VANESSA VALKIN

Power businessman impressed

Khumalo also says that members of the South African Jewish community have played a seminal role in his business career.

MSG Afrika today has interests in radio (Power FM & Capricorn FM), TV production (Quizzical Pictures), PR and event management (The Communications Firm), print (The Quarto Press), and outdoor (Continental Outdoor Media), and operates in more than 14 African countries.

Khumalo himself hosts a show on Power FM called Power Business, which covers international markets, entrepreneurship, self-development and investment and hosts CEOs of major companies making the news.

The trip to Israel last month which included 25 of South Africa’s most promising entrepreneurs under the age of 40, was organised by the South Africa-Israel Forum and funded by entrepreneurs Jonathan Beare and Morris Kahn.

“I did the trip because I wanted to experience the ‘start up nation’, says Khumalo in an interview with Jewish Report.  “My experience of the trip was very little to do with the politics, although we were there on the day of elections and we did go to the West Bank and through the checkpoints… if anything we received quite a balanced outlook on things.”

The presentations that he and his fellow travellers were exposed to, made him realise that although there are a lot of Israel critics in South Africa, when one is “on the ground” there, ones sees “the fear and intimidation on both sides”. 

“The trip opened my eyes to how complex the situation over there is,” he remarks.

While in Israel, Khumalo attended an investor conference for start-up technology businesses who were pitching to venture capitalists. He was amazed at the sophistication of the “tech start-up scene”, he remarked.

“It was unlike anything I had seen before;” Israeli technology funders are prepared to invest large amounts of money in a few different ventures because the returns on just one success will more than make up for losses on the less-than-lucky picks. The South African tech industry has not yet reached that level of maturity, he believes, and is more averse to risk.

Khumalo now intends to fund another young entrepreneur to go on the next SAIF tour to Israel.

Some of the major turning points in his own business career, says Khumalo, have been through connections in the South African Jewish community.

After finishing accounting articles at Deloitte, he worked at Investec for two years with the legendary Andy Leith and Stephen Koseff.

“It was the steepest learning curve of my life,” he recalls. A junior analyst in investment banking is usually pushed into the back office but that did not happen for him. “I was in at the furnace of the deal negotiations.”

At Investec, people invested in their jobs as if it was their own business, and were well rewarded for this.

“As a young black person, you are very suspicious of corporate South Africa,” says Khumalo. “But I never felt like the black guy in the white team… everyone just put in a lot of effort.”

Investec played another key role for Khumalo when, having gone out on his own, he attended a screening of a football match at the bank’s Sandton offices during the 2010 World Cup. It was there that he met his partner Given Mkhari, who was just building the MSG Afrika group.

Investec had just acquired a stake in MSG and wanted Mkhari to find a partner with a finance background and so, with the support of Investec, Khumalo became the third partner. The two have since bought Investec’s stake, but still have close relationships there.

For Khumalo, a key to success in business is being passionate about what one does. “I have always tried to stay away from businesses I don’t feel strongly about,” he says.