ILLNESS of a parent or any other person you love and important in your life is a bad situation, which can force you to do your best to make it better than it is.
This was also the case with Ms. Nqobile Mgwaba when her mother fell ill in 2022, she was diagnosed with ulcers. This forced him to make efforts to help the situation to improve and prevent it from worsening, and he ended up starting a business he did not intend.
Ms Mgwaba, originally from Kwa Maphumulo, but now based in Manzimtoti, south of Durban, is the founder of Flavors of Home Spices, her spice products business is unique in that it is suitable for people who suffer from ulcer disease, which bothers us because it gets worse when you eat very spicy food.
He said he started this business by worrying about what products he could mix so that if his mother eats it, it would not disturb her in the situation she is in. He started there by adding different spices, which he started using in his family and relatives.
“When I just started, they praised me a lot at home and in my relatives – they admired their fun, that gave me the opportunity to start this business because I see that it is very useful and that I can make a living from it,” said Ms. Mgwaba.
Continuing, he said that another thing that helped him a lot was that they supported him a lot, which made it easy to add to the money he was saving, he started this business and used the knowledge of the field of Consumer Science and Food Nutrition, which he did in his third year at Durban University of Technology (DUT) last year.
“At the moment I work with two people who help me run the job and I do most of it at home as I don’t have a specific place to work, which is one of the challenges I am facing because it is not easy to work in a place that is not open to do this kind of work well, and that there is an infrastructure that I still need, which I don’t have yet – which means that I can’t produce the way I want,” he said.
He said there are nine spice products he makes at the moment, and he often gets many customers in Maphumulo, Newcastle, Pietermaritzburg, Durban and even Johannesburg.
“I also encourage other people who wish to start businesses to make sure that there is a problem that they are solving so that it will not be too difficult to prosper,” he said.
Regarding future endeavors, Ms. Mgwaba said she wishes to find a large workplace, to have equipment that will enable her to produce more and high-quality products, which will help her products to be available in large and reputable food stores across the country.