OM honours innovative businesses

FINANCIAL services group Old Mutual Zimbabwe (OM) has saluted “resilient and innovative” local companies in a challenging environment characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA).”

Samuel Matsekete, the group’s chief executive, told a Top Companies Survey (TCS) in conjunction with The Financial Gazette that the global giant remains committed to contributing to the development of business and the Zimbabwean economy.

“We are here to commemorate and honour resolute companies that have shown exemplary leadership and performance in business,” he said, adding it was the company’s “desire to inspire start-ups and other small-sized companies to expand operations, “Matsekete said.

“Delta came out supreme in the 2022 Top Company survey following a similarly rigorous exercise of quantitative and qualitative evaluation factors.”

“As we honour every business milestone this evening, we hope that this serves as an inspiration to other businesses, be they start-ups, entrepreneurs, MSMEs, or large corporates, to strive for the best,” he added.

Fingaz’s TCS, which has been sponsored by OM for the last nine years, was first launched in 1980, and with a view or aim of promoting good governance, ethical conduct and corporate social responsibility.

This year’s TCS ran under the theme: “Innovating for growth in a VUCA environment”.

“The theme speaks to a need for all companies to increase focus on resilience and agility at the same time. We are all exposed to VUCA, variously.

“All the paradigms we see shifting demand interventions that ensure that as businesses we become more agile and resilient at the same time,” Matsekete said.

“This has meant adapting the way we do business, supply chains, and how businesses access and interact with customers.

“Strategies, people, processes, and technologies must not only continuously adapt to changing conditions but do so faster each time,” he said.

The OM boss said that companies needed to continue adhering to responsible business frameworks.

“In addition to continuing to evolve our customer value proposition, we remain conscious of the wider community whose development we are committed to support,” Matsekete further said.

To demonstrate OM’s importance to the economy — and backed by its 31 000 shareholders post-1999’s demutualisation — the company has accelerated its empowerment and investment initiatives such as infrastructural programmes, among other things, by investing in the renewable energy sector.

As such, the group has poured millions in hard currency in Solgas Energy solar plant in Hwange, Mutual Gardens solar plant in Harare, while Nyabira Solar farm is under expansion. It also has hydro projects in the pipeline.

The group currently supports value chains in mining and logistics through real estate developments and has opened at least two sites over the past twelve months.

“Some of our real estate developments are also designed to support SMEs as they seek to grow and formalise their ventures.

“One of the successful projects, the Eastgate Market, has become the group’s successful model,” Matsekete said.

Apart from that, OM’s innovation hub in Harare continues to see overly exciting ideas being incubated and transformed into real business ventures.

Only this quarter four ventures were officially launched into the market at the hub.

Moreover, the group’s flagship financial literacy programme, ‘On the Money’ has touched many people from organisations spanning across the spectrum of private, public, large, and small and medium-size entities.

A panel of judges and analysts, independent of both Fingaz and OM, come up with the judging criteria and categories for the top awards.