100% black female owned company – Mighty Comms – is a broadband solutions company that has carved out a niche for itself in the South African ICT sector. The company offers clients across various sectors broadband and network design services, deployments, installations and maintenance services.

Mighty Comms founder, Refilwe Marumo, says she has encountered many twists and turns during her entrepreneurial journey. “My first business venture was a corporate cleaning business established in 2005 named Mighty Care, which traded for about three or four years. This was followed by a period of broadcasting service applications with a consortium, but after two rounds of applications, we were still not successful and the business had to evolve in order to survive.

“In 2014, we underwent a name change, from Mighty Care to Mighty Comms, and armed with a new vision we focused on the ICT industry, and offered a selection of products that we had experience in. With a staff complement of only four, we started small and the growth has since been organic.”

Today, Mighty Comms employs 10 people, the bulk of which are female technicians and ICT specialists. “We broadened our scope to deployments in 2016, which meant a greater focus on Core Network designs, LAN installations and maintenance, which led to the additional job creation for six technicians. We are passionate about empowering women in the ICT sector and have upskilled all new employees through various courses offered to the ICT industry.

Having recently embarked on machine monitoring innovation with our partner IoT NxT, Marumo says that further employment will be created over the coming year. “Machine monitoring innovation is truly the cutting edge of the Internet of Things (IoT), where analogue equipment is ‘transformed’ into digital, for easier monitoring and asset tracing.

“We believe we are at the crux of the future and in order to scale accordingly, are taking in 20 new learners, who will receive the necessary ICT industry training and exposure. The idea is that some of these learners will be employed by Mighty Comms on a full-time basis in the future,” she explains.

Accredited with global original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Alcatel Lucent, Huawei and Ruckus, and boasting an impressive list of Government and private clients, Mighty Comms seems set for great things. “The business has shown significant growth in the past year, increasing revenue by a whopping 147%,” says Marumo. “We have also been approached by three multinational companies in the past year – one that offers hospital management solutions and another that supplies two-way radio trunking products and a swift messaging platform for the banking sector – to be their local partner.

“These partnerships have led to an even greater focus on the upskilling and training of our employees, as our technicians will need to learn the ropes on how we can take these new products to market,” she concludes.

Refilwe Marumo is a finalist in the 2017 Entrepreneur of the Year® competition sponsored by Sanlam and BUSINESS/PARTNERS. For more information on her business, please visit the Mighty Comms website: mightycomms.co.za.