for the engagement, explained Ms. Ngcobo, was to introduce them to the
acceleration programme which has key industry partners including the Council for Scientific and
Industrial Research (CSIR), SAB Foundation, angel investors, and other key partners of the
Centre. “We wanted to ensure that they now understand the next level of their businesses where we
need to talk hardcore business issues,” Ms. Ngcobo shared.

Amongst some of the critical engagements that the alumni cohort and the business experts
touched on centered around networking, knowledge sharing, fundraising, and mentorship and
how key these aspects were to the continued and consistent growth of their business.
Ms. Ngcobo elaborated on just how important for the entrepreneurs these topics were,
particularly given how lonely business can sometimes be for the entrepreneurs.

“Business can truly be lonely, and these entrepreneurs have gotten to a point where they have
to focus on so many things, some of them have even attested that they don’t even get time to sit
with their laptops and do their administration because they have to be operational. “Although business can be lonely and drive them up the wall, if they network, they will get to know that these challenges are universal, and are for everyone in business. So, we wanted to re-introduce them to each other so that they could learn from each other, and network.

“This is very important for them, even for their well-being, their mental health as well, so that
they don’t drown because they know they have another sister or brother in entrepreneurship to
call, they have mentors to call,, and they know that there is a pool of a community in this space
that could assist from other peer businesses,” Ms. Ngcobo said. She explained that with the cohort no longer in line to benefit from the Centre’s incubation programme, it was also significant to expose them to the external business support agency partners to further accelerate their enterprises.

The engagement also had its sights on the future, with the alumni cohort now expected to assist
the Centre with the upcoming businesses currently in the various stages of the innobiz
incubation programme. “They can impart their experience with our upcoming student entrepreneurs, because they have experienced first hand the difficulties and challenges of business and the majority have
overcome those challenges. We want them to come back to share those experiences with the
ones coming into the entrepreneurship space and support, mentor, and guide them.

“We want to work with them in various projects while we are also supporting them. We want to
create a platform for them to impart their experience, knowledge that they have learnt through
their practical entrepreneurial journey,” Ms. Ngcobo explained. The cohort was exposed to opportunities from various industry players, including the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), DUT Procurement and business mentors and coaches with years of experience in the entrepreneurship landscape. Mr. Sipho Dikweni, Commercialisation Manager at the CSIR, shared that they were responsible
for scientific and industrial research, mostly building new technologies and solving specific
problems for the industry.

“We also follow scientific and improving technological trends and disrupting the status quo, so
we work with SMMEs from technical support and contract research and assist them generally if
they want to commercialise some of the Intellectual Property that we have within the institution,
they can licence that IP and take it to the market. “We can also coach them throughout the process, until they are sustainable in the market and we can actually get our return on investment. The coaching is not time specific, it depends on what you are doing and how mature you are as a company.

“We don’t do early stage companies, we are doing companies that are already operating, who
have interest in the technologies that we have so that it enables them to be competitive in the
market, introduce new products into the market or solve specific problems that they would have
with the technologies that they products that they are taking to the market,” Mr. Dikweni said.
Ms. Nirupa Kemraj, DUT Procurement Sourcing Manager, explained that there were several
opportunities for student entrepreneurs, particularly in the EMEs (Exempt Micro Enterprise) and
QSE (Qualifying Small Enterprises) categories, because they are small businesses.

“We have opportunities in electrical, plumbing, carpentry and building works, framework
contracts where we appoint several suppliers per category for electrical and plumbing, and we
award work evenly on different campuses and different residences. So that’s one of the
opportunities. “If students want to access opportunities on the DUT website, they can do so under tenders or Request for Quotation (QFQ) and they don’t need to be registered on the database, they just
need to look it up, apply and make sure that they submit all of the documents,” Ms. Kemraj said.

Additionally, she highlighted that when students want to do business with the University, they
also need to be mindful of whether there was a demand for the service that they were providing.
“It all depends on the demand, but there is nothing stopping them from engaging with us and
talking with us. They also need to be mindful that being on the database doesn’t mean you
automatically get the work, it’s up to them to market their business and if they are not getting
work they can come and ask us why.

“It’s hard for us to monitor who we buy from, but we can try and assist them, coach them, help
them to see where they are going wrong or right and encourage them to apply for more tenders,
more RFQs. “We are finding that a lot of small suppliers are not applying for tenders and I wonder why, but being on the database doesn’t mean you automatically get work, you have to work for it like in
any business because have to be seen as being fair, competitive, transparent and we can’t give
them work automatically,” Ms. Kemraj explained