‘I Started Avoiding Calls From Creditors'

Gavin Mkhabela’s success quickly turned to failure as his business was financed on debt he couldn’t repay.

- Melitta Ngalonkulu

On the day FORBES AFRICA meets Gavin Mkhabela, the sun is shining as bright as he had hoped his future in business would be when he resigned from the banking sector. He thought he would be the person that would clean every working space across Africa, but little did he know that it would be his bank account that would be cleaned out.

At a business park in Midrand, 30kms north of Johannesburg, Mkhabela is energetic and full of life, unlike six years ago when he was broke and depressed.

“All I did was to wake up, eat and sleep again,” he says.

It started in the basement of his work place, where he had spent four hours in his car contemplating his hasty resignation.

“I like to believe that I am a very creative person and the corporate industry tends to be stagnant at times. There are certain ideas which you may not implement because they are just not ready for them. My lifestyle was also inflated but not in accordance with my income at the time,” he says.

Soon after his resignation in 2011, Mkhabela received his pension payout which he used to start his cleaning company GavCare.

“I was excited; it was my first business. I used my provident fund to start the business,” he says.

Mkhabela used his credit cards to finance the new business.

“My fiancé and I bought everything new. We even bought a carpet machine new that was being phased out. We were just spending,” he says.

Things started well for the young entrepreneur after he received contracts with corporate giants, such as Standard Bank and Nampak, and a few local law firms.