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Blood, Setbacks And Tears
Forbes Woman Africa
|August-September 2017
Two sisters with common failures and a dream to eventually succeed.
MY GUESTS IN THE office on a warm weekday afternoon in Johannesburg are two sisters, two entrepreneurs from Pretoria, bonded by business and blood.
As we settle for the interview, Zahra Rawjee, the older sister, speaks with a firm voice while Nadia comes across as more bubbly.
The two were raised in a business family, but are now CEOs of a company they both created ground-up. In 1937, their grandfather had set up a food distribution business, a small shop called Hoxies in Marabastad in South Africa’s capital city Pretoria, then passed on to their father, Karim Rawjee.
As young girls, during school vacations, Zahra and Nadia spent most of their time at the shop packing and selling goods, even fish. It was expected of them to be fully involved in the business.
In their growing years, they would prepare weekly reports for their father on where the markets were sitting, and what was happening in the food business internationally.
This story is from the August-September 2017 edition of Forbes Woman Africa.
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