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Nedbank the new title sponsor of the Pitch & Polish competition

Nedbank the new title sponsor of the Pitch & Polish competition

February 4, 2024

The 14th season of South Africa’s biggest pitching competition, Pitch & Polish, promises to be another nail-biting instalment. While the programme will follow the same winning formula as last year, where contestants engaged in a gripping battle of business pitches as they competed for the ultimate prize, there will be a notable change: a new title sponsor has come on board.

Previous co-sponsor of Pitch & Polish and a long-time supporter of small businesses, Nedbank, has stepped up its commitment to growing the entrepreneurial landscape in South Africa by becoming the title sponsor for 2024. The competition is now known as Nedbank Pitch & Polish.

“The role of entrepreneurship is critical in any country, particularly in a developing economy such as South Africa’s,” explains Alan Shannon, executive of Sales Strategy and Enablement in Retail and Business Banking at Nedbank. “Given South Africa’s high unemployment rate, diversification of the economy is key to job creation. To realise this, we need an environment that promotes and enables entrepreneurship and supports entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to life.

“At Nedbank, we strive to create opportunities for entrepreneurs to share their ideas, gain critical skills and have access to funding. In this way, we enable economic growth. Pitch & Polish is a critical role-player in the stimulation of the economy, as it provides entrepreneurs with sought-after opportunities to pitch ideas that can change lives and sustain them.”

In 2024, the Pitch & Polish competition will once again offer contestants a structured learning programme that will help them hone their investment pitching skills and boost their likelihood of receiving funding for their businesses. Each entrepreneur will be matched with an experienced business mentor from Africa’s leading incubator Raizcorp, which will work with them on strategy, finance, sales and marketing as well as their personal development so that even those contestants who don’t win one of the prizes will walk away with valuable knowledge that gives them a higher probability of growing successful, sustainable businesses.

It’s not just the contestants themselves who are impacted by Pitch & Polish. The viewers at home, too – many of them aspiring entrepreneurs – learn alongside the contestants, and it’s this secondary impact that plays a crucial role in boosting the entrepreneurial ecosystem in South Africa. With last year’s episode views exceeding 4 million (up from 3.2 million in 2022), it’s clear that there’s a growing market for the competition.

“At Raizcorp, we believe South African entrepreneurs display a level of ingenuity and resilience that deserves to be nurtured and developed – Pitch & Polish is one of the ways we do this. In its 14 years, Pitch & Polish has added value to hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs at all stages of their journey,” says Raizcorp CEO, Allon Raiz.

The 1st prize is worth an impressive R1 million, consisting of R650 000 in cash and a bursary worth R350 000 for a full two-year Raizcorp business development programme. The runner-up walks away with R100 000 in cash and the 3rd prize is R50 000 in cash. Over the past 14 years, Pitch & Polish has directly supported more than 11 000 entrepreneurs along their journey to becoming successful, thriving cogs in the economic wheel.

“At Nedbank, our purpose is to use our financial expertise to do good for businesses. Pitch & Polish provides us with an opportunity to live this purpose by stimulating the entrepreneurial spirit in young South Africans to use entrepreneurship as a vehicle to help improve our socio-economic reality. We are proud to be the main sponsor to an initiative that promotes a culture of entrepreneurship and seizes opportunities to make a real, impactful change in South Africa’s economy,” adds Shannon.

Like last year, Nedbank Pitch & Polish will be a fully online programme. Weekly pre-recorded episodes will be released on Facebook, YouTube and the Pitch & Polish website between August and November.

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Florence Duval

Florence Duval is a seasoned strategist with over 25 years of experience leading sustainability, stakeholder engagement and social impact initiatives across public and private sectors. 

As CEO and founder of IN TOUCH, she guides cross-sectoral teams to deliver high-impact advisory solutions that strengthen institutions, enable public-private partnerships and secure both the legal and social licence to operate. Her expertise spans compliance, community development, issue management and sponsorship development – always anchored in sustainable development principles. 

A former mining executive and committed social activist, Florence is known for her ability to build meaningful partnerships, navigate complex regulatory environments and drive transformative impact through purpose-driven leadership

Monique Chinnah

Monique is a curious, serial questioner who wants to take the mystique out of business and finance to make it practical and relevant to entrepreneurs. ‘Why?’, ‘Why not?’ and ‘How can we help, for real?’ are her favourite questions.

She is the Senior Manager of Segment Design and Development in Retail Relationship Banking at Nedbank, and she is responsible for ensuring that small businesses are fully supported through Banking and Beyond® solutions and most particularly as the product owner of the SimplyBiz® platform. Monique believes that keeping business strategy simple, real and practically implementable is fundamental to success. She also believes in the power of fun. If you don’t like what you’re doing, don’t do it!

Monique draws on her own entrepreneurial journeys and extensive management roles in various industries to ensure that solutions are conceptualised and delivered with small-business owners’ needs in mind.

She believes in life-long learning and being a sponge through immersions in over 300 000 businesses, various tertiary and educational programmes, and she is a YouTube and social-media hustler. In 2012 she was awarded a scholarship through Goldman Sachs UK to attend the 10 000 Women entrepreneurial programme through the Gordon Institute of Business Science, and she has been recognised with several Top Achiever Awards in Nedbank.

Allon Raiz

Allon Raiz is regarded both locally and globally as a pioneer and maverick in the business-incubation industry. He is the founder and CEO of Raizcorp which, according to The Economist, is the only genuine incubator in Africa and which currently supports over 500 businesses.

A two-times PhD dropout, Allon is the best-selling author of three entrepreneurial books. He hosted the first national radio show on entrepreneurship in South Africa in 2004; wrote and hosted the first South African prime-time entrepreneurship reality television show; and created and published an entrepreneurial cartoon strip. Allon is currently hosting his 15th season of the popular The Big Small Business Show on Business Day TV.

Allon is a co-founder of the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation South Africa and Rural Roots, and is on the advisory and judging boards of numerous local and international NGOs and entrepreneurial awards. His passion for and focus on the development of entrepreneurs attracted the attention of the World Economic Forum (WEF) which, in 2008, recognised Allon as a Young Global Leader.

As an accomplished international speaker, Allon was invited to speak at the 2011 WEF Annual Meeting held in Davos, Switzerland. In 2011, he became a member of the WEF’s Global Agenda Council on Fostering Entrepreneurship, making him one of 15 recognised global experts in the field. More recently, he became a member of the WEF’s Global Future Council.

In 2013, Allon received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the Oliver Transformation and Empowerment Awards. The following year, he became the country winner, regional winner and continental winner of the Titan Award for Building Nations.

Between 2014 and 2016, Allon guest lectured at Oxford University where he was recognised as the Oxford University Saïd Business School’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence.

In 2015, Allon received an invitation from the White House, on behalf of President Barack Obama, to speak at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit held in Kenya.

Nonkqubela Maliza

Nonkqubela Maliza is the director of Corporate and Government Affairs at Volkswagen Group Africa. She has held the position since 2006 and also chairs the VW Community Trust and VWSA BEE Initiatives Trust. 

Prior to this, Nonkqubela was a senior executive at Metallon Corporation, a pan-African mining and financial services company with operations in South Africa and Zimbabwe. She also served as a chief director at the Department of Trade and Industry and has strong experience in the financial services sector. 

Nonkqubela holds an MBA from the University of Cape Town, a BA Honours in Economics from Rhodes University and a BA in Psychology and Economics from Rhodes University.