Seelan Gobalsamy

- South Africa

Profile

His foray into the business world began early on. No stranger to hard work, his entrepreneurial spirit, passion to be a changemaker and a strong family influence were his greatest driving forces. “My great- grandmother would give me things to sell to earn my pocket money. As a teenager, I remember spending my evenings selling sweets, samosas and vegetables, to lend my family a helping hand. I relished in the challenge of trying to figure out the price at which to sell items to ensure I made a decent profit. At university, my tiny room was piled to the ceiling with T-shirts – a venture that paid for my first car,” recalls Seelan.

A chronic overachiever, Seelan studied 40 years’ worth of matric exam papers to prepare for his finals. He graduated from high school at 16, achieving many distinctions. He went on to study a BCom in Accounting and Law at Rhodes University, taking up part-time employment to pay for his studies. As luck would have it, a local company was very impressed by his performance. They tracked him down via a local newspaper and offered him a bursary.

Seelan explains, the value of a good education was instilled in him, early on; “I recognised the power of education in opening doors, especially in pre-democracy South Africa. So, my focus was on excelling in my studies, earning a decent income and doing something that feeds my passion”. It is this drive and ambition that saw him achieve his Chartered Accountant qualification in his early twenties, and he went on to do an Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School.