If you ask a room full of MBA students what type of business they'd like to build, you’ll probably hear about AI, fintech, apps, and digital platforms. It’s less likely people will reply “luxury toilet hire”, “industrial cleaning”, or “rubble removal”. However, “dirty work” (businesses that require boots on the ground rather than laptops in coffee shops) often offers not only the opportunity to generate sustainable revenue but also to solve real-world problems. Why are these types of businesses often overlooked?
The idea that opportunity often hides in unglamorous sectors is not new. Writing for Moneyweb in 2025, Sasfin Wealth (now Otto1890) portfolio manager Andrew Padoa noted that while investors often chase exciting technology trends, some of the strongest long-term returns have come from businesses operating in seemingly mundane industries.
The common denominator is not glamour but fundamentals: essential products and services, specialised expertise, operational excellence and barriers to entry. But while South Africa's largest companies have long operated in sectors such as mining, manufacturing, and logistics, entrepreneurial attention often gravitates elsewhere.
Hiding in plain sight
For Siyabonga Mbatha, director of Siyaphila Luxury Toilet Hire, the opportunity wasn’t in inventing something new. It was seeing the (rather unglamorous but very important) missing element in what was already available in the market.
While mobile toilets were a familiar sight at community events where he lived in Durban, what Mbatha noticed was that many operators were neglecting the most important part of the business: keeping the units clean and serviced for the duration of an event.
By focusing on hygiene, reliability, and customer experience, he found a gap in a market that others assumed was already crowded.
Mbatha and his business partners launched Siyaphila in 2022 with a single two-cubicle VIP toilet trailer. Today, the business operates in both Durban and Johannesburg, having expanded its fleet to meet growing demand.
While opportunities in tech might dominate many business school discussions, South Africa is full of examples of successful businesses operating in less fashionable niches. From manufacturing industrial equipment that’s better suited to local applications than imported counterparts, to recycling waste products, operating a pet crematorium, or servicing boilers, opportunities abound in sectors where utility is often more important than innovation.
The business of keeping things working
Palesa Mofokeng, founder and MD of Pre-Eminence Trading and Projects, is perhaps not who you might imagine when you think about the person behind a company offering plumbing and industrial cleaning services.
“As a young woman leading a business in industries traditionally dominated by men, I hope our journey encourages more young people, especially women, to pursue opportunities in technical and infrastructure sectors. There is space for innovation, leadership, and impact in these industries, and they play a far greater role in society than many people realise,” she says.
She’s founded other businesses previously, but when it came to Pre-Eminence, she says her motivation was to create something that would be relevant and sustainable in the long term.
“I wanted to build something that would not only generate income but also contribute towards solving real problems in South Africa and beyond, create employment, and make a meaningful impact,” she says. “The first thing that came to mind was water. Water is life, and challenges around water infrastructure, sanitation and maintenance continue to affect communities, municipalities, mines, and industries every day.”
Rather than chasing a fashionable industry, Mofokeng focused on an enduring need. She built Pre-Eminence around water infrastructure and maintenance, later expanding into industrial cleaning.
Over the past five years, that approach has helped Pre-Eminence grow steadily. Mofokeng attributes the company’s success to consistency, resilience, and a commitment to delivering quality work in environments where reliability matters. Many of the company’s opportunities have come through referrals and long-term relationships, while continuous investment in equipment, training, and operational systems has helped it compete in demanding sectors.
No disruptive technology, viral marketing campaign, or overnight success. None of those shiny elements of entrepreneurial mythology. Instead, the business grew through the less glamorous ingredients of hard work and persistence.
Perhaps, suggests GIBS’ Prof. Motshedisi Mathibe, that lack of perceived prestige is one of the reasons unglamorous business opportunities are often undervalued.
Visibility over value?
“I think entrepreneurial culture globally has become heavily shaped by venture capital logic and media narratives that celebrate disruption, rapid scalability, and technology-driven innovation,” says Mathibe. “As a result, businesses operating in sectors such as sanitation, waste management, transport logistics, maintenance, agriculture, energy distribution, or infrastructure services are often perceived as less exciting because they are operationally intensive and less visible in popular entrepreneurial storytelling.”
Young entrepreneurs, she adds, especially graduates from elite institutions, are often socialised to pursue businesses that appear innovative rather than businesses that are fundamentally useful. Yet this perception often obscures where real value is created.
Mofokeng believes another reason these opportunities are overlooked is that many people underestimate what they require.
For example, she says, one of the biggest misconceptions she comes up against is that plumbing and industrial cleaning are low-skill industries. In reality, the work demands technical expertise, safety compliance, planning, problem-solving, and ongoing training.
The flip side is that operational demands can deter would-be entrants. For example, maintenance of the fragile VIP toilet units is one of Mbatha’s biggest ongoing headaches. “They can block any time,” he says. “Regular services need to be conducted, especially after a big event. The maintenance team also always needs to be on standby, in case anything happens to the unit while serving an event. People don’t understand the risks involved in running this sort of business.”
In Mofokeng’s business, operational demands are also a barrier to some would-be market entrants. Working in municipalities, mines, and industrial environments requires specialised equipment, strong systems and the ability to respond quickly when problems arise. The silver lining for entrepreneurs who are willing to grapple with these challenges is that, as Mofokeng puts it, “difficult industries often have less competition”.
Following the need
Particularly in developing economies, Mathibe says, entrepreneurs do not always need to invent entirely new products or services. “Often the opportunity lies in executing basic services reliably, affordably, and at scale. Consistency itself becomes innovation.”
In other words, while start-up culture often celebrates invention, many successful entrepreneurs build their businesses around execution. They identify a persistent problem, find a way to solve it more reliably than competitors, and then repeat that process consistently over time.
In South Africa, Mathibe sees significant opportunities in areas linked to infrastructure gaps, service delivery failures, and everyday operational inefficiencies, from water management and waste recycling to logistics, maintenance, and agricultural processing.
“In the African context especially, we need to broaden how we define entrepreneurial success,” she urges. “Sustainable economic value is not only about disruption; it is also about reliability, resilience, and the ability to solve structural problems consistently over time. Some of our most impactful entrepreneurs are not building apps. They are building systems that allow societies to function more effectively.”
Chipping away at the entrepreneurship veneer
Mathibe says that business schools and aspiring entrepreneurs can learn from businesses built around operational excellence, maintenance, logistics, and essential services rather than novelty or hype.
“Business schools need to place greater emphasis on execution capability, operational resilience, and systems thinking,” she says. “Entrepreneurship education sometimes overemphasises ideation and pitching while underemphasising the discipline required to build businesses that deliver consistent value over many years. Operational businesses teach important lessons about process management, customer trust, supply chain coordination, cost discipline, and long-term sustainability.”
As an example, she cites clean-energy enterprises in Rwanda, which are partnering with community leaders to improve access to clean cooking solutions in rural communities. “Through prepaid ‘pay-as-you-cook’ gas models, households can access cleaner energy alternatives without the burden of high upfront costs for gas cylinders and infrastructure.”
For Mathibe, this highlights an important point: innovation is not always technological. In many emerging markets, innovation can take the form of improving access, reducing inefficiencies, increasing reliability, or adapting services to underserved communities.
Mofokeng has seen this principle play out firsthand. She argues that essential-service industries teach resilience, operational excellence, and long-term thinking because they are built around solving real problems that affect people’s daily lives.
“Young entrepreneurs can learn that opportunity does not always exist in fashionable industries,” she says. “Sometimes the greatest opportunities are found in sectors where there is real demand, operational gaps, and room for innovation.”
Lessons from the field
- Look for service gaps, not just product gaps: Siyaphila Luxury Toilet Hire wasn't built around a new product but doing a familiar job better. Customers were frustrated by poorly maintained units and unreliable service, creating an opportunity to compete on quality rather than novelty.
- Follow persistent needs: Water infrastructure, sanitation, maintenance, and logistics may not generate the same excitement as emerging technologies, but they address challenges that do not disappear when trends change or economic cycles play out.
- Don’t mistake “unglamorous” for “easy”: Many overlooked industries require significant technical expertise, compliance, planning, and operational discipline. These barriers can deter competitors, but they also create opportunities for capable operators.
- Reliability is a competitive advantage: Entrepreneurs in “dirty work” businesses emphasise the importance of consistency. Long-term growth often comes from keeping promises, maintaining standards, and building trust rather than chasing rapid expansion.
- Invest in systems, people, and capability: Equipment, training, maintenance, and strong operational processes are often what separate successful businesses from struggling ones. Growth is difficult to sustain without them.
- Innovation is not always technological: Particularly in emerging markets, innovation often means improving access, increasing reliability, reducing inefficiencies, or adapting services to meet local needs. Sometimes the most valuable ideas are also the most practical.
