SA women sells her car to start a business now worth R67 million

We all need a little inspiration especially in times like these when the end of lockdown feels ages away. Often we as women forget how powerful and innovative we can be when we put our minds to it.

One women shows exactly how powerful an idea can be if you take a risk on your own potential. We’re talking about Babalwa Mbuku, a young influential women who sold her own car to start her business because she believed in herself and her mission to help young girls.

Babalwa Mbuku saw the desperate need for sanitary products amongst young girls and made the courageous decision to start her very own sanitary pads company, Ntombam, in 2017.

Her inspiration came from a young girl who claimed that she would rather get free sanitary pads from the government then free education. While Babalwa did research she noticed that the Eastern Cape was amongst the most severely affected when it came to sanitation and education about menstruation. With many girls using alternative options like pieces of cloth, aloe and cow dung as sanitary towels. Many girls miss school days each month due to not having access to affordable sanitary supplies and merely because they are embarrassed and uninformed about what is going on with their bodies. Often due to this basic need not being met some girls are forced to find alternative means of dealing with their menstrual cycle, posing a huge health risk.

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❤My babies

A post shared by Ntombam Sanitary Towels (@ntombamsanitary) on Oct 22, 2019 at 1:18pm PDT

(Take a look at Babalwa Mbuku’s brand Ntombamsanitary Instagram Page)

Babalwa inspires us because she started this entire brand on her own by going as far as selling her own car to acquire the capital needed to begin this venture. She imports all sanitary pads from South Korea and has gained enough popularity to be able to have them available in most retail stores in the Eastern and Western Cape. Babalwa has, along with the sanitary towels created a number of other hygiene specific products suited to young girls. She is a menstruation coach to teenagers teaching young girls to take pride in their girlhood. Babalwa is currently in the process of building her own sanitary towel manufacturing plant in East London with the help of a South Korean investor, M.view Global, that is worth R67m. With this, she is guaranteed to have a number of new projects in the future.

All this because she believed in herself enough to take a big risk. When you learn to love yourself and believe in yourself anything is possible rubies.

Have you dreamed of starting a business but don’t have the confidence to do it yet – what would you do differently if you believed in yourself?

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