Jovana Korać

Jovana Korać

Current title
Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer, Nandi Pads

Course at Wits Business School
Master of Management in Entrepreneurship & New Venture Creation, 2014

A defining moment in my career
It is my fundamental belief that social entrepreneurship is the future of doing business. Shared value equates to shared growth – across industries and communities. This translates to a core moment for us at Nandi Pads. Six months into the life-span of our start-up (as any entrepreneur will attest, by far the hardest and most challenging period!) I received some feedback that cemented that we are on the right path and that all the challenges and sleepless night are absolutely worth it.

Chatting to one of our customers, offhand, she mentioned that earlier in the day she was at the shops and sanitary pads were on her list. She saw the competitor brands and said to herself she would rather wait until the evening when she would see her sister and buy Nandi Pads from her, her sister is one of our distribution agents. 

It dawned on me that brands spend millions of dollars to get this level of brand loyalty, and here we had it within six months of operation and zero marketing spend. By virtue of a business model that saw us generating shared value for our communities, not just value for ourselves, we were rewarded with something much bigger than financial value – customer loyalty.