Johannesburg, 24 June 2016 – Nelson Mandela once said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” The director and founder of M-Squared Medical, Masego Mohajane is the embodiment of this quote.

Following the constant feeling that she had reached her career ceiling as a clinical engineer, Mohajane left her highly paid job with perks and ventured into entrepreneurship in 2014 to revive a company she had registered in 2010. As if dealing with the pressures of starting a new business and the uncertainty of entrepreneurship wasn’t enough, Mohajane had to face naysayers and competitors who were forcing her to close down – saying she was encroaching on their space. While it became too much to bear at times, Mohajane persevered and was even more determined to face her fears and pursue her business journey. Thank goodness she never relented because nowadays her business is thriving – she has built a name for herself in a male dominated industry, employs a number of people and recently relocated from her garage to Riversands Incubation Hub – a large scale business incubator.

The ambitious businesswoman from North West plans to expand her staff complement from three to nine people in the following months. Mohajane also wants to have a footprint all over South Africa and gradually expand to Sub-Saharan Africa – where she has already established business relationships.

“Our vision as M-Squared Medical is to be the fastest growing and the largest ultrasound sales and technical specialists in Africa. Also, the most cost effective medical equipment supplier in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region,” Mohajane explained.

So what exactly is M-Squared Medical and what does the company do?

M-Squared Medical is a medical engineering company that mainly sources, distributes, refurbishes, sells, maintains and leases various brands of ultrasound equipment. Although ultrasound equipment is the company’s speciality, the business also supplies and maintains a wider range of medical equipment including consumables and offers applications training and technical training on equipment.

Mohajane has been in the medical engineering field for 15 years and has worked with established companies such as the Netcare Hospital Group as a clinical engineer and Tecmed Africa as a technical representative of the Computed Tomography (CT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and ultrasound departments. While at Tecmed Africa, she was promoted as technical manager for the ultrasound department – one of the biggest achievements in her career which also helped prepare her for what she does today. While the businesswoman admits that there are a lot of players in her field, she saw an opportunity in the market to target medical establishments that don’t have surplus budgets to spend on acquiring and maintaining medical equipment and founded the company.

“Our target market includes healthcare practitioners such as gynaecologists, cardiologists, urologists, physiotherapists, general practitioners, VETS, ante and post-natal clinics, hospitals (public and private sector) and our client base spans the entire SADC region. This is accomplished by our alliances on the African continent,” said Mohajane. She credits professionalism, excellent and quality service as well as reasonable costs as some of the aspects that set her company apart.

Mohajane on empowerment

Due to the fact that Mohajane has been mentored in the past and as a result achieved success by working her way up in various companies, she strongly believes in paying it forward and upskilling others. Besides M-Squared Medical, she runs a talent management company to help young people who want to enter the entertainment industry hone their skills.

As someone who believes one can never stop learning, Mohajane is excited about being at Riversands and expanding her personal capacity. “I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Riversands offers more than just premises and has various programmes to help us grow as entrepreneurs. There are a lot of things I don’t know as a business owner, so I am excited that Riversands will act as my mentor and this gives me confidence that I’ll achieve more than what I’ve been doing previously,” said Mohajane.

With entrepreneurs like Mohajane who have the courage to pursue their dreams, there’s no question that Riversands’ vision of a South African economy that’s growing and thriving through the creation of a large number of successful small businesses whose ownership reflects SA’s population demographics, creating jobs and economic opportunity for all will be achieved.

By Simangele Mzizi