Listen here:
How Innosa Projects actually started.
I was a draftsman before I was a founder. That’s the part people usually skip when they tell this story, and it’s actually the whole reason 3D laser scanning happened at all.Part of my job was reverse engineering, taking something that already exists and rebuilding it as a drawing.
Say you’ve got a manufactured part, a phone, whatever it is, and you need to recreate it. The old way is you get your measuring tools out and you measure it, by hand, point by point. It works.
It’s also painfully slow.
So we started looking for a faster way into a 3D environment, and that’s how I first came across 3D laser scanning as a better skillset for a job I was already doing. It was only once we started digging into it properly that we realised how narrow our thinking had been.
I’d only ever used it for manufactured parts. Turns out the same principle scans a building. It scans a factory. It even scans an accident scene, if you need to reconstruct exactly what happened for legal or insurance purposes.
That was the moment the tool stopped being a shortcut for my old job and started looking like a company.
Where the name actually comes from.
Innosa isn’t a made-up word dressed up to sound clever after the fact. It’s genuinely a combination of two names.
Mine, Sandile, and my co-director’s, Innocent. Put them together and you get Inno-SA. It was only afterwards that we noticed it also read as “Innovation South Africa,” which fit so well we built the logo around it.
An earth sphere, because the whole point was changing how something had been done the same way for fifteen years.
Starting with nothing to point to.
Here’s the part that doesn’t make it into a polished company bio: we had no capital, no practical business plan, and no work history.
Scanning equipment isn’t cheap, and when you’re a startup with none of those three things, every door you knock on asks for at least one of them.
We found our way through it by Googling incubators around Richards Bay. Genuinely just searching and visiting them until one fits. The first one we tried wasn’t right.
The second was Black Umbrellas, and they gave us something we didn’t have on our own… A business plan that was actually practical, and a platform to present in front of real stakeholders instead of guessing.
Even with that, the market didn’t open up on its own. Being based in Mhlathuze, an area with dozens of industrial plants built decades before digital modelling existed. Plants with missing or undocumented drawings, exactly the problem we solve.
You’d think the work would be sitting right there.
It wasn’t, because everyone already had their own supplier, usually a company from Johannesburg.
So we ended up travelling out of our own region to find work (which we found in in Rustenburg), while the work we were built for sat right around us, held by companies we hadn’t earned a name with yet.
The mistake that cost us the most time.
If I’m honest about what actually slowed us down most, it wasn’t the capital or the equipment. It was that we started out presenting to the wrong audience. We hadn’t yet learned to go where the right people actually were, industry exhibitions, specifically in our field.
So a lot of early effort went into rooms that were never going to say yes. Once we corrected that and started showing up in front of people who actually had this problem, the return on the same effort changed completely.
Trying to approach a name like RBM or Transnet with no work history behind you, offering a service most people had never heard of is a specific kind of hard.
You’re not just selling a service.
You’re proving the category exists.
Where that startup is now.
That struggle for recognition didn’t stop the day Black Umbrellas signed off on a business plan, it took years of it.
But it’s also not where the story stopped.
Innosa is ECSA-registered today, ISO 9001:2015 certified, based in Rustenburg, and doing the same work, turning undocumented, decades-old infrastructure into accurate digital data for names like Anglo Platinum (Now Valterra Platinum), Sappi, Mondi, and Transnet across the Platinum Belt.
The same kind of client that was out of reach for an unknown two-person startup!
What I’d tell someone starting out.
People ask me sometimes what I’d tell someone thinking about engineering, or about starting something like this. My honest answer is don’t pick it because of the salary number in your head.
I’ve seen qualified graduates, good results, still sitting unemployed. The degree alone isn’t the plan.
If you actually want to change how something is done, get the knowledge so you can apply it to something real.
And if you end up working for someone else first, that’s fine. Just don’t stop looking for what could be improved.
You don’t need ten years of experience to notice a better way of doing something. One year, applied properly, is enough to start.
If you want to know more about how that same scanning-and-drafting work applies to a live plant shutdown today, I’ve written about it here: 3D Scanning for Plant Shutdown Planning.
[Intro/Ad read]
Today’s podcast is brought to you by algorithmlab.com, a social innovation movement of disruptive approaches for business and brands. I’m joined by Sandile Shembe, who is a managing director at Innosa Projects, a South African-based company that specialises in 3D laser scanning service and drawing office solutions.
[0:18] So without wasting any more time, let’s get into the conversation and find out more about Innosa and everything engineering. Sandile, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Yola. I’m so glad to have you here with us. Let’s just get into it, but before we get to it, just tell us a bit about yourself and where you’re from.
[0:37] [About Sandile]
I’m actually from the area around Richards Bay. I was born in Empangeni. I lived in eSikhawini for years. Studied there from primary up until high school. Went to Durban for further studies, came back, worked here at Richards Bay, and also worked in Port Elizabeth for a couple of months. I’ve been around South Africa and almost in seven provinces where I’ve gained experience.
[01:10] [About InnoSA]
And the name Innosa, Innosa Project, just give us a quick background on that as well. Well, the name is a combination of two names of the company directors, which is myself, Sandile, and Innocent. So it’s Inno and then SA. But then combining those two also brought another meaning to the name, which is Innovation South Africa.
[01:41] And then which also speaks to the logo of the company, which is the earth sphere. So which means we are changing the way things have been done before. ‘Cause what we are doing, it’s been there for the past 15 years, but then we’re bringing innovation to it. And for someone who doesn’t know what it is that you guys do at Innosa, how would you then describe it?
[02:06] [What InnoSA does]
If I had to explain to someone maybe who’s not into engineering, like what Innosa Project really provides, then I would just give an explanation of a building. So for instance, you have a building that you don’t have drawings for, and you want to have as-built drawings to submit maybe to municipality, then what is the quickest way of getting the measurements and getting to the drawing?
[02:43] That’s where we use the application of 3D laser scanning for capturing as-built measurements and then convert that into drawings. So to explain for someone who is not into engineering, it’s better to use an example of a house.
[03:07] [How 3D laser scanning came about]
I want to find out how and why did you come about 3D laser scanning? It’s actually based on work experience. Where I was employed, I was a draftsman, so I used to do engineering designs and also do drafting work. Part of that, we had to do reverse engineering, reversing what has already been built.
[03:38] So if, for instance, this phone has already been manufactured and we want to copy it, then I need to get measuring tools and measure and create drawings. That’s what we actually did, but it was a long process. That’s why we had to introduce or implement 3D laser scanning, which was the quickest way of getting to a 3D environment, and that’s how I came about 3D laser scanning.
[0410] But without knowing that, there’s actually more into it, because I was only focused on manufactured parts for machines. As we did the research, we also found out that we can apply laser scanning to buildings, to factories, and even to accident or scene investigations.
[13:36] So if there’s an accident and you need to simulate what happened, you can actually scan the scene and be able to reproduce a simulation of some sort. So there’s actually more into it rather than buildings or manufactured parts.
[04:58] [Market access]
And how has the access to the market been for Innosa? It was tough in the beginning. It’s still a problem even now. Although we have figured maybe about 40% of it, we are almost there into how we’re going to access the market. But it was always going to be a challenge if you’re going to be a startup and you require capital to buy machines.
[05:23] You also require some business development. So we were able to bridge that by seeking funding from business developers like incubators. We tried a couple of incubators,
[05:50] until we found one that we were able to work with, which was Black Umbrellas. They provided the business development side, which is the business plan. A practical plan we can use to access the market.
[06:10] So through working with the incubator, we were able to see how we can be able to penetrate the market that is tough.
[06:35] [Partnerships]
And how have you guys been making your contacts? With Black Umbrellas it was. I won’t say it was easy. But we use Google a lot. That’s how we’re able to find incubators. We had to Google incubators around Richards Bay.
[06:57] And then we found a couple of them, went to the first one, weren’t satisfied, went to Black Umbrellas. And then they also offered a platform where we can present in front of stakeholders. It wouldn’t be easy to make such contacts in this field because it’s so different and foreign from the norm.
[07:22] Because you guys are doing 3D laser scanning. Yeah, you are right. In order to speak to the right audience, we had to plan and go to exhibitions related to our field, so that we can actually present to the right people.
[07:47] So that we can present to the right people. ‘Cause when we started, we were presenting to the wrong audience, and hence it took longer to actually see the returns of doing marketing and sales.
[08:09] [Mid-roll Ad]
Are you committed to drive social change and business development for collective value creation? For more information, email business@algorithmlab.com or come to us at RBIDZ TechnoHub, Pienaar Road, Tshikazi Waterfront.
[08:29] [Challenges]
Now, Sandile, going back to our conversation, what are some of the challenges Innosa Project has encountered during this startup?
[08:33] I’ve mentioned the first point, which was a practical business plan. That was the first challenge, and then we were able to maneuver that by joining the incubator. And then after that we had a requirement of capital,
[08:53] that we required in order to start. So we wasted most of our time trying to see how we’re gonna get capital. We didn’t have a plan on how to work without having an investment. So we actually had to spend some time doing research on how we can get going without actually having the equipment and all the resources.
[09:21] So that was one of the challenges and it was because we didn’t have mentorship at that time. After we had a mentor, we were able to navigate on how to actually get going without having to invest in capital.
[09:44] The other challenges we’re facing now. We didn’t have the work history or the experience. So it’s always going to be a challenge to approach clients like RPM
[10:05] or Transnet, when you don’t have any work history and you want to provide a niche service. So we had to plan how we gonna go around that.
[1023] [Umhlatuze environment – pros and cons]
What have been the pros and cons for the environment of Umhlatuze for Innosa Projects?
[10:30] It’s a challenge. It still is a challenge, because the service is required around the area. In one of the articles we published, we mentioned that most of our industrial plants were built even before we were born.
[10:52] Maybe 50 years ago. And these plants were built before technology. So the information is still not digital. Even the drawings that are available are not informative. And they’ve done changes, but they have not documented those changes.
[11:14] Now the problem is how do we get to them and let them know that there is a solution to this? But the problem is, since it’s a small area, everyone knows who is who. So they have their own companies
[11:23] that they use, maybe from Johannesburg. Most of the companies come from Johannesburg. So the challenge is we find ourselves going out of Richards Bay to find work, whereas there is a pool of companies around here where we can provide the same service.
[12:34] But because we’re still unknown. Yes.
[12:47] [Advice for aspiring engineers]
And just coming to an end of our conversation, what would be the guidelines for someone who wants to pursue a career in engineering or has an interest in 3D laser scanning?
[13:28] I think the first thing is you have to like what you do. Maybe you mustn’t choose engineering just because you’re going to be paid well. Because we think engineering means finances. Like now we have graduates that are unemployed.
[13:50] And they are qualified, they’ve got good results. I think if someone were to pursue engineering. let’s say you have an idea of something you want to change. you want to actually get knowledge so that you can be able to apply it into real life.
[14:14] Other than just looking at “I’m going to get a degree and then work for a company.” But if you work for a company, then look for opportunities to see how things can be improved within a company. And even with one year of experience, you can come up with an idea
[14:37] if you really apply yourself and the knowledge you’ve gained at school. So it’s liking what you do and also applying what you’ve learned.
[15:59] [Outro]
Thank you so much. I hope you have learned a thing or two about engineering, because I have certainly been educated by Sandile here with me.
[16:11] Please do note that this podcast will be coordinated by Innosa Projects as they are now partnered with Algorithm Lab. So from me, thank you so much for listening.
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