It was as tough as tough could be. From his early years, life loomed like a clenched fist in the face of Teboho Twala. These days he drives a Porsche and is a classy and elegant young entrepreneur a world away from his often tortured childhood.
At the age of 10, he was sleeping under a wheelbarrow in the yard and lived on the streets for more than a year. The reason – a troubled childhood through a mother who turned to drink and violence when Twala’s stepfather left her. His job became protecting his younger brothers and sister while dodging drunken rages by sleeping in the open in Qwaqwa, in South Africa’s Free State province, a 300-kilometer drive from Johannesburg.
Twala was left stranded without a plan, but someone was there to help him.
The first saviour was the mother of a friend, Masabata Sophie Mokome, known as ousie Sophie. She was the only one that stood up for Twala while other neighbors were scared, he says. Soon after, she told his son to fetch Twala to live with them.
“She ran a bath for me and the next day she took us to Edgars and bought us clothes,” he recalls.
Twala was adopted for over a year before moving back with his grandmother after she heard he was homeless.
Sadly, the grandmother died while young Twala was in secondary school. Fortunately, after living alone for a while, he was taken in by his aunt who is a domestic worker.
Teboho Twala
He didn’t have an easy childhood, but the hardships steeled him into the man he is now. These days he has a trimmed beard, articulate speech, and is always on the phone.
He is a 35-year-old entrepreneur who makes a hangover drink, which also doubles as an energy drink for those who don’t drink alcohol. It is called Zzero Hangover.
It is a legacy of high school where his second saviour, his principal and biology teacher, believed in him like a father.
“Mr Ntsane; he looked after me. He may not have given me money but pushed me and I pushed myself,” he says.
Twala did so well in school that his fellow pupils collected money to pay his registration fees at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).
“The whole school had to donate, R1, R2. Mr Ntsane and I had to go to taxi ranks and government buildings to donate and we raised R1,700 ($120),” he recalls.
Young Twala passed all his subjects and he bought himself a Pentium 1 computer for about R1,000 ($70). It was his first computer and had no idea how to operate it; he had to learn fast. He was doing his first year in a bachelor of science (BSc) degree and needed to do assignments.
Two years later, he dropped the BSc for chemical engineering; he passed and got a bursary with Gold Fields in Virginia, Free State where he was reunited with his land of birth.
Sadly, all didn’t go well. Gold Fields’ share price went down in 2004 and students had to go home. Twala was without registration fees, nor a job.
Stranded without a plan, in stepped another guardian angel.
“A friend of mine assisted me; he had just finished his master’s and started working. He paid for my registration at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). I did well there; I had seven subjects and got five distinctions,” he says.
Post-graduation, Twala worked for Impala Platinum and later got an offer to work for South African Breweries (SAB). Two years later, he got a better offer with a bigger responsibility from Impala Platinum, in Rustenburg, in the North West province. He went back and worked right through to 2011.
The blessings came in abundance. That same year, he got an opportunity to work for a German company looking for a process engineer. Through that, he got an opportunity to work in Nigeria and travel to Germany.
That is when his entrepreneurial interest developed. He was inspired by the young entrepreneurs in Nigeria.
“But also, I had a boss, Sir David Osunde that believed in me. He was an old man; he took me to big meetings. I could then do presentations to ministers. That’s the level I was at because of this man,” he says.
Twala and other engineers from other parts of the world lived in a camp in cluster houses; each owning one. Besides work, they had nothing else to do. So they would spend time at the bar.
One night, they went to a pub and had a little too much to drink. The morning after, one of the engineers had a heavy hangover and didn’t know how to get rid of it, says Twala.
He took that as an opportunity and researched what could kill a hangover.
A European at the camp told him there was a solution for that in their continent. It was in Slovakia, but it was a German product with their head office in Austria. It was confusing for the young man.
In 2013, Twala came back to South Africa for a holiday. He wanted to make the idea work and not go back to Nigeria. He contacted people from Europe and told him they have a person in South Africa with a franchise, he bought it. He started distributing the product.
“It was called Alcohol Kill, but now it’s dead,” he says.
After traveling to and from Europe, Twala lost the R1 million ($70,000) he had invested in the business.
He had to come back and rethink how he was going to make the hangover solution work. During that period, he met a neurologist who said she could make an energy drink.
“I wanted something unique; my mind was on a hangover solution,” he says.
They worked tirelessly together and got a formula after a year.
Before that, Twala’s entrepreneurial instinct had kicked in. He and a friend bought News Café; a cafe-bar and cocktail franchise restaurant founded in South Africa.
He used that as an opportunity for customers to taste his product at the bar. He was getting good responses and decided to start bottling, manufacturing and distributing the product.
Twala came across a company called Boxmore which specializes in packaging. He bought generic bottles and branded them. The next challenge was finding someone who could fill the bottles.
He was satisfied with Inhle Beverages in Heidelberg, south of Johannesburg, which filled for big companies like USN and Clover. Throughout the production phase, all the companies liked the brand and its uniqueness.
Zzero Hangover was now born and had a trial run in April 2016.
“We produced a few units and sent them to the shops. That’s when the story broke in the media which was good for us,” he says.
The product was launched in May. Today, it is found in big retail stores across southern Africa. Zzero Hangover is self-funded and directly employs 10 people and contracts about 300.
Twala went from sleeping under a wheelbarrow to driving a Porsche and looking like a hero in his childhood township in the Free State. The hangover from his tough childhood has gone.