The Social Entrepreneurship Impact Lab™ has one purpose – to equip promising and driven social entrepreneurs with the tools, knowledge and confidence to scale their businesses and create real impact.
Philip Mngadi, CEO and Founder of Zinacare is one such entrepreneur, and he took full advantage of the support on offer to rocket his social enterprise to a whole new level of success.
Social Impact
By providing people with access to fast, safe and discreet testing facilities for a range of communicable diseases, Philip and Zinacare are making a telling contribution towards the good health of communities across the country. The company has also made significant impact in democratising access to safe home-based testing in the sexual health and women’s health arena.
Business Journey
When Zinacare was selected as a participant on the FNB Social Entrepreneurship Impact Lab™, the business’s primary focus was to improve access to medical testing and screening in the sexual health and women’s health markets.
At the onset of the COVID-19 outbreaks, Zinacare found themselves well positioned to conduct COVID-19 screening, and rapidly pivoted to establish Drive-Thru COVID-19 testing facilities across Gauteng. The Drive-Thru facilities provide people with convenient access to COVID-19 testing with results provided to patients within 48 hours.
The SEIL Support
The first Zinacare Drive-Thru testing facility was opened in Kyalami on 2 March 2020 and was a major success. It offered quick, professional and convenient access to COVID-19 testing, with results provided to patients within 48 hours. The initial site was soon followed by two other Drive-Thru testing facilities, and an additional on-demand testing service for company employees. In the second half of 2020, Philip saw his revenue increase by 86%, his profit margin by 162% and his job growth by an amazing 700%. He has since gone on to develop home testing kits for COVID-19 and partnered with some of SA’s leading laboratories to streamline the testing process even further.
Programme Impact
While the COVID-19 pandemic presented Philip and Zinacare with an excellent opportunity to scale exponentially, he is quick to acknowledge that none of this would have been possible without the support of FNB, Fetola and the Social Entrepreneurship Impact Lab™. He credits his mentor for providing a practical, experienced voice of reason throughout his growth phase, and of the SEIL programme he says:
South Africa needs more entrepreneurs like Philip Mngadi, and SEIL exists to find them, support their vision and unleash the power of social entrepreneurship to address our pressing social and environmental challenges.
7900 COVID tests performed
4915 positive cases detected
Opened 3 COVID-19 testing sites
86% Turnover growth
