Founder and CEO of BN Business Solutions, Bakani Ngulani, has been recognised as South Africa’s top entrepreneur under the age of 25 at this year’s National Small Business Chamber awards in Johannesburg. He walked away with the prestigious ‘National Young Entrepreneur Champion’ award.
The 24 year-old entrepreneur founded his accounting firm in 2016 and is clearly on his way to success having finished off as a finalist at the 702 Sage One National Business awards in 2016 and this year being crowned the National Young Entrepreneur Champion at the National Small Business Chamber awards.
“A young and vibrant culture is what keeps us going at BN Business Solutions”, said Ngulani. It’s very clear Ngulani lives up to his company’s tagline ‘purely millennial’.
“My vision is to run the business on a 70% / 30% age policy – 70% being youth (under 35) and 30% adults. I really believe in the youth, not because I’m one of them, but because everything in today’s times is moving so fast and we need to ensure our human resources will be able to move with the times and not be rigid to change.
Ngulani’s passion to change the perception that accounting is hard, complicated and a rigid industry is evident in his day to day running of the business.
“By empowering youth in the company we are able to execute on deadline and provide a much better service simply because we are innovative, we don’t hesitate to accept new practices and ideas and most importantly change is a challenge for us.”
The awards adjudication panel was impressed by the company’s culture with Ngulani at the helm, much that they described him as a ‘brand disruptor’.
“I really try hard to find interesting ways of getting our name out there. I’m a strong believer that if people see you taking your brand seriously at all times they will gravitate towards it and you. That is why during my downtime you will see me in my white Nike basketball sneakers, cap worn backwards while wearing our very trendy company golf shirts.”
Young as the business is, the company already has branches in Johannesburg (HO), Cape Town and Durban. Ngulani would like to increase that number to see more in South Africa and also in Namibia due to their similar taxation structures. He has a vision to curb unemployment, continue supporting SMMEs in their growth and most importantly, to make accounting and compliance fun.