MOGUL IN THE MAKING

This Soshanguve businessman designed a smartphone in the township – and it’s selling like hotcakes

- LESEGO SEOKWANG

THINK cellphones and your mind automatically jump to big-name brands such as Huawei, Samsung and Apple. But local entrepreneur Lebogang Mokubela is aiming to change this perception and show South Africans that local is lekker.

With its big screen, glossy body and minimalist design the new Libra smartphone can proudly hold its own alongside handsets made by its rivals. But what sets it apart is that it was conceived and designed in Soshanguve near Pretoria.

Sure, there are other proudly South African phones, like the Mara handsets made in Durban, but the Libra is being branded as the first township- based smartphone brand.

Boasting 128GB onboard storage; a six-inch screen; 10-megapixel rear camera; 4MB RAM; dual SIM; biometric fingerprint authentication; and 2,6GHz Deco Core Processor, the Android phone, which retails for R2 999, is way ahead of many entry-level phones.

But the thing Lebogang (29) is most proud of is the handset’s stylish look.

“One of the things I hated when I looked at the entry-level budget phone category, is that they have this standard gold cover,” Lebogang says.

And it seems he was spot-on with his analysis of the market.

When his company, Lemok Group, officially launched the phone online at midnight on 18 December they had their first sale within minutes – and by 11 pm the next day they had almost sold out. They even sold to someone in Canada.

For years he couldn’t understand it. Browsing in the aisles of electronics stores, all Lebogang could see were products made in China, Taiwan, India, Vietnam and South Korea. Why was hardly anything made here?

“The market is huge and we don’t have real South African players,” Lebogang tells us.

When he decided to have a go at breaking into the competitive industry, he had to sit down and carefully consider which category of electronics to start with.