Ghanaian economist, George Ayittey in his TED talks described Africa’s economic terrain as being controlled by two “Africas” – the “hippos”, considered the current ruling elite, who are happy with the status quo, and the “cheetahs” – those moving fast to bring innovation all around the continent.

Most African young entrepreneurs belong to the Cheetah’s group – the sect who Ayittey says isn’t willing to wait for the government to do things for them, but who do it for themselves.

One of Africa’s emerging Cheetahs is 23 years old serial entrepreneur -Douglas Hoernle, the founder of Rethink Education, an online education startup that allows children to learn via social media chat rooms which he started just two months to his graduation in 2012. Since then, he has signed on high-profiled South African schools, which have employed application to aid their curriculum viability. Aside his education-focused venture, Douglas also has investments in the wine business.

Douglas’ story resonates the lesser need to nurture a revolutionary idea to make an impact; sometimes the opportunities we seek are right under our very nose.

VA: What inspired the creation of Rethink Education?

DH: I founded a number of start-ups before Rethink Education. A few in the wine industry and one in the education space. I realised that there was a great opportunity to create an online content platform for high schools in South Africa as there were not a lot of content available that was useful to students aside from ePubs.

I asked the questions “How do students engage online?”And the answer is through chat applications like Whatsapp, Mxit, BBM, Facebook, Twitter etc. That made me decide to create academic material in a chat interface, to ensure that the material was familiar to students in order to create higher engagement. My team developed content that covers the entire high school Maths and Science curriculum in South Africa. Our platform does not only allow students to work through the content, it also allows teachers to monitor if students are/are not working the content.

What inspired me to create it? A couple of things. Mainly because I am passionate about entrepreneurship and start-ups and love coming up with innovate ideas and making them successful businesses, but also because I am driven by making a difference and finding clever solutions to make fellow Africans lives easier/better. And the best way to do this is through a proper education.

VA: How does Rethink Education work? How do you use this channel to fuel people’s skills?

DH: A user logs onto our platform and can choose any chapter of the curriculum that they may want to work through, (Posted Images … More info here: http://rethinkeducation.co.za/how-to/how-it-works).

The idea was to create content in a platform that is familiar to a student. Like a chat. We created the platform ourselves. We do have a mobile platform that works on Mxit. On that we have over a quarter of a million users

VA: How long have you been operating this way?

DH: I started building the product in 2012. We released our premium (web platform) in August 2013 and our mobile platform (on Mxit) in November 2013.

VA: Is your mobile platform only on Mxit?

DH: For now yes. This works well for us because Mxit is the largest social network in South Africa.

VA: Any plan to extend this?

DH: Absolutely. Unfortunately I can’t share too much about the next step. Watch this space though 😉

VA: Is this sort of business a capital intensive venture?

DH: Its very labour intensive. Creating premium academic content is extremely expensive, so yep, it wasn’t a cheap exercise. A large initial investment was required to develop the platforms and the content. So yes, it did require a significant amount of upfront capital.

VA: What is your market reach? 

DH: Only local recognition. Our content is specific to the South African curriculum, so we will only get global traction when we start creating content for other countries. We intend to start doing this toward the end of 2014.

VA: Tell us about your wine business?

DH: Wine is more a hobby for me. Education is where the hard work lies. I have a small business that sells personalised wine and does a wine market on a Thursday night in Cape Town.

VA: Why did you go into the winery business despite your commitments in education?

DH: Cape Town is right next to the wine lands…. and South African wine is easily up there with the best wine in the world. Who wouldn’t be interested? I started that business in 2009, so over five years now. I am about to launch a Craft Distillery in Cape Town producing premium Gin. But that’s another story.

VA: Do you have your own label?

DH: No, we buy in wine from surrounding wineries and re-label them for clients.

VA: How many wine labels do you have?

DH: We source wines from a variety of suppliers and then re-label them for clients. Pretty simple business. The distillery will be a new business. We will be producing our own Gin there. We are planning to open shop in June.

VA: Is the wine business profitable?

DH: Very much so, but its difficult to scale.

VA: What do you think can help start-ups develop to profitability?

DH: Not sure, just a passion for getting things going I guess. I ran my first successful business at 16 years old and have been hooked ever since. The key thing to any successful business is passionate and driven founders. You have to believe in yourself, your product and your business wholeheartedly. If that is in place, you will make the business work.

VA: What advice will you offer young and aspiring entrepreneurs?

DH: Take any and every opportunity that is given to you. The more opportunities you get involved in, the more likely it will be that you will find yourself starting a business. And make sure you have fun doing it!