Octopus Horse Riding is an animal farm and petting zoo that offers horse riding activities and riding safaris. 

Vusi Tshabalala, the owner, is passionate about environmental education and through the business promotes conservation efforts and awareness.

He has found a powerful benefit from the accelerator programme as well as the 5-day workshop he did with us in 2019.

“When I first joined the Socionext training for that one week, one of the best impacts that came to me was the message of ‘there’s no reason why you haven’t started. You start with the little that you have. Test your products, test your services, and get your feedback from your clients and build from there.’ And from there that’s what I did.”

“Before I knew it things were coming along very well. Actually, far better than I thought it would. The first program really pushed me to start.”

Through the mentoring his business management skills have improved, and the investment has been put towards much needed infrastructure upgrades for the business. Including flushing toilets and a kitchen to offer guests food and refreshments.

In speaking about how the mentoring has given him the tools to professionalize the business operations:

“I was also able to look at how our monthly operational costs are incurred, from the food to the salaries, and all that was coming from that. So, it really helped me to get my business in order, get our books in order, get our administration in order. And now I am able to see where our business is doing well and where it is not. And that has helped me to know where to improve, which departments, which areas. Or which clients do I need to strengthen the relationship in order to increase our revenue and which ones do I need to keep revisiting to keep the relationship we currently have.”